Upcoming Philosophy Courses

What does it mean to live a good life? 

This course will challenge students to think about why they have come to college, what their next steps are, how a liberal arts education can prepare them for what comes down the road, and what is ultimately meaningful in their life. 

The course will include philosophical, literary, and psychological examinations of happiness, freedom (how do we make transformative life decisions), the value of college education, materialism/consumerism, and resilience in the face of suffering and mortality. 

In short, you will work at answering the fundamental question: What is the meaning of it all? 

The class fulfills the Humanities & Fine Arts General Education requirement.

An introduction to the application of basic moral concepts and theories to contemporary moral issues. Discussion topics will vary and may include: distribution of wealth and resources, capital punishment, torture, environmental ethics and sustainability, animal rights, euthanasia, abortion, cloning, genetic engineering, privacy rights, drug laws, marriage and sexuality, gun control, and affirmative action. 

This class fulfills the Humanities & Fine Arts General Education requirement.

This special section of Contemporary Moral Problems will have focus on developing the skills and perspective to engage in Civil Discourse. While investigating a wide range of ethical and moral problems, we will discuss contentious issues in a way that promotes mutual understanding. The essence is respect, trust and a desire to find common ground. Although it is unlikely that we will reach consensus, we will aim for mutual understanding. This course is not about proving you are right, it is about deepending your appreciation of central arguments and trying to understand the views of those with different values and perspectives. In the end, we aim to improve our ethical understanding and usefully engage those with whom we seemingly have fundamental disagreements. 

This class fulfills the Humanities & Fine Arts General Education requirement.

What does it mean to be an engaged critical reasoner?

Some think it is simply to be contrarian. This course will challenge that view by emphasizing reasoning activity as systematic and rigorous. 

This course will include argument construction and assessment, deductive and inductive logics, formal deductive logic, and the identification of fallacies and their avoidance. It will also challenge the students to address real-world issues! 

This class fulfills the Humanities & Fine Arts General Education requirement as well as requirements for Philosophy (BA - All Concentrations and Minor), Psychology (Advocacy, Ethics, Social Justice & Law Cognate Requirement BS), Neuroscience (Cognate Requirement, BS), and is recommended for Medical Humanities (Minor). 

What is good? What is right?
What should you do?

In this class, students learn essential moral distinctions and influential moral theories and learn to apply these in the deliberation of complex ethical issues. At the heart of it all is discussion. Discussion of the theories and their application is central to learning how to reason about ethical problems and make moral progress.

This class fulfills the Humanities & Fine Arts General Education requirement as well as requirements for Nursing Programs (UNMC - Prerequisite), Medical Humanities (BA, BS, and Minor), Psychology (Advocacy, Ethics, Social Justice & Law Cognate Requirement, BS), Neuroscience (Cognate Requirement, BS), Holocaust and Genocide Studies (Minor), Human Rights (Minor), Ethics (Minor), and Philosophy (BA: All Concentrations and Minor).

In the rapidly evolving fields of medicine and healthcare, ethical considerations play an ever-increasing role. This course is designed to equip students with the conceptual tools necessary for ethical reasoning and decision-making in medical contexts. This course investigates critical issues such as informed consent, end-of-life decisions, reproductive ethics, genetic testing, and research ethics. Ideal for students thinking about a career in healthcare, philosophy majors, medical humanities majors, or anyone interested in grappling with the complex ethical questions that accompany advancements in biomedical science and healthcare practice.

This class fulfills requirements for Nursing Programs (UNMC - Prerequisite), Medical Humanities (BA, BS, and Minor), Psychology (Health and Science Explorations Cognate, BS), Neuroscience (Medical Humanities Path, BS), Ethics (Minor), Ethics, Law, and Social Political Philosophy
Concentration of Philosophy (BA), and Philosophy (Minor).

This course focuses on writing instruction, with particular emphasis on editing and revision, the use of logical argument structures, and proper research and citation methods. Significant quantities of both formal and informal writing will be required throughout the semester.

Philosophy Writing is ideally suited to students who are beginning to take upper-level coursework and wish to develop more sophisticated skills in argument-based writing. Although most students who take the course are Philosophy majors or minors, it is open to students from any major, especially those in which logic, mathematics, or other symbolic languages may be used to construct arguments.

In addition to being REQUIRED for ALL Philosophy Majors (ALL Concentrations), this course also fulfills the Advanced Writing Requirement for Mathematics (BS).

What is the law and how is it created? What makes legal authority legitimate, and what are its limits? What is the relationship between law and morality? What are legal rights and how should they be protected?

This course explores these questions and many others, including competing theories about the nature of the law and legal reasoning, constitutional interpretation, and punishment.

This course fulfills requirements for Psychology (Advocacy, Ethics, Social Justice & Law Cognate Requirement, BS), Ethics, Law, and Social Political Philosophy Concentration of Philosophy (BA), Human Rights Studies (Minor), Ethics (Minor), and as an elective for Philosophy (BA: Other Concentrations and Minor).

This course includes a detailed examination of selected topics in normative ethics and/or metaethics. Normative ethical questions to consider may include: Is the morally right thing to do always the thing that has the best consequences, as so-called "consequentialists" believe? What sorts of things are intrinsically good, i.e., good in themselves, regardless of their effects?

Metaethical questions to be considered may include: Are there any objective moral facts? If so, where do they come from?

Reserved for Bachelor of Multidisciplinary Studies (BMS) Students only.

In today's complex and interconnected world, ethical leadership is a necessity. Ethical leaders inspire trust, foster a positive organizational culture, and drive sustainable success. This course aims to equip future leaders with the essential moral knowledge and reasoning skills required to navigate the broad and difficult challenges they will confront. In particular, students will study the philosophical foundations of ethical leadership, examine how these illuminate historical and contemporary cases of leadership success and failure, and apply the lessons to their own experience. In short, this course aims to cultivate the ethical leadership skills that will not only propel careers but will help students meaningfully contribute to a better, more responsible world.

Philosophy of Social Science focuses on how presumably PHILOSOPHY and SCIENCE work within any SOCIAL phenomenon.

Through intensive and extensive conversational “lectures” (a series of village roundtable-like “dialectic”), course participants explore how certain “foundational” philosophical frameworks (such as social ontology/social epistemology) and certain science concepts co-examine social goods(be they physical, mental, economic, or axiological). In other words, the course examines how the human being apparently always manages to live simultaneously alone and with others amid questions about “money”… (economics), “wellbeing”… (psychology), “control” … (political science), “origins” … (anthropology), and “groupings” … (sociology). This course should be of interest to students in such disciplines as economics, psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, medical humanities, criminology and criminal justice.

Over the past few decades there has been an explosion of research on animal consciousness. In this class, we will study three separate but interrelated issues: questions of animal consciousness, issues related to the study of animal consciousness, and how current understandings of animal consciousness should impact our treatment of animals. Some topics we will cover include: whether animals have beliefs and desires, whether animals have a conception of the self, problems of measuring animal consciousness, whether death can be bad for animals, and how considerations of autonomy might affect the permissibility of animal captivity.

Crosslisted with PSYC and ENVN.

A discussion of various accounts of the nature of minds which focuses upon philosophical problems such as whether the mind is identical with the brain, the extent of similarities between human minds and computers, the nature of personal identity, and the relationship of mental activity to behavior.

This course will address questions such as: What is the nature mind? Is mind a unique sort of substance, just a program, or nothing at all? Do minds really have an effect on the world? If so, how? Could physical science ever explain the nature of mind? Could mind be somehow a fundamental constituent of reality?

This course fulfills requirement for Psychology (BS).

Crosslisted with PSYC.