PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT

 COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

2004 FALL SEMESTER

(This is an almost complete list.  Contact the instructor for information if the course you are looking for is not listed here.)



PHIL 101.01 (Introduction to Philosophy)
Instructor: Yıldız Silier
Description: click here


PHIL 101.02 (Introduction to Philosophy)
Instructor: Murat Baç
Description: click here


PHIL 131.02 (Logic I)
Instructor: Sun Demirli
Description:

This is an introductory course in symbolic logic, requiring no prior knowledge of logic and philosophy.  We will be engaged in symbolizing English sentences in the language of a series of logical systems; in constructing derivations from premises to conclusions of valid arguments in these logical systems, and in providing refutations—invalidating models—of arguments in the languages of these systems that are invalid.


PHIL 213.01 (Ancient Philosophy)
Instructor: Stephen Voss
Description:

In this course we take the opportunity to work with classical writings by the very first known philosophers in our western tradition—strange figures like Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Pythagoras, and above all the two great presences who did so much to make us who we are today as human beings and philosophers—Plato and Aristotle.  Beyond them, a figure forever solitary and yet imitated everywhere—Socrates.


PHIL 273.01 (Epistemology)
Instructor: İlhan İnan
Description: click here


PHIL 301.01 (Problems of Contemporary Philosophy)
Instructor: Murat Baç
Description: click here


PHIL 313.01 (History of Modern Philosophy I)
Instructor: Sun Demirli
Description:

We will investigate the philosophical systems of seven  representative philosophers of the modern period (that is, the 17th and 18th centuries)—Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Kant on the Continent, as well as Locke, Berkeley, and Hume in Great Britain.  Although we will not have any class exclusively on Kant, he will loom large in the background.  Special attention will be devoted to selected metaphysical and natural philosophical issues, including substance and causation, mind and body, and the nature of ideas. Some attention will also be given to a number of epistemological issues, most importantly our knowledge of the external world, our knowledge of other minds, and the nature and defensibility of inductive reasoning.


PHIL 320.01 (Philosophy of Religion)
Instructor: Chryssi Sidiropoulou
Description:

This will be e a course aiming to offer a first introduction to the philosophy of religion. Major attempts to prove the existence of God (such as the ontological, cosmological and design arguements) will be examined in considerable detail. Issues like ritual, miracles, survival after death, the immaterial soul, prayer and superstition will also be examined to some extent. Most importantly, we shall focus on a philosophical examination of religious language and meaning drawing on the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein.


PHIL 375.01 (Philosophy Of Mind)
Instructor: Stephen Voss
Description:

This course asks what the deepest difference is between things that don't have minds and beings that do have minds.  What is it to have a mind?  What was it that happened, perhaps even before you were born, when that unique flame began to burn and you became capable of awareness?  If you have a human mind you can think and sense, feel joy and pain, and wish and desire and plan and act.  But can a being use a mind to understand what it is to have a mind?


PHIL 400.01 (Current Issues in Philosophy: Freedom)
Instructor: Yıldız Silier
Description: click here


PHIL 431.01 (Inductive Logic)
Instructor: Berna Kılınç
Description:

The course is an introduction to inductive logic with an emphasis on its conceptual basis in probability theory and on its procedural repertoire furnished by statistical methods.  After reviewing the basic notions of scientific inference, the course will focus on the probability calculus and its interpretations.  This will be used, in turn, to reassess the problem of induction, both in its classical formulation by Hume, and in its various modern articulations such as those related to the grue paradox and the paradoxes of confirmation.  Time permitting, we will survey some psychological and philosophical analyses of statistical fallacies.


PHIL 492.01 (Selected Topics in Philosophy)
Instructor: Ian Almond
Description:

The course will examine the role of Islam in a series of Western philosophical texts :

Introduction: Medieval Images of Islam
Martin Luther: "On War Against the Turk" and selected passages
Leibniz: Mars Christianissimus and extracts from the letters and Theodicy
Kant: selections from "Religion at the Boundaries of Reason Alone" and Physical Geography
Hegel: selections from Aesthetics, Lectures on History of Religion and History of Philosophy
Nietzsche: passages from The Antichrist and Genealogy of Morals
Foucault: interviews and articles on the Iranian Revolution
Derrida: "Faith and Knowledge," "Taking a Stand for Algeria," and selections from The Gift of Death
Baudrillard: "The Gulf War Did Not Take Place"


PHIL 538.01 (Topics in Political Philosophy)
Instructor: Gürol Irzık
Description:

Much of contemporary debate about social and political issues employs primarily the language of interests and rights, and only secondarily the language of needs. Whether one invokes the language of one or the other does seem to make a difference with respect to the social policy approach one adopts concerning health, education, social security and so on. In this course we will focus on the discourse of needs and try to see its difference from those of interests and rights, especially in relation to the question of social policy. A number of questions will guide our inquiry:
  
What is the grammer or ‘logic’ of needs discourse? How does it differ from those of interests and rights?

• What is the ontological nature of needs and how do they differ from wants, interests, and rights?

• Which needs (or categories of needs) have political or moral force? What political or moral force do they have?
• The satisfaction of which needs (or categories of needs) can be the subject of social policy?

These questions will be explored in the writings of such thinkers as Aristotle, Marx, Agnes Heller, Michael Ignatief, Martha Nussbaum, Axel Honneth, Len Doyal and Michael Walzer.

The course needs no prior knowledge of the topics that will be covered, but a familiarity with basic concepts of and approaches in social and political thought/philosophy would be certainly helpful.


PHIL 588.01 (Special Topics: Wittgenstein)
Instructor: Chryssi Sidiropoulou
Description:

This is a graduate course aiming to introduce students to the later philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein through selected readings from his main posthumous work, the Philosophical Investigations. The instructor is interested in reading the PI as a work in philosophy of mind, not philosophy of language. Central to our class will be the so called Private Language Argument: this will be presented as the most important philosophical attempt to refute the Cartesian conception of the self but also as a very promising line to take against the comtemporary physicalist.

Another focal point of the course will be the discussion of Wittgenstein’s ‘attitude towards a soul’ and his remarks pertaining to thinking in animals and automata.

Note:  No undergraduate should register for this class before contacting the instructor.


PHIL 598.01 (Special Topics: Recent Debates in Modern Normative Ethics)
Instructor: Karanfil Soyhun
Description:

Up until recently, contemporary normative ethics has focused on the issues such as right actions, as opposed to the moral character or the virtues of the agent, the moral education of an agent,  as well as the questions concerning happiness, and how we should live. The focus on the actions, as opposed to the agents of these actions, thought to be the strength of such theories. But, this so called strength came under serious criticism, by the modern virtue theorists who pointed out that the latter questions were important, and need to be addressed by any complete normative ethical theory. In this course, after a short introduction to two contemporary versions of Kantian and Utilitarian theories, we will critically examine Judith Jarvis Thomsons’ answers to these questions, and compare her answers to those given by Rosalind Hursthouse’s modern day neo-Aristotelian virtue theory. Even though our focus will be on the comparison and evaluation of a more typical normative theory and a virtue theory, we will also be looking into their implications regarding various issues in applied ethics.


PHIL 599.01 (Chance and Determinism)
Instructor: Berna Kılınç
Description:

The course will examine the interpretations of probability, chance and determinism.  While some landmark formulations of these concepts in the works of philosophers and scientists such as Aristotle, Laplace and Maxwell will be surveyed, the goal will be to understand the modern outlooks based on rigorous frameworks developed in the mathematical theory of probability and statistics.  We will also examine related issues involving the concepts of laws of nature, miracle and chaos.  Time permitting, the course will dwell on the compatibility of (in)determinism with freedom.