Philosophy 13195: Honors Philosophy Seminar

Jeff Speaks
Fall 2006


Topics. This seminar will be organized around ten important arguments from the history of philosophy. For each argument, we will devote one seminar to discussing a proponent of the argument, and one or more subsequent seminars to discussing the work of a critic of the argument.

The seminar will begin by consideration of a few of the most important arguments for the existence of God, and the most important argument against the existence of God: the argument from evil. Our discussion of the latter will show the relevance of questions about human free will to questions about the existence of God. We will then turn to a discussion of free will and its relation to divine foreknowledge, and determinism.

Many philosophers have thought that there is a connection between questions about free will and questions about moral responsibility. Following our discussion of free will, we will turn to a discussion of morality. We will discuss moral responsibility, moral disagreement, and the relationship between moral rules and divine commands.

A principal aim of the course will be to teach students to recognize and produce good arguments. We will spend a bit of time at the beginning of the course, and occasionally throughout, discussing what good arguments are, and why they might be worth pursuing.

Texts. You need not purchase any books for the course; all of the readings will be made available in PDF form online here.

Assignments. There will be four written assignments. The first will be a short 1-2 page assignment worth 10% of the grade; the next three will each be 5-7 pages in length, and worth 25% of the grade. Late papers will be penalized. The remaining 15% of the grade will be given on the basis of class attendance and participation. In all of their assignments, students are responsible for compliance with the University’s honor code, information about which is available at http://www.nd.edu/~hnrcode/.

A class-by-class list of topics & readings is available here.