This is a course designed to improve critical reasoning skills and provide an introduction to formal logic. There will be lectures, discussions, demonstrations of problem-solving techniques, and reading and writing exercises. This course will provide an introduction to some basic philosophical issues drawn from a number of branches of philosophy. Competing answers to each question will be considered. There is no prerequisite.
Freshmen are welcome.
There will be two required five to eight page papers, and a final examination. One Philosophy Introduction. This is a course in philosophical ethics. We will be concerned to see whether there is anything one can say in a principled way about what is valuable, worth wanting for its own sake, and what is morally obligatory, what it would be wrong not to do. And we shall examine the relationship between these fundamental philosophical questions of metaethics and substantive ethical questions.