Spring 2024

• PHI 1001 Conflict of Ideas
  • Lecture meetings: Tuesdays and Thursdays period 7 (1:55 PM – 2:45 PM)
  • Breakout sessions with TA: Fridays periods 4 (10:40 AM – 11:30 AM), period 5 (11:45 AM – 12:35 PM), and period 7 (1:55 -PM – 2:45 PM)

We live in a time of heated disagreement — over politics, religion, culture, and more. One may be tempted to react to such conflict by disengaging, perhaps deciding that there’s no way to settle these disputes and so no point in arguing about them. There are many drawbacks to disengaging in this way, however, and one of the biggest is that it’s not always even an option to just agree to disagree: sometimes a fight is inevitable. Since we are stuck having to deal with conflicts among our ideas, we should ask what we can do to make the fights fair and productive. In this course we look at work in logic, philosophy, linguistics, and psychology to explore strategies for doing this. Requirements include participation by means of ungraded writing exercises, some regular simple quizzes, a report on an experiential learning activity, a short video presentation, and two essays. Students are expected to attend and be ready to contribute during both lecture and breakout sessions. The course provides 2000 words of WR credit and meets the Quest 1 requirement.