Contemporary Philosophy Course

Lesson 1 • Defining Contemporary Philosophy

Clarifies the temporal and conceptual boundaries of contemporary philosophy. Sets the stage for understanding how 20th-century shifts reshaped philosophical inquiry.

Lesson 2 • Legacy of Modern Philosophy

Traces Kantian, Hegelian, and empiricist legacies that shaped contemporary debates. Provides the conceptual vocabulary needed for later chapters.

Lesson 3 • Major Philosophical Traditions Today

Surveys analytic, continental, and pragmatist traditions as living frameworks. Students identify each tradition's core commitments and methods.

Lesson 1 • Fundamentals of Logical Reasoning

Introduces deductive and inductive reasoning as the backbone of philosophical argument. Grounds students in validity, soundness, and strength concepts.

Lesson 2 • Philosophical Thought Experiments

Examines thought experiments as a distinctive philosophical method for testing intuitions. Students practice constructing and critiquing hypothetical scenarios.

Lesson 3 • Constructing Philosophical Arguments

Guides students through drafting, refining, and presenting original philosophical arguments. Directly prepares students for written and oral philosophical work.

Lesson 1 • Origins of Analytic Philosophy

Traces the movement from Frege and Russell through logical positivism to ordinary language philosophy. Establishes the analytic tradition's defining commitments.

Lesson 2 • Philosophy of Language and Mind

Explores the intersection of language, thought, and mental content. Prepares students for the philosophy of mind chapter by linking linguistic and cognitive issues.

Lesson 3 • Speech Act Theory

Introduces Austin's and Searle's accounts of how utterances perform actions. Connects linguistic analysis to ethics, law, and social ontology.

Lesson 1 • Naturalized Epistemology

Explores Quine's proposal to replace traditional epistemology with empirical inquiry. Students evaluate the implications of naturalizing knowledge theory.

Lesson 2 • Social and Feminist Epistemology

Analyses how social location, power, and identity shape knowledge production. Introduces standpoint theory and epistemic injustice as contemporary frameworks.

Lesson 3 • Reliabilism and Virtue Epistemology

Examines process reliabilism and virtue-based accounts as alternatives to internalism. Connects epistemic virtues to broader ethical and social concerns.

Lesson 4 • Classical Epistemological Problems

Revisits the Gettier problem and the justified true belief account of knowledge. Frames the central puzzles that contemporary epistemology addresses.

Lesson 1 • Time, Causation, and Metaphysical Grounding

Examines A-theory vs. B-theory of time, causal realism, and grounding relations. Prepares students for philosophy of science and mind discussions ahead.

Lesson 2 • Personal Identity and Persistence

Analyses psychological and physical continuity theories of personal identity over time. Connects identity debates to ethics, responsibility, and personal survival.

Lesson 3 • Core Questions in Metaphysics

Introduces the scope and methodology of contemporary metaphysics. Distinguishes descriptive from revisionary metaphysics and frames key ontological debates.

Lesson 4 • Modality, Possible Worlds, and Necessity

Introduces modal logic and possible-worlds semantics as tools for analysing necessity and possibility. Students apply modal concepts to metaphysical and ethical arguments.

Lesson 1 • The Mind-Body Problem

Frames Descartes' legacy and the contemporary versions of the mind-body problem. Establishes the explanatory gap as the central challenge for philosophy of mind.

Lesson 2 • Consciousness and Qualia

Examines phenomenal consciousness, qualia, and the knowledge argument. Students engage with Nagel, Jackson, and Chalmers on the limits of physicalism.

Lesson 3 • Embodied and Extended Mind Theories

Explores enactivism, embodied cognition, and the extended mind hypothesis. Challenges traditional boundaries between mind, body, and environment.

Lesson 4 • Intentionality and Mental Content

Analyses how mental states are about or directed at objects and states of affairs. Connects intentionality to earlier discussions of language and reference.

Lesson 1 • Applied Ethics and Moral Dilemmas

Applies normative frameworks to bioethics, environmental ethics, and social justice. Students practice structured moral reasoning on contested contemporary issues.

Lesson 2 • Consequentialism and Its Variants

Analyses utilitarian and broader consequentialist theories of right action. Students evaluate objections including demandingness and agent-neutrality problems.

Lesson 3 • Virtue Ethics and Care Ethics

Surveys Aristotelian virtue ethics and feminist care ethics as character-centred approaches. Connects moral character to human flourishing and relational responsibility.

Lesson 4 • Metaethics: The Status of Moral Claims

Investigates whether moral claims are objective, subjective, or neither. Grounds subsequent normative discussions in a clear metaethical framework.

Lesson 1 • Global Justice and Cosmopolitanism

Extends justice theory to global poverty, migration, and international obligations. Students apply cosmopolitan and statist frameworks to transnational moral problems.

Lesson 2 • Theories of Justice

Examines Rawlsian liberalism, libertarianism, and communitarian critiques of justice. Students evaluate distributive principles against real-world inequalities.

Lesson 3 • Power, Domination, and Critical Theory

Analyses Foucauldian power, Frankfurt School critical theory, and ideology critique. Connects structural analysis to contemporary social and political movements.

Lesson 4 • Democracy, Deliberation, and Legitimacy

Examines deliberative democracy, epistocracy, and the grounds of political legitimacy. Students assess competing models of democratic participation and authority.