Teaching

Phil 2455 - Introduction to Bioethics

Survey class covering ethical questions raised by advances in the medical field.
Course Units
- Ending Life - E.g., Is it morally permissible to advance a patient's death, at his or her request, to reduce suffering?
- Beginning of Life - E.g., Should parents be given control over the genetic make-up of their children?
- Optimizing Life - E.g., Are some forms of human enhancement morally troubling?
- Valuing Life - E.g., Should medical treatment ever be compulsory, or is mandating treatment unacceptably paternalistic?

Introduction to some of the most influential and difficult problems in the history of Western philosophy as modeled on Descartes' Meditations
Course Units:
- Knowledge and Skepticism
- Personal Identity and the (Im)Possibility of Immortality
- Arguments For and Against the Existence of God
- Free Will, Determinism, and Responsibility

An introduction to metaphysical debates in Western Europe in the 17th - 19th century
Central question: what is the world made up of?
Philosophers
- Descartes
- Cavendish
- Locke
- Leibniz
- Berkeley
- Hume
- Kant