In this course, we will cover a number of philosophical topics such as personhood and the self, mind and consciousness, knowledge and scepticism, free will and moral responsibility, and the nature of morality. We will consider such questions as: What makes someone the same person across time? How is the mind related to the body? What does it mean to have a conscious experience? What can we know? What is the extent of our knowledge of the external world? Do we have free will, if every event is physically determined? Do we really need free will to be morally responsible for our actions? What does it mean to be moral? What makes an action right or wrong? We will examine answers to these questions through a critical analysis and close reading of the relevant concepts and arguments in the assigned texts with the express purpose of charitably reconstructing arguments for philosophical evaluation.

TEXT: Timmons, Mark & Shoemaker, David. 2013. Knowledge, Nature, and Norms: An Introduction to Philosophy, 2^nd edition. Cengage Learning.