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To help you make an informed decision in choosing which courses to enroll in, we have compiled a list of course descriptions composed by the professors who will be teaching the classes. We hope that this will give you more insight into what will be taught in these classes. If you have further questions about a specific course, we encourage you to contact the instructor directly. Our course listings and other essential information can all be conveniently found here.
This course will introduce you to some of the central questions that historical and contemporary thinkers have grappled with in philosophy, questions that we can’t avoid reflecting on as human beings considering our place in the world and among one another. These questions include: What is justice? What is the relation of justice to power? When is a government legitimate and just? What can we know? When is knowledge reliable and when is it not? What is the source of knowledge? How do we explain the existence of bad in the world? Can people know what’s right and still do what’s wrong? While you will develop an appreciation for the importance of contributions to these topics from prominent thinkers, a core goal of the course is to get you to begin evaluating and offering arguments related to these topics. This is an important skill in nearly any area of inquiry or aspect of life that involves critical thought, whether doing philosophy, participating as a member of society, or many other pursuits that you will embark on after the course.
Associate Professor Anna Gotlib
Aristotle tells us that “human beings began to do philosophy even as they do now, because of wonder, at first because they wondered about the strange things right in front of them, and then later, advancing little by little, because they came to find greater things puzzling.” Philosophy, thus, begins in wonder. In this class, we also begin by wondering—by asking questions about whether life is worth living, and why; about what it might mean to be happy, and whether the quest for happiness is sufficient to fulfill us; about whether we should fear death. We will consider what it might mean for something to be good—or evil; what kinds of things are found in the universe, and how do we know; what makes a good argument different from a very strongly-held opinion; what can be said, and believed, about God. We will question whether our lives have inherent meaning, or if we, as individuals, must create meaning for ourselves. Many of you have probably asked some of these questions before. In fact, some of you are already on your way to becoming philosophers. In this class, we will ask these, and other questions, examine and evaluate what philosophers throughout the centuries have had to say about them, and then consider whether their answers are convincing. We will then think about what further questions their answers raise—and why it is important to keep asking them. And to wonder.
Associate Professor Andrew Arlig Tuesdays, 11 a.m.–12:15 p.m. Thursdays, 11 a.m.–2:05 p.m.
European philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is often portrayed as the direct precursor of our present-day philosophical attitudes, approaches, and sensibilities. This is the age of the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment thinking, the age when the shackles of authority are broken and human reason is celebrated. This is a myth, but like many myths there is some truth that underlies the tales that we tell about this period of philosophy. In this course we will attempt to get a fuller sense of what philosophy in this period is all about. We will note the continuities with past traditions and uncover the places where innovations appear. To accomplish this, we will read several core texts from cover to cover. To get context, we will examine other selections from authors that these core texts engage with. Presently, the planned core texts include Anne Conway’s Principles of the Most Ancient and Most Modern Philosophy and David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. These texts will be put into dialogue with works by Christine de Pizan, Marsilio Ficino, Michel de Montaigne, Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, Mulla Sadra, William Paley, and John Locke, among others.
NET (Online Asynchronous) Professor Daniel Campos
American society is in political and intellectual turmoil over issues such as democracy, freedom, justice, race, immigration, gender identities, women’s rights, and the environment. Do American philosophical traditions afford ways to understand, diagnose, and resolve these conflicts? We will seek pluralist answers that are relevant to current events. To do so, we will examine a diversity of American approaches to classical philosophical topics, including the nature and place of human beings within the natural world, the sources and types of human knowledge, the nature of community, and the origin, purpose, and legitimacy of social relations and institutions such as freedom, slavery, and democracy. We will study a plurality of views, both from figures who are usually considered “classical American philosophers” and from the Native-, African-, Asian- and Latinx-American traditions. Students will reflect on the distinctive characters and mutual influences of various views and articulate personal philosophical positions on questions related to knowledge, democracy, freedom, equality, social justice, race, civil disobedience, and immigration, among others.
Professor Matthew Moore
We are often presented with arguments designed to convince us to believe certain things, or to act in certain ways. Most of the time we do pretty well at sorting out the bad arguments from the good ones, but we may not have a very clear idea of what this involves. One thing we often demand is that a good argument should be deductively valid, that its conclusion should be entailed by (should “follow from”) its premises. But what is it for an assertion to be entailed by others? In this course we will develop a formal framework within which entailment and validity, along with other central concepts of deductive logic, can be rigorously defined and studied.
In the course of our working lives, we often tend to be too busy and too focused in the tasks in front of us to notice the complex and difficult moral dilemmas that surround us in our chosen fields. But this does not mean that these moral predicaments can, or should, simply be ignored or swept under the rug. In fact, this class is grounded in the claim that it is central not only to our success as professionals, but to our ability to live together in a shared moral universe with others, that we acknowledge, and attempt to come to some consensus, about how to address these dilemmas. In this course, we focus on the specific ethical concerns, responsibilities, and burdens of several professions that are not only central to everyone’s well-being, but that tend to be particularly ethically demanding of the practitioners. Specifically, we will focus on ethical issues pertaining to medical professionals, lawyers, business people, and technology professionals (especially as their work concerns AI). We will ask what distinguishes professional work from non-professional jobs, and whether professionals ought to be held to higher moral standards than non-professionals. Importantly, we examine what it might mean to be professionally responsible, and how, and whether, we ought to morally evaluate professionals differently than other workers. In addition, we raise the issue of how professionals should confront our many conflicting obligations–including specific codes of ethics–while balancing our responsibilities to our clients, our personal interests, and society’s well-being. We ask the difficult moral question of whether the well-being of the many should always—or ever—be prioritized over that of our clients and our specific duties as professionals. For some clarity, we look to philosophy, and specifically to moral theory, in our discussions about how professionals ought to conduct themselves in ethically problematic situations involving public safety and public trust, privacy and confidentiality, honesty and deception, informed consent, objectivity and conflicts of interest, and whistleblowing. As a part of our class discussions, we will engage with theories of moral responsibility, and apply them to real-life situations, case studies, and other examples of challenges posed by the often-conflicting responsibilities of the professional.
This course will examine central ethical questions that arise in business. We will critically evaluate the common and negative answer to the question whether there is any role for ethical reflection in business, learn about the major ethical frameworks that can be applied to our thinking about issues in business, and apply these frameworks to a host of important topics, including the justification of taxation, the social obligations of multinational corporations, the relation of business activity to the environment, what makes bribery wrong, the ethical implications of insider trading, diversity in the workplace, sexual harassment, and the involvement of business in international aid. Through the course, students will acquire a firm understanding of how moral issues can be evaluated from different and sometimes competing ethical perspectives and how specific moral issues in business should be addressed using them.
Associate Professor Christine Vitrano Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2:15 p.m.–3:30 p.m.
This course focuses on the moral issues that arise within a business context, and we will approach these issues through an examination of real cases. We will begin with a discussion of some important topics in moral philosophy, such as the nature of morality, the major normative theories from the history of philosophy, theories of justice and economic distribution, the nature and justification for capitalism, and the development of the modern corporation. The remainder of the course will focus on applying this philosophical knowledge to common problems that arise in the workplace, including personnel policies regarding hiring, promotions and discharge, the role of unions, the right to privacy as an employee, the obligation to provide safe working conditions, and overall employee satisfaction. We may also consider the specific moral challenges facing an employee, such as loyalty to the employer, abuses of power, bribery, the acceptance of gifts, whistle blowing and job discrimination. If you have any questions or would like more information about this course, please email me at cvitrano@brooklyn.cuny.edu.
Associate Professor Christine Vitrano Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:30 a.m.–10:45 a.m.
As biomedical technology progresses, we face new challenges to our traditional moral beliefs and practices. Medical ethics is the study of the moral issues associated with the practice of medicine and the pursuit of biomedical research, and it deals with a broad spectrum of concerns that affect patients and their families, physicians, researchers, and society. In this course, we will approach these ethical issues through an examination of real cases covering topics ranging from the familiar (abortion, suicide, euthanasia) to the more obscure (assisted reproduction, cloning and medical enhancement). We will also discuss how doctors should handle requests to die from terminal and non-terminal patients, whether it is permissible to end life-sustaining treatment in comatose patients, and how we ought to treat severely impaired babies. If you have any questions or would like more information about this course, please email me at cvitrano@brooklyn.cuny.edu.
Professor Saam Trivedi Mondays and Wednesdays, 12:50-2:05 p.m.
What is music, and what distinguishes it from non-musical sounds, noise, and silence? Are musical works discovered or created? How can purely instrumental music without words or an associated story or program be heard as sad or happy, considering music is without life, consciousness, and mental states? Can music arouse or evoke genuine emotions in listeners, and if so how? What is the value of music? And what accounts for its power? Is there a distinct aesthetics of Western classical music as opposed to jazz, rock, hip-hop, and other popular music? What can we say about the aesthetics of various non-Western musics? This course will use a wide variety of musical examples in raising and addressing such philosophical issues pertaining to music. The class is cross-listed with our Conservatory of Music.
What does it mean to say that a policy, a law, or a state is unjust? Who is responsible for addressing political injustice? This course will examine the most influential contemporary and historical answers to these questions. In introducing students to political philosophy, the course will also discuss important real-world injustices, including racial and gender injustice. And in addition to seeking a better understanding of philosophical concepts and theories, we will examine what our conclusions should amount to in practice, in terms of what reforms and actions democratic citizens should be advancing.
