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The Philosophy Department offers a wide range of courses in line with the diverse areas of specialization of our faculty. Students in many departments will find cognate courses for their majors, including ancient philosophy, political philosophy, philosophy of religion, philosophy of the fine arts, and medical ethics. In addition to regularly offered Miami Plan courses, the department's upper-level courses change in content from semester to semester. Upper-level (undergraduate and graduate) course descriptions for the current and upcoming semesters will be updated on a regular basis.

Descriptions

PHL 263: Informal Logic

TR 11:40am -- 1:00pm -- Dr. Clay Alsup

This class will both teach critical reasoning skills and engage in philosophical inquiry into the subject matter of informal logic itself. We will begin by discussing what makes a good argument, considering the possibility and features of purely visual arguments, and learning common argumentative fallacies. We will then talk about cognitive biases, stable psychological features of human reasoning that regularly lead us astray in our efforts to reason well. We will then shift to some philosophical discussion of the ethics of belief, considering the classic debate between W.K. Clifford and William James and the respective cases to be made for evidentialism and non-evidentialism. We will also discuss conspiracy theories: what they are, whether they’re intrinsically irrational, and why they are so widely believed. Finally, we will shift our focus to science. We will consider the ways in which science can be done well or poorly, and then engage in philosophy of science, tracing some of the developments in that field regarding what scientific theories are and should be.

PHL 264: Ethics in Science & Technology

TR 2:50pm – 4:10pm – Dr. Facundo Alonso

When you board an airplane, open your favorite app, or take a common medication, have you ever considered the trust that you are placing in the ethical decision-making of complete strangers? Developments in science and technology have the power to create, improve, degrade, or destroy life on our planet – both human and non-human. How should we navigate the ethical issues that are created by advancements in science and technology? In this course ºÚÁÏÉçÇøs will acquire a set of conceptual and theoretical resources for identifying, analyzing, and working through ethical quandaries that arise in an age of ever-developing science and technology.

PHL 265: Confronting Death

TR 2:50pm – 4:10pm – Dr. Keith Fennen

We are well aware that all living things will die and we inevitably imagine, even if only vaguely, our own future death. By actively considering the end of life, our own and that of others, we can hopefully lead more thoughtful and satisfying lives. With that in mind, this course will investigate death and dying. Through conversations, writing, and projects that engage philosophy, literature, photography, film, and poetry, we will investigate topics such as grief and mourning, human reactions and attitudes towards death, the practice of burying the dead, suicide, war, and the death penalty. While our focus will be on human death, we will consider some of these topics in the context of nonhuman death. This course aims to foster a classroom space and community where open and honest conversation and careful, serious, and meaningful inquiry are the norm.

PHL 273: Formal Logic

MWF 10:05am – 11:20am – Dr. Michael Hicks

It is tempting to characterize a really good argument this way: if you accept its premise, you must accept its conclusion. This course begins by analyzing this “must”—in what sense can one be logically compelled? What is it for an argument to be valid? A simple trick called “formalization” allows us to focus on certain structural features that are often relevant to the validity of an argument. In this course, we consider two formalizations, sentential logic and a first-order quantification-theory that builds on it, and figure out how to use them to show the validity of arguments. The primary task will be to master these mathematical representations of argument. As such this class is very different from other philosophy classes: homework will often be pseudo-mathematical, and there is very little writing.

PHL 302/302H: Modern Philosophy

TR 10:05am – 11:55am – Dr. Keith Fennen

Philosophic activity in Europe during the 17^th and 18^th centuries is generally referred to as Modern Philosophy. During this time, philosophic activity, both in terms of the critique of traditional concepts and the development of new ideas, was exceptionally high. New conceptions of science, nature, political association, and morality, for example, were put forth. In this course, we will study works by Descartes, Pascal, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume, and Kant, but we will also read brief excerpts from other thinkers. While we will discuss each thinker’s overall philosophical system, some guiding themes throughout the semester will be the self and its constitution, judgment, agency, immanence, and transcendence.

PHL 331: Political Philosophy

MWF 1:15pm – 2:10pm – Dr. Daniel Cunningham

This course will take a historical approach to political thought, including philosophical and historical texts and primary documents. It will focus on the modern world, beginning with the series of great political revolutions that occurred from the late 18^th to the mid-19^th centuries, and will move gradually up to the present day. Part 1 will be called “The Birth of Modern Political Culture in the Long 19^th Century”; Part 2 “International Ideological Civil War,” focused on the first half of the twentieth century; Part 3 “Nationalism, Colonialism, and Revolution,” focused on European colonialism and the movements that overthrew it; and Part 4 “Neoliberalism and Whatever Comes Next,” focused on the worldwide neoliberal revolution of the 1970s and 1980s and its legacies today. Along the way, we will explore important current issues such as climate change, political extremism and polarization, global inequality, and the politicization of education. Major thinkers studied will include John Stuart Mill, Alexis de Tocqueville, Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Friedrich Hayek, Hannah Arendt, and Frantz Fanon. 

PHL 355/355H: Feminist Theory

TR 1:15pm – 2:35pm – Dr. Elaine Miller

What concepts organize our lives as gendered and sexed beings?  In this course, we will investigate contemporary feminist thought from a specifically philosophical perspective. We will focus on key issues in feminist theory, such as the sex/gender debate, sexual desire and the body, consent, the political economy of gender, the creation of the queer subject, and the construction of masculinity, among others. How are these issues addressed differently in philosophy than in other disciplines? This course also aims to think through the ways in which these concerns intersect with issues of race, class, sexuality, (dis)ability, and the environment, both symbolic and natural.

PHL 375/375H: Medical Ethics

TR 1:15pm – 3:05pm – Dr. Clay Alsup

This class will consider a range of issues of ethical significance that arise in the practice of medicine. In the first part of the course, we will examine cases of "medicalization" in history, cases in which arguably non-medical situations are interpreted as being fundamentally medical. These include 18th and 19th century concerns about the health effects of reading novels and later concerns about menstruating women attending universities. We will then look at more recent cases of medicalization and the connection that develops between notions of health and moral character: here we will especially focus on the simultaneous medicalization and moralization of obesity. In the second part of the course, we will consider various ethical debates that emerge in the vicinity of medicine: these will include the extent to which access to health care should be guaranteed by governments, what the appropriate response to the debilitating rise in medical debt should be, and especially various concerns that emerge from the fields of epidemiology and public health, especially in cases of emergency, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

PHL 404: What is Philosophy? (Capstone)

MW 11:40am – 1:00pm – Dr. Michael Hicks

Philosophy is, primarily, an intellectual discipline: it is a peculiar kind of thinking. But most of our coursework is built around reading and writing. That is to say we focus on philosophy as a literary genre. What are the implications of this? In this capstone class we consider what it means to write philosophically, with special attention to the question of whether there are philosophical purposes that might require, for instance, fiction writing or other literary procedures. In addition to reading traditional philosophical essays on these and related topics, we will center our discussion on two very different and problematic texts. In the first half of the semester, we’ll read Plato’s Phaedrus, an extended reflection on love, rhetoric, and Socrates’ principled objections to writing as such. In the second half, we’ll focus on J.M. Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals, a literary work in which the protagonist appears to defend the claim that poets have a kind of access to animal life that philosophers lack. In this context we conclude with Audre Lorde’s disturbing suggestion that “reason” (and non-poetic discourse in general) is, in some important sense, merely the inheritance of our “European fathers”. Is there something rotten at the core of the literary genre of academic philosophy?

PHL 430G/530G: Stoicism, Skepticism, and Epicureanism

MW 5:00pm – 6:50pm – Dr. Pascal Massie

What ultimately matters?  What should you fear and what is inconsequential? How should you change your life and why? How can you achieve peace of mind in an ever-changing universe? What can philosophy do for you? These were questions that haunted the last centuries of ancient philosophy known as the Hellenistic period -- from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C.E. to the victory of Octavian over Mark Anthony at Actium in 31 B.C.E. Yet, the questions philosophers raised in these centuries still resonate with us today. During these centuries while Platonism and the Peripatetic tradition were still alive, the center stage of philosophy was occupied by three schools: Epicureanism, Stoicism, and Skepticism. This seminar is intended as a systematic exploration of these schools.

PHL 450G/550G: Dreams and Desires

R 2:50pm – 6:25pm – Dr. Emily Zakin

How well do you know who you are, who you want to be, and what you want? Are you ever surprised by your own actions, inclinations, feelings, or judgments? What, if anything, do your dreams and desires tell you about yourself? This class will explore questions related to agency, identity, and self-knowledge (and their absence or limitation). The ways that we imagine, symbolize, and transmit our selves, our pasts, and our futures are also ways that we interact with, engage, and disclose the world. We will think about how our relation to the past, our emotions, and our memories influence our self-conception, our hopes for the future, and the formation of community. Readings will range widely across psychoanalysis, political philosophy, and feminist theory.

Past Courses

To view courses offered during previous Miami academic terms, visit the Course Bulletin.