8 courses with the subject PY, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
PY 2711Epistemology1/3
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy inquiring into the nature and conditions of knowledge and truth. Epistemologists ask such questions as: How should we define knowledge? Is knowledge generated by reason or experience? How has knowledge of nature been represented in Western philosophy and science? Is knowledge objective? What constitutes adequate justification for holding a belief? Do attributions of epistemic credibility vary among knowers from different social, cultural, and economic locations? How do power and ideology shape our experiences of the world? Students explore questions such as these and others as they submit their own beliefs about the nature of knowledge to philosophical examination. The course readings and situating context for inquiry will vary each time the course is taught, with each iteration focusing on a particular period or school of philosophical thought. Possible contexts include seventeenth century philosophy or other periods in the history of philosophy, critical theory, pragmatism, analytic philosophy, phenomenology, and feminist philosophy. This course will be offered in academic years ending in odd numbers.
This course examines metaphysical and moral questions that philosophers have raised about social and political life. Among questions treated might be: What are the grounds, if any, of the obligation of a citizen to obey a sovereign? Are there basic principles of justice by which societies, institutions and practices are rightly evaluated? What is democracy, and how can we tell if an institution or practice is democratic? To what degree do economic institutions put limits on the realization of freedom, democracy and self-determination? Readings might include excerpts from the works of Plato, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and Marx, as well as numerous contemporary philosophers. This course will be offered in academic years ending in even numbers.
The purpose of this course is to evaluate the social impact of technology in the areas of biology/biotechnology, biomedical engineering and chemistry. The focus of the course will be on the human values in these areas and how they are affected by new technological developments. The course will deal with problems such as human experimentation, behavior control, death, genetic engineering and counseling, abortion, and the allocation of scarce medical resources. These problems will be examined through lectures, discussions and papers. This course will be offered in academic years ending in even numbers.
This course will focus on the following questions: What is the scope of the current environmental crisis? What does this crisis reveal about the philosophical presuppositions and dominant values of our intellectual worldviews and social institutions? How can existing social theories help explain the environmental crisis? What implications does the crisis have for our sense of personal identity? What moral and spiritual resources can help us respond to it? Readings will be taken from contemporary and historical philosophers and naturalists.
This course focuses on two important movements in nineteenth and twentieth century philosophy, existentialism and phenomenology. Readings might include works by Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Beauvoir, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, and Fanon, as well as contemporary readings by feminist, critical race, and queer theorists working within these traditions. Students will also encounter some of the great works of existentialist fiction and cinema. Themes that may be explored include the relationship between self and other, the tension between freedom and responsibility, the possibility of ethics after World War II, and the problem of ethical and political commitment in an alienating world.
PY 2731/RE 2731 Ethics 1/3 Related Environmental Courses in Social Sciences (Minimum 2/3 Units) Students must complete 2/3 units from List 2 ("Related Environmental Courses in Social Sciences") Item # Title Units
This course will focus on philosophical questions concerning the following topics: the existence and nature of God; the compatibility of God and evil; the nature of religious faith and the relationship between religion, science and ethics; interpretations of the nature of religious language; the philosophically interesting differences between Western and Eastern religions; philosophical critiques of the role of religion in social life. Authors may include: Hume, Kant, Kierkegaard, Buber, Tillich, Daly, Nietzsche and Buddha. This course will be offered in academic years ending in odd numbers.
