Skip to Navigation Skip to Content
College of Arts and Letters | Michigan State University

Spring 2015

 

PHL 200-211 | PHL 340-380 | PHL 411-480 | PHL 801-870


PHL 101 - INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY

Section 001 (Jensen)

Theories of Knowledge, values, and reality. Topics such as objectivity, relativism and cultural diversity, moral responsibility, aesthetic values, and the self, existence of God, free will, minds and machines.

Section 002 (Hedrick)

Theories of Knowledge, values, and reality. Topics such as objectivity, relativism and cultural diversity, moral responsibility, aesthetic values, and the self, existence of God, free will, minds and machines.

Section 003 (Lindemann)

Theories of Knowledge, values, and reality. Topics such as objectivity, relativism and cultural diversity, moral responsibility, aesthetic values, and the self, existence of God, free will, minds and machines.

Section 004 (McClendon)

Theories of Knowledge, values, and reality. Topics such as objectivity, relativism and cultural diversity, moral responsibility, aesthetic values, and the self, existence of God, free will, minds and machines.

Section 005 (Dai)

Theories of Knowledge, values, and reality. Topics such as objectivity, relativism and cultural diversity, moral responsibility, aesthetic values, and the self, existence of God, free will, minds and machines.

Section 005 (Lambert)

Theories of Knowledge, values, and reality. Topics such as objectivity, relativism and cultural diversity, moral responsibility, aesthetic values, and the self, existence of God, free will, minds and machines.


PHL 130 - LOGIC AND REASONING

Section 001 (O'Rourke)
 
Deductive and inductive reasoning. Topics such as rational argumentation, fallacies, definition, meaning, truth and evidence. Techniques for critical reading and thinking.

Section 002 (Roper)
 
Deductive and inductive reasoning. Topics such as rational argumentation, fallacies, definition, meaning, truth and evidence. Techniques for critical reading and thinking.
 
Section 003 (Grey)
 
Deductive and inductive reasoning. Topics such as rational argumentation, fallacies, definition, meaning, truth and evidence. Techniques for critical reading and thinking.

Section 004 (Grey)
 
Deductive and inductive reasoning. Topics such as rational argumentation, fallacies, definition, meaning, truth and evidence. Techniques for critical reading and thinking.
 

PHL 211 - MODERN PHILOSOPHY

Section 001 (Grey)

Philosophy from the Renaissance Through the Nineteenth Century, including Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.

PHL 220 - EXISTENTIALISM

Section 001 (Sprague-Rice)

 Husserl, Jaspers, Kierkegaard, Marcel, Nietzsche, Sartre, and de Beauvoir. Topics such as hope, anxiety, bad faith, subjectivity, freedom, social being, phenomenological method.

PHL 330 - FORMAL REASONING

Section 001 (Steel)

Formal methods in deductive reasoning. Logic of connectives and quantifiers including identity, functions, and descriptions.

PHL 340 - ETHICS

Section 001 (Nelson)

Inquiry through the writings of some important theorists, their critics and their contemporary followers. Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Mill, Sidgwick.
 
 

PHL 344 - ETHICAL ISSUES IN HEALTH CARE

Section 001 (Lindemann)

Termination of treatment, truth-telling, informed consent, human experimentation, reproductive issues, allocation of scarce resources, justice and the health care system.

Section 002 (Valadas)

Termination of treatment, truth-telling, informed consent, human experimentation, reproductive issues, allocation of scarce resources, justice and the health care system.

 

PHL 354- PHILOSOPHY OF LAW

Section 001 (Schwartzman)

Legal concepts such as punishment, responsibility, rights and duties, and judicial decisions. Legal theories such as natural law, positivism and realism.

PHL 355- PHILOSOPHY OF TECHNOLOGY

Section 001 (Gifford)

Examination of the desirability of technology, its social forms, and its alternatives. Conventional productivist, ecological progressive, and radical humanist outlooks.

PHL 356- PHILOSOPHY OF ASPECT FEM

Section 001 (Sertler)

Conceptual and normative issues in feminist theory. Topics such as sexism, oppression, coercion, control, power, equality, personhood, respect and self-respect, rape, separatism, community, intimacy, and autonomy.

PHL 357-  PHILOSOPHY OF KARL MARX

Section 001 (Lotz)

Marx's philosophical thought and itsbearing on science, religion, art and politics.

PHL 360-  PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE

Section 001 (O'Rourke)

Conceptual and normative issues in feminist theory. Topics such as sexism, oppression, coercion, control. power, equality, personhood, respect and self-respect, rape, separatism, community, intimacy, and autonomy.

PHL 411 - ARISTOTLE SEMINAR

Section 001 (Katz)

 Aristotle's major works and his major contributions to the metaphysics, psychology, ethics, the arts, and politics. Variable by term in content.

PHL 415/810 - KANT SEMINAR

Section 001 (Rauscher)

 A seminar in Immanuel Kant's critical philosophy in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics, or other areas. Variable by term in content.

PHL 432- LOGIC AND ITS METATHEORY

Section 001 (McKeon)

 Logical consequence, first-order predicate logic with identity, including functions and descriptions. Proof theory and model theory. Topics in metatheory such as completeness, compactness, and the Lowenheim-Skolem Theorems. The axiomatic method and Godel's Incompleteness Theorems

PHL 440- CENTRAL ISSUES IN ETHICS

Section 001 (Nelson)
Twentieth-century discussions of universalization, utilitarianism, nature of a moral theory, moral language, relativism, skepticism, theory and practice, weakness of will, moral education, and jistification.

PHL 451 - PHILOSOPHY AND THE BLACK EXPERIENCE

Section 001 (McClendon)

Philosophical issues about race and the black experience. Nature of racism, relationship of science to race, debates about identity, public policy and race.

PHL 453 - ETHICAL ISSUES IN GLOBAL PUBLIC HEALTH

Section 001 (Gifford)

Ethical issues about public health from a global perspective. Health and illness in the context of development, poverty, technological change, resource conflicts, the distribution of power, and social violence. Values and policy issues regarding resources, environment, and the distribution and quality of health care.

PHL 454 - TOPICS IN PHILOSOPHY OF LAW

Section 001 (Hedrick)

Courses in legal or political philosophy and one PHL course at the 300 level or above.

PHL 461 - METAPHYSICS

Section 001 (Nails)

Basic concepts employed in trying to understand the nature of thins. Concepts include universals, particulars, things, kinds, properties, events, persons, change, causality, chance, existence, possibility, necessity, space and time.

PHL 492 - CAPSTONE FOR MAJORS

Section 001 (Nails)

 Advanced, variable topic seminar for undergraduate majors. Presentations, substantial written work.
 

PHL 810/415 - SEM HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 

PHL 850 - SEM IN VALUE THEORY

Focus: Rationality and its other II

Section 001 (Hedrick/Lotz)

philosophy and critical experience (Adorno), culture industry, fetishism, capitalism (Benjamin, Krakauer, Adorno), and social pathologies (Habermas, Honneth)


PHL 880- SEM IN PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

Section 001 (Steel)