Philosophy

This course explores the main Mexican philosophical currents, as well as the problems they have attempted to solve, through the study and exposition of the controversies in which prominent Mexican philosophers have expressed their ideas, from the ancient indigenous peoples to the present day (focusing on humanistic, political, and scientific thought).  

The course covers the following topics: Nahuatl philosophy; Mayan philosophy; the invention of America and the conquest; the Valladolid controversy; controversy about Potestas or Dominus and political philosophy; controversy about identity and modernity; controversy about natualista; controversies of the 21st century (independent discourse); controversies regarding the best way to teach (positivism, liberalism and anarchism; Philosophy of Mexico to Mexican Philosophy (the "feeling of inferiority" and its history); Zea Villoro controversy (about the best way to do philosophy), and Canadian multiculturalism versus Mexican intercultural philosophy.
 

This course offers students the philosophical and critical theoretical tools to analyze the complex phenomenon of violence by exploring the contemporary field of the Environmental Post humanities. Assembling perspectives from contemporary feminist and political philosophy with environmental post humanist approaches, violence here is examined as an (im)material socio-political phenomenon that is impacted by categories such as gender, race/ethnicity, dis/ability, class, sexuality, age, and others and the societal power relations that have been engendered by these – and other intersecting – categories. The course focuses on the analysis of eco-violence, the more-than-human, and processes of de/humanization.

This course explores the relationship between religion and violence through a close reading of one of the foundational texts for the understanding of this relationship - R. Girard's Violence and the Sacred. The course analyzes this text, while examining criticisms or developments of Girard's thought from William Cavanaugh, Luce Irigaray, Sarah Coakley, and John Milbank. 

This course provides an introduction to philosophical issues in metaphysics and philosophy of mind. These include questions such as: What is the relation between the mind and the material world? Is the mind a part of the scientific, law-governed material world? If so, can I really act freely? If the mind is part of the material world, how could a material thing be conscious? What, fundamentally, are material things and their properties? What is it for one event to cause another? What is time, and what is change? How can physical objects persist through change? Can a person persist through time and change and still be the same person?

This course examines the fundamental presuppositions of every area of human life and inquiry. This course looks at philosophy by taking up questions about the nature of knowledge, the human mind and its relation to the body, the principles of right action and of a good life, and freedom and constraint in a just political order. It examines both contemporary and historically influential approaches.

This course examines influential theories of nature and the environment in philosophy and a range of interdisciplinary writings, from Aristotle to the present.  The course explores the following questions: Is there a connection between how nature has been conceived in philosophy and science and the current environmental crisis? Is the notion of nature still a meaningful term in the Anthropocene?  What is the difference between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’? How should humans understand their relationship to ‘nature’? These questions will be addressed from a range of perspectives, such as: Phenomenology, Critical Theory, German Romanticism, environmental ethics, Ecofeminism, contemporary thought and non-Western approaches. Drawing on these diverse traditions, the course examines possible alternatives for understanding the human-nature divide.

This course offers an introduction to the problems, concepts, and methods of logic. Topics include: the object of logic; truth and demonstration; basic concepts of set theory; syntax; semantics; interpretation; truth; formalization; logical truth; equivalence; consequence.

This course concentrates on a number of philosophical approaches that help us understand the relationship between media and technology and our lived experience. Media theory and whether specific technologies and media, like writing and print, provoke structural changes in patterns of thought, action and experience are discussed. The course also deals with the critical philosophies of technology in the Marxist tradition, the hermeneutic tradition and the feminist tradition as well as contemporary debates about ethics, labor, and the environment. These topics encourage us to think about how, to paraphrase the historian Melvin Kranzberg, media and technology are neither good nor bad nor are they neutral. A variety of different media and technical artifacts, including AI, health care technologies, books, social media, the alphabet, and education are considered. This course requires that students have completed an upper division course in the humanities as a prerequisite. Prior knowledge of philosophy is recommended.

This course continues the exploration of various moral theories, emphasizing approaches which are not part of standard introductions. 

After discussing contemporary utilitarianism, the course looks at ethical egoism and its standing in empirical research on, e.g., human evolution. Subsequently, the course discusses David Ross's idea of prima facie duties within ethical pluralism and Tom Scanlon's contractualism in which he expands John Rawls’ approach to morality as such. The course concludes with moral particularism and its denial that there are general moral principles. 

This course offers a reflection on science and acquires cross-disciplinary analytical skills. It addresses the notions of problematization, definition, and reasoning, notably through the reading of philosophical texts.