Course Outline—Philosophy 1000 (Introduction to Philosophy), Fall 2011
Instructor: Bryson Brown,
TH 864 (Just east of the B staircase/elevators)
403 329-2506
brown@uleth.ca
Office hours: Tuesday, Thursday 11:00-12:00 and by appointment.
Text: First Philosophy (Second Edition), A. Bailey and R.M. Martin, eds.
This course is a wide-ranging introduction to philosophy. Since most high schools don’t actually
teach philosophy, you probably have only a vague idea of what that means. I hope you’ll have a clearer
one when we’re done—but learning what philosophy is requires actually doing some philosophy, not
just learning some kind of definition. Still, I’ll begin here by trying to say something helpful about what
we’ll be doing here.
One way to approach philosophy is to study some of the topics philosophers have written about.
Our text, like many introductions to philosophy, is organized this way, with selections of writings
gathered by topic. Beginning with God and his (her?) existence, the problem of evil and the nature of
faith, the book continues with essays about knowledge and evidence, the nature of mind, determinism
and free will, and ethical and social thought.
The readings often present conflicting positions on these issues. These conflicting positions
connect with one ordinary way of talking about philosophy: When we say things like, ‘My philosophy on
that is…’, ‘ …’ expresses our position or point of view. But we usually recognize that other people may
well not agree: it’s not obvious what the right answer to a philosophical question is. This leads to the
widespread mistake of thinking that having a philosophy is just a matter of having opinions about deep,
dark issues, issues so hard to settle that it seems any opinion is as good as any other. But philosophy is
more than just position-mongering.
The main aim of philosophical writing is to give arguments, defending some positions and
criticizing others. Unlike (for example) most politics, arguments in philosophy are not just window
dressing or verbal games. Their aim is not just to persuade (still less to fool) people: philosophical
arguments are meant seriously, and aim to show that some position is right or another wrong. That
doesn’t mean they will be convincing, or even make sense to you—the people we’ll be reading are very
clever, they come from different backgrounds, places and times, and it’s not always easy to understand
how their arguments are meant to work. There are big differences in the background assumptions that
philosophers of different times and different cultures bring to their work.
Part of what you will be learning here is how to identify and interpret arguments, tracing them
back to fundamental ideas that lie beneath them and figuring out whether they really work or not. This
means that you will need to read these papers in a special way—not just for what the author says and
whether or not you agree with her, but to understand why the author says the things she does, and
whether you think her reasons are good or bad.
Philosophy is not a spectator sport. It’s not about cheering for the thinkers you agree with, and
booing the ones you don’t. There can be bad arguments for good positions, and there can be very
interesting, persuasive, challenging arguments for bad positions. One of the worst things you can say
about a philosopher is that s/he never understood an argument whose conclusion s/he didn’t like.
A philosopher who can’t understand her opponents’ positions and arguments can’t make a useful
contribution to the conversation. Doing philosophy is not stating your own opinions—it’s making a case
for them, and responding constructively to your opponents’ case, too. Explaining, criticizing and
defending arguments requires really understanding and engaging with them.
An argument (in this serious sense) is not just a verbal fight. It has to do more than charm the
audience, or place the author’s position in a flattering light (that’s what rhetoric is for). A good
argument presents evidence for its conclusion—evidence that is persuasive (if not convincing) even for
people reluctant to accept it.
In philosophy, everything is up for discussion and examination. While we will be relying on your
having a good, common sense grasp of what we mean by ‘evidence’ and when it justifies drawing some
conclusion, we will also be putting our ideas about evidence under the microscope and trying to see just
how they work.
One disadvantage of introducing philosophy by means of topics is that we can lose track of
history: The authors range from ancient philosophers (especially Plato and Aristotle) through the
medievals (often also theologians) and early moderns (including major figures in early modern science—
Galileo, René Descartes, G.L. Leibniz and others), to contemporary figures. Sometimes this gives
students (and even some professional philosophers) the impression that there is no progress in
philosophy—that it’s always the same old story, the same frustrating struggle between worn-out
opponents, none of whom is ever vanquished or victorious. But in fact things do change in philosophy.
We may end up applying our new ideas to some very old problems, but we have also gained a much
richer understanding of the problems over time. Even though many of the problems we discuss still
don’t have generally accepted solutions, there are well-thought-out answers that deserve serious
attention, and there are half-baked ideas that don’t. Philosophy is not a matter of ‘anything goes’, and
some opinions are decidedly better than others.
Another source of frustration for students is that in philosophy everything seems perpetually
open to debate. This makes it hard to get started when you try to build an argument of your own:
there’s no safe place to set your feet because there’s no simple collection of doctrines that beginning
students can focus on learning. But there is something for you to learn here (something you can be
right—and wrong—about): The arguments. Mastering these readings requires understanding the
arguments, not learning which conclusions are right. And you can show that you understand the
arguments by discussing them, explaining them, and responding to them with arguments of your own.
This is what made philosophy interesting for me, right from the first class I took. In other fields
(especially in the sciences) you have to spend years learning the things that everyone already agrees
on—only after that do you get to be part of the current discussion and argue about the things that are
still considered open. But those issues, the live issues, are the real business of the field—without those
frontiers, the field would be dead, with nothing more to do. (Late in the nineteenth century some
people argued that physics had reached that point!) But in philosophy, we begin with questions that are
still live issues, and try to think creatively about them while studying some of the cleverest and deepest
thinkers who have ever lived.
Grading: Grades will be based on 2 essays (each worth 30%), a midterm and a final exam (each worth
20%).
Academic Offenses: Plagiarism and other academic offenses are described in the University Calendar.
The penalty in this course for a first instance of plagiarism will be a 0 on that assignment and notification
of the Dean’s office—other consequences may follow, as detailed in the Calendar.
Class Schedule: Class meetings are Tuesday/Thursday, 13:40- 14:55 in B650.
Week 1: September 8. Introduction to philosophy: What is philosophy? What is an argument? Reading
and writing about philosophical issues.
Readings: Ch. 1, pages 1-14.
Week 2: September 13, 15. Philosophy of Religion: The existence of God.
Readings: Ch. 2, pages 15-32; then 33-42.
Week 3: September 20, 22. Philosophy of Religion: Hume and natural theology.
Readings: Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion pages 43-82.
Week 4: September 27, 29. Epistemology: Knowledge of the ‘external’ world.
Topics for first paper distributed September 29
Readings: Introduction, Descartes’ Meditations 1-3 pages 133-157.
Week 5: October 4, 6. Descartes’ epistemological theodicy; the external world re-conceived
Readings: Meditations 4-6, pages 157- 172.
Week 6: October 11, 13. Locke, primary vs. secondary ‘qualities’, substances and external things
Readings: Locke’s Essay, pages 172-189.
First paper due October 11
Week 7: October 18, 20. Philosophy of Science: Induction
Readings: Introduction, Hume’ Enquiry, pages 287-310, Hempel on Scientific Inquiry
Sample questions for test 1 distributed, October 18
Week 8: October 25, 27. Philosophy of Science: Pierce on “The Fixation of Belief”
Readings: pages 371-386.
Test 1: Moodle-based, open from the 18th to the 21st of October.
Week 9: November 1, 3. Philosophy of Mind: The very idea of a mind
Readings: Introduction pages 415-417, Ryle “The Concept of Mind” pages 417-429
Week 10: November 8, 10.
Readings: Smart, “Sensations and Brain Processes”, Searle, “Minds, Brains and Programs”, pages 429442 and 455-473.
Week 11: November 15, 17. Metaphysics and Freedom I
Readings: Rees, “The Illusion of Free Will,” Campbell, Selection from “On Selfhood and Godhood”, pages
527-556
Week 12: November 22, 24. Metaphysics and Freedom II
Readings: Ayer, “Freedom and Necessity” and Dennett, “On Giving…” pages 556-576.
Topics for second paper distributed November 24
Week 13: November 29, December 1. Ethics
Readings: Mill (Utilitarianism), Nietzsche (From Beyond Good and Evil). Pages 671-715.
Sample questions for final distributed November 29
Week 14: December 6, 8. Social/Political Philosophy
Readings: Introduction, Hobbes and Rawls. Pages 755-782 and 864-875.
Second paper due December 8.
Final Exam: Moodle exam, not yet scheduled.