Spring Special Topic Offerings for the Philosophy Department

The Philosophy Department is happy to announce that it will be offering three Special Topics courses this Spring 2023. Reach out to phildept@uark.edu or jwj006@uark.edu if you have any questions about the courses. 

PHIL 4093/4093H-001: Friendship and Loyalty
Good friends are supposed to be loyal friends. But what is it to be a good friend, and what does loyalty in friendship amount to? In this course, we will consider what the value of friendship is (with particular focus on its relation to morality), what role loyalty plays in good friendship and whether loyalty in friendship is always a good thing. We will begin the course by considering the merits of different accounts of friendship before turning our attention to what loyalty is, whether it is a virtue and what role it plays in good friendship. 

PHIL 4093/4093H-002: Signals, Nudges and Manipulation
While people are largely rational, we also frequently believe or act due to nonrational factors. We are often unaware of these influences. We might believe something not because we have good evidence for it but because other people treat us better for so believing. Our beliefs can function as signals that communicate information to others, manipulating them to our benefit. For example, our religious or political beliefs might gain us friends or at least the trust of others. We might act because we have been nudged in that direction, where the nudge exploits our vulnerabilities. The default setting is changed to enrolling in a retirement plan, nudging us in that direction. Sometimes these nudges are beneficial; sometimes they outright manipulate us. As technology grows and the behavioral sciences mature, the prospects for sophisticated signaling and nudging — perhaps of a nefarious nature — also expand. This class investigates the cognitive science underlying these issues and also the ethical questions that signals and nudges raise. Readings will be drawn from both philosophy and the behavioral sciences.

PHIL 4093/4093H-003: Descartes and the Rise of Early Modern Science
An intensive study of Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy together with the Objections and Replies and associated correspondence. Topics to be considered include: philosophical skepticism, self and self-knowledge, substance and mode, human free will, matter and bodies, the structure of science and the nature of the human being. Attention will also be paid to the historical context in which the Meditations arose: the Medieval Aristotelian target (as exemplified by Aquinas and Suarez), key figures in the scientific revolution (Copernicus, Bacon and Galileo) and, most notably, the fruition of early modern mechanism (especially in the works of Robert Boyle).