TEACHING
 

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100 Level Courses

I teach in each of the following two courses, which are offered each year.

Course Description:  This unit aims to teach the fundamentals of critical thinking and reasoning.  Students will learn how to construct, analyse, and critically evaluate arguments, how to detect common fallacies of reasoning, and how to think both logically and creatively.  We teach these skills by way of looking at arguments from business, law, science, politics, philosophy and articles from newspapers and journals.

Phil 131 Mind, Meaning, and Metaphysics.
Taught in conjunction with other Philosophy staff.  Next offered in Semester 1, 2002, although I will not be teaching in this course this year.
Website: http://www.phil.mq.edu.au/ug/131/

Course Description:  My section of the course, entitled 'Consciousness and Free Will', examines the question of whether we can reconcile the commonsense conception of ourselves as conscious and autonomous beings with the scientific picture of human behaviour and thought as the product of physical causes.  We will confront the questions: What is the relation between the mind and the brain?  Is it possible to capture the subjective aspects of consciousness within a purely materialist theory of the mind?  Is it possible to square the conception of ourselves as free, morally responsible agents with the fact that our behaviour may be causally determined?

Phil 262 Body and Mind.
Next offered in Semester 2, 2003.  Website: [under construction]

Course Description:  This course examines the relationship between the body and the mind.  It introduces students to the central issues in contemporary philosophy of mind, focusing on the issue of whether the mind can be incorporated into the scientific picture of the world.  The first part of the course consists of a survey of competing philosophical theories of the mind: dualism, behaviourism, the identity theory, and functionalism.  The second half will consist of a discussion of some topical issues in contemporary philosophy of mind:  What is the nature of subjective experience?  Is a physical theory of consciousness possible?  Is there a language of thought?  If so, what is it's nature?  How do mental states have content?  Does neuroscience show us that folk psychology is scientifically unrespectable?

Phil 249 Biology, Mind, and Culture.
Next offered in Semester 1, 2002.  Website:  [under construction]

Course Description:  This course is devoted to examining the ways in which evolutionarfy biology can shed light on the nature of the human mind and culture.  The course begins with an introduction to evolutionary theory and a discussion of some foundational issues concerning its nature and structure:  What is fitness?  What is adaptationism?  What is the unit of selection?  A substantial part of the course, however, will be taken up with investigating extensions of evolutionary theory to the explanation of human mind and culture.  The course will examine recent theories of cultural evolution, evolutionary epistemology, and evolutionary psychology.  A special study will be made of the ambitions and limitations of sociobiology, in particular, of sociobiological explanations of human sexual and ethical behaviour.

Phil 358 Metaphysics.
Next offered in Semester 2, 2002.  Website:  [under construction]

Course Description:  This  course examines some traditional questions in metaphysics, focusing on questions about the fundamental nature of reality.  The first half of the course is devoted to considering questions about the constituents and structure of reality.  Are there properties as well as things?  Are there possible worlds?  What is the nature of time?  Does time flow or is it static?  What is causation?  Is time travel possible?  The second half of the course is devoted to a critical examination of the metaphysical theory of materialism, which states that everything is ultimately physical in nature.  We will examine this theory's explanations of colour, free will, and value.  The course concludes with a discussion of whether there is, indeed, a single, ultimate reality, or whether a pluralistic view makes more sense.

Phil 354 Levels of Reality and the Disunity of Science.
Next offered in Semester 2, 2002.  Website:  [under construction]

Course Description:  This seminar course will consider the question whether the different perspectives on the world offered by commonsense and the sciences can be integrated into a single coherent view.  We will look at some recent criticisms of reductionism and the thesisof the unite of sciences offered by Nancy Cartwright, John Dupré, and Ron Giere.  The greater part of the course will be taken up with two special case studiesthat illustrate the issues involved in these questions.  One is the problem of mental causation: how can we reconcile the commonsense view that mental states cause behaviourwith the scientific outlook that states that behaviourcan be comprehensivelyexplained in terms of neurochemical states?  The other is the problem of free will and determinism: how can we reconcilethe commonsense view of ourselves as free agentswith the scientific picture of ourselves as elaborate causal mechanisms?  The course will conclude with a brief examination of John Dupré's recent book criticising reductionist programmes in evolutionary psychology and economics.
 

Postal Address:
                Department of Philosophy                                            Telephone:  61+ 02+ 98508876
                Macquarie University                                                    Fax:  61+ 02+ 98508892
                North Ryde, Sydney
                NSW  2109  Australia
 

Email & Web:
                pmenzies@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au or Peter.Menzies@mq.edu.au
                http://www.phil.mq.edu.au/staff/pmenzies