Student Outcomes Assessment
Department of Philosophy and Religion
Learning Goals for Philosophy Major
Category I: Skills
Students will:
1. Read and understand philosophical texts
2. Write effectively
3. Engage in reasoned discussion
4. Analyze, evaluate, and construct arguments
Category II: Knowledge
Students will:
1. Acquire knowledge of representative major figures and developments
in the history of Western philosophy and their critics.
2. Acquire knowledge of major subject areas in philosophy, specifically
including ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, and elementary logic.
3. Identify some major problems in historical and contemporary
philosophy (e.g., the mind-body problem, problem of the one and the
many, freedom and determinism, knowledge and belief, the nature of
the good).
Category III: Historical Contextualization
Students will:
1. Comprehend and appreciate philosophical problems in historical
context.
2. Demonstrate awareness of their own historical context.
3. Place their study of philosophy into the horizon of their own and others’
lives and problems.
Fall 2010