PHLA11H3: Introduction to Ethics
Instructor: Hamish Russell
Lecture Mode: In-person
Tutorial Mode: In-person & Online synchronous
Description: Ethics is about how to live. It is about how we ought to treat one another, about the difference between right and wrong, and about the elements of a good and meaningful life. It is also about how we ought to live together, as a society, when we have different ethical views. These are big, weighty questions, and no one has the authority to simply tell us the answers. What we can do is read, ponder, and discuss the ideas of people who have thought hard about ethics—people whose ideas can broaden and deepen our own ethical outlook. In the first half of the course, we’ll compare a range of views about how to live, exploring the concepts of virtue, duty, freedom, altruism, and interconnectivity. In the second half, we’ll think about the ethical principles that ought to govern how we live together as a society, engaging with theories of liberalism, feminism, civil disobedience, worker solidarity, and anarchism. Our discussions will draw on influential Western philosophers, historically marginalized perspectives, and contemporary film and fiction.
PHLB03H3: Philosophy of Aesthetics: Kant to Adorno
Instructor: Michael Blézy
Lecture Mode: In-person
Description: What is beauty? Why does beauty matter? Are there grounds for thinking that all humans ought to find the same things beautiful? Or does beauty lie in “the eye of the beholder”? What role, if any, does historical or social context play in influencing what we find beautiful? What is the “sublime”? How does beauty differ from the sublime? Can beauty or the sublime teach us anything about morality? What is the relation between beauty and art? How are we to understand the relationship between art and truth? How have technologies of mass production, reproduction and distribution affected the nature of artworks and their standing in society? What is the relation between art and politics? Does art have the power to bring about political revolution? This course aims to introduce students to issues in the philosophy of aesthetics through a survey of some the key writings on art and aesthetics in the Continental tradition. After familiarizing students with Kant’s ground-breaking theories on the nature of beauty and the sublime in his Critique of the Power of Judgment, the course will trace the ways in which prominent post-Kantian thinkers (e.g., Hegel, Benjamin, Heidegger, Adorno) challenged and reworked Kant’s ideas in order to develop their own accounts of aesthetic experience and art and their significance for morality, truth and political change.
PHLB07H3: Ethics
Instructor: Nathan Howard
Lecture Mode: In-person
Tutorial Mode: In-person
Description: What is the difference between right and wrong? What is 'the good life'? What is well-being? What is autonomy? These notions are central in ethical theory, law, bioethics, and in the popular imagination. In this course we will explore these concepts in greater depth, and then consider how our views about them shape our views about ethics.
PHLB09H3: Biomedical Ethics
Instructor: Eric Mathison
Lecture Mode: In-person
Tutorial Mode: In-person
Description: This course will introduce students to some of the main topics in bioethics, including informed consent, truth telling, privacy, medical assistance in dying, abortion, and emerging technologies. We will consider both theoretical questions (e.g., What is death? What are the goals of medicine?) as well as some applied and policy questions (e.g., When should vaccinations be mandatory? How do we ethically distribute scarce resources such as organs?).
PHLB13H3: Philosophy and Feminism
Instructor: Zoé Anthony
Lecture Mode: In-person
Description: What is feminism? What is a woman? Or a man? Are gender relations natural or inevitable? Why do gender relations exist in virtually every society? How do gender relations intersect with other social relations, such as economic class, culture, race, sexual orientation, etc.?
PHLB20H3: Belief, Knowledge and Truth
Instructor: Benj Hellie
Lecture Mode: In-person
Description: An examination of the nature of knowledge, and our ability to achieve it. Topics may include the question of whether any of our beliefs can be certain, the problem of scepticism, the scope and limits of human knowledge, the nature of perception, rationality, and theories of truth.
PHLB31H3: Introduction to Ancient Philosophy
Instructor: Alfonso Quartucci
Lecture Mode: In-person
Description: A survey of some main themes and figures of ancient philosophical thought, concentrating on Plato and Aristotle. Topics include the ultimate nature of reality, knowledge, and the relationship between happiness and virtue.
PHLB35H3: Introduction to Early Modern Philosophy
Instructor: Michael Blézy
Lecture Mode: In-person
Description: The aim of this course is to introduce students to philosophy in the early modern period through a survey of the work of some of its most influential figures: Francis Bacon, René Descartes, Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. By the end of the course, students will be familiar with such philosophical issues and concepts as: the Copernican shift, the significance of the scientific revolution, the difference between inductive and deductive reasoning, scientific explanation, the scope of human reason, the foundations of knowledge, the mind-body problem, the nature of the self, the existence of God, the sources of superstition and illusion, and the problem of human freedom.
PHLB91H3: Theories of Human Nature
Instructor: Seyed Yarandi
Lecture Mode: In-person
Description: This course will explore the philosophical questions of what we are, whether we are good or evil, and whether we have free will. We will begin by asking the question, "What are we?" Are our memories and psychological states the only things that make us who we are? Is there a non-natural component to our being? Or are we physical bodies, just like any other animals? We will then explore the question of whether we are good or evil. Are human beings innately selfish, or are we capable of genuine altruism? What motivates us to be moral? Why do some people do evil things? Finally, we will consider the question of whether we have free will. Do we have the ability to make choices that are not determined by our past or our environment? What does it mean to be a moral agent if we do not have free will? Can we be held responsible for our actions if they are the inevitable result of the laws of nature?
PHLB99H3: Philosophical Writing and Methodology
Instructor: Jessica Wilson
Lecture Mode: In-person
Description: In this writing-intensive course, students will become familiar with tools and techniques that will enable them to competently philosophize, on paper and in person. Students will learn how to write an introduction, how to appropriately structure philosophy papers, how to accurately present someone else's position or argumentation, how to critically assess someone else's view or argumentation, and how to present and defend their own positive proposal or argumentation. Students will also learn many specific skills, such as how to 'signpost', how to identify and charitably interpret ambiguities in another discussion, and how to recognize and apply various argumentative strategies. Last but not least, the course will have a significant grammar and style component.
PHLC07H3: Death and Dying
Instructor: Eric Mathison
Lecture Mode: In-person
Description: We are all going to die (probably). Given this, there is value in trying to figure out what death is and how we should feel about it. In this course, we will tackle some of these questions. What does it mean to die? Why, if at all, is death a bad thing for the person who dies? Would it be better to live forever? We will also investigate some of the applied and policy questions about death, including what the legal definition of death should be, whether assisted dying should remain legal (and in what circumstances), and whether we can ever have a duty to die.
PHLC14H3: Topics in Non-Western Philosophy
Instructor: Jessica Wilson
Lecture Mode: In-person
Description: Buddhism in its many variations is a rich source of philosophical thought and argumentation, covering topics in metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. In this topics course, we will explore several issues and debates in these areas, focusing on the understandings of self, reality, causation, and right behaviour from the perspective of Buddhism as developed in certain Indian and Chinese traditions. We'll start by discussing the pre-Buddhist context in India, and in particular the understanding of the self in the Advaita Vedanta school of Hinduism. We'll then read most of Mark Siderits's excellent book, _Buddhism as Philosophy: An Introduction_ (second edition), which provides a detailed philosophical and historical overview of the aforementioned topics as treated in certain prominent schools in the Indian Buddhist tradition, as well as discussion of the contrasting metaphysics and epistemology of the Nyaya school of Hinduism. We'll then finish up by studying the contrasting understandings of causation, indeterminacy, and the self in the Chinese Buddhist tradition.
PHLC37H3: Kant’s Practical Philosophy
Instructor: Michael Blézy
Lecture Mode: In-person
Description: Kant’s practical philosophy continues to shape the way we think about core issues in ethics and moral philosophy. His ideas have left an indelible mark on the way we view such topics as the nature of personhood and the will, the metaphysics of freedom, the source of moral motivation, practical reason, choice, the inherent value of human beings, human autonomy and the content of the moral law. The aim of this course will be to introduce students to Kant’s many contributions to practical philosophy through an in-depth study of two of his most famous works: the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and the Critique of Practical Reason. Through a close reading of these two texts, students will come to be familiarized with Kant’s most innovative ideas in practical philosophy and the conceptual language he used to express these ideas, as well as appreciate their influence and lasting appeal.
PHLC72H3: Philosophy of Science
Instructor: Elliot Carter
Lecture Mode: In-person
Description: In this seminar-style course, we consider one or two metaphysical topics in depth, with an emphasis on class discussion. This semester we will explore the philosophically foundational topics of fundamentality and metaphysical dependence. We will assess a representative range of available accounts of these notions; along the way we will consider a number of salient questions on the topic, including whether there is a generic notion of metaphysical dependence or rather just many specific notions, and whether fundamentality should be characterized as primitive or rather in terms of (an absence of) metaphysical dependence.
PHLC89H3: Topics in Analytic Philosophy
Instructor: Seyed Yarandi
Lecture Mode: In-person
Description: Advanced topic(s) in Analytic Philosophy. Sample contemporary topics: realism/antirealism; truth; interrelations among metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind and of science.
PHLC95H3: Topics in the Philosophy of Mind
Instructor: Benj Hellie
Lecture Mode: In-person
Description: Advanced topics in the Philosophy of mind, such as an exploration of philosophical problems and theories of consciousness. Topics to be examined may include: the nature of consciousness and 'qualitative experience', the existence and nature of animal consciousness, the relation between consciousness and intentionality, as well as various philosophical theories of consciousness.
PHLD05H3: Advanced Seminar in Ethics
Instructor: Hamish Russell
Lecture Mode: In-person
Description: This seminar is an in-depth study of two major, just-published books on the ethics of capitalism: Joseph Heath’s Ethics for Capitalists and Waheed Hussain’s Living with the Invisible Hand. Both books take up two sets of questions: (1) Why capitalism? What are the best arguments for this way of organising a society, and what are the best arguments against it? Does capitalism need to be regulated or reformed in order to be morally justified—and if so, how? (2) What is the ethics of capitalism? What morals or ideals should guide conduct in capitalist institutions, whether by senior corporate executives or by the average person? Is there a middle ground between the optimistic view that the “invisible hand” makes ethics irrelevant and the pessimistic view that corporate profit-seeking makes ethics impossible?
PHLD87H3: Advanced Seminar in Philosophy of Mind
Instructor: Andrew Lee
Lecture Mode: In-person
Description: Qualia are the properties that characterize what it’s like to have an experience. Consider, as examples, what it’s like to feel pain, see red, or smell cinnamon. This seminar will investigate a variety of philosophical questions about qualia, including: Can qualia be physically explained? Are qualia fundamentally representational? Can you know what kind of qualia I have? How can we model qualia? Readings will be drawn from contemporary analytic philosophy. Some prior background in philosophy of mind will be helpful for those interested in taking the course.
PHLD88Y3: Advanced Seminar in Philosophy: Socrates Project
Instructor: Hamish Russell
Lecture Mode: In-person
Description: The Socrates Project Seminar is a full-year seminar course that provides experiential learning in philosophy in conjunction with a teaching assignment to lead tutorials and mark assignments in PHLA10H3 and PHLA11H3. Roughly 75% of the seminar will be devoted to more in-depth study of the topics taken up in PHLA10H3 and PHLA11H3. Students will write a seminar paper on one of these topics under the supervision of a UTSC Philosophy faculty member working in the relevant area, and they will give an oral presentation on their research topic each semester. The remaining 25% of the seminar will focus on the methods and challenges of teaching philosophy, benchmark grading, and grading generally.
PHLD89Y3: Advanced Seminar in Philosophy: The Socrates Project for Applied Ethics
Instructor: Eric Mathison
Lecture Mode: In-person
Description: The Socrates Project for Applied Ethics is a seminar course which occurs over two terms that provides experiential learning in philosophy in conjunction with a teaching assignment to lead tutorials and mark assignments in PHLB09H3. Roughly 75% of the seminar will be devoted to a more in-depth study of the topics taken up in PHLB09H3. Students will write a seminar paper on one of these topics under the supervision of a UTSC Philosophy faculty member working in the relevant area, and they will give an oral presentation on their research topic each semester. The remaining 25% of the seminar will focus on the methods and challenges of teaching philosophy, benchmark grading, and grading generally.