John W. Powell's Courses:
In general, I function in this department as one of several utility infielders. The listing below with links to syllabi and materials
is roughly in reverse chronological order, but they can also be grouped under G.E., majors courses, and courses taught as
overloads or labors of love.
- In the General Education Program, I teach our Intro to
Philosophy; The Philosophy of Sex and Love;
Perspectives on Science, Social Sciences, and Humanities (which Prof. Derden, who used to teach it, has called "the impossible everything
course"); and Theories of Ethics (which is also required for majors). There's a syllabus for each below.
- In the major,
I teach the ethical theory course mentioned above; the first course in our two-year-long sequence, four semesters, in history of Western philosophy, PreSocratics,
Plato, Aristotle; Reflections on Art; Existentialism; PostModernism; and the Dept. Seminar, so far on four different topics: Madness and Human Nature;
Wittgenstein; The Meaning of Life; and Philosophy vs. Literature.
- Under labors of love, I almost always teach an overload
one-credit seminar/reading group on current philosphical issues, often issues of philosophical methods (Dichotomies; Examples; Attacks on
Wittgenstein's Methods, Philosophical Intuitions). I've also taught Native
American Literature; reading groups on Pinker, Intention-based Semantic Theory, Richard Rorty; and Wittgenstein's On Certainty (with
Prof. Shaeffer).
My take on some of these courses puts me at odds with more common approaches. I'm not sure Plato is a Platonist, for instance, or really
has an agenda of definition. Sex and Love issues get turned into problems in contemporary metaphysics: subjectivity, the status of dualism,
the false dichotomy of moral absolutism vs. moral relativism, abstraction vs. examples. The tension between abstractions and examples also shows up in the Intro course and in Perspectives on Science,
Social Sciences, and Humanities. The Theories of Ethics course functions to raise questions about how to evaluate theories, and Meno's
Paradox and Socrates' implied attack against Divine Command Ethics get applied more broadly against theories in general. Some might predict
such positions or concerns based on my having been influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein. I nevertheless
resist being pegged as a Wittgensteinian, since it seems to me his own methods are inconsistent. More important in my own development is the
influence of a group of philosophers at the University of Oregon--there's more about that on the page on Academic Thinking.
Much of that thinking took shape through grappling with problems in these
courses, and I've adopted from O.K. Bouwsma through Bob Herbert the practice of
writing summary letters to my classes. Some of those letters have been
revised and polished into keepers, and have found their way from the Teaching
side of my life into the Research and Scholarship side.
Summer 2005
Phil 304, Philosophy of Sex and Love, Syllabus with links to many of the readings
and other materials at end. A problems-oriented course
with some classic and influential readings. What is love, really? Is love
subjective? What are natural sexual practices? How can we do a good job
of justifying moral judgements about sex? Are there things about sex or
love which cannot be put into words?
Spring 2005
Summer 2004:
Issues in Critical Thinking,
- Assignment One, and links to readings for assignment are here
-
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry for Informal Logic, by Leo Groarke
- Don Levi's essay on "Why Do Illiterates Do So Badly in Logic?" from his book In Defense of Informal Logic, (Kluwer Academic Press, 2001) accessible via a link to my website.
- My introduction to informal fallacies.
- My quick summary response to the question, "What Is the Standard of a Good
Argument?"
- Michael Levin's "A Case for Torture" and a description, including the crucial work
on clarification of the issue.
- Second Essay Assignment.
- My article, "What's Education For?" from the journal Thought and
Action
- My essay on what's wrong with definitions.
- a paper by a colleague at Helsinki which offers
some of the context for the Wittgenstein quote, "what is the use of studying philosophy if all that it does for you is . . . ." and
tries to answer a part of the question, "What's philosophy for?"
- The third assignment.
-
The fourth assignment.
The first question summarizes a main argument developed in this course and allows students to
evaluate the argument. The second question presents arguments on the issue of whether arguments
matter, including objections based on such ideas as everyone has a right to one's own opinion. The
third question asks about how we are kept from thinking clearly. Keep your critical faculties intact.
- Class White Paper, Proposal to HSU faculty to amend General Education
Requirements.
From earlier semesters:
- Phil 380, History
of Philosophy: Presocratics, Plato, Aristotle,
-
NAS 310, Native
American Literature, which was also listed (with different requirements) as ENGL 240, World Lit: Issues in Indigenous
Literatures
-
Phil 301, Reflections
on Art, (Aesthetics), from Spring 2003
-
Philosophy 390,
The Dept. Seminar, The Meaning of Life, (Fall 2002)
-
Phil 391, Wittgenstein's
On
Certainty (Fall 2002), co-taught with Prof. Shaeffer
-
Philosophy 390,
Seminar: Wittgenstein, from fall of 1999
How to Read (and How Not to Read) Wittgenstein (a handout for that
class)
-
Philosophy 399
or 391, Philosophical Methods: The place of examples
This has been an ongoing series on such questions as the following:
How shall we appraise Grice's and Searle's arguments against Wittgenstein's
ordinary language methods? What presuppositions underly the main problems
in philosophy of language? How strong are arguments which appeal to intuitions?
What choices have we for methods in working on epistemological problems?
What methods are needed for appraising the argument from illusion?
-
Philosophy 391,
Pinker's How the Mind Works; this reading group in 2002 was instigated
by students led by John Taylor. His website is at http://www.crumpled.com/cp/,
-
Seminar: Madness and Human Nature, Aesthetics
("Reflections on Art"); Perspectives:
Science, Social Science, and Humanities ; one-credit reading groups
on Intentionality
in Philosophy of Language, Identity and Personhood, Dichotomies.
Send comments and suggestions to: jwp2(at)humboldt.edu
Last Updated: July 2005. An update is planned for someday soon,
as always.
©John W. Powell
All rights reserved
