Fall 2024 Tenure-Track Faculty Course Schedule
Note: all scheduling information is provisional and subject to change due to unforeseeable events. We recommend confirming the information on this page with an advisor before adding a class, especially if the exact schedule or faculty member assigned to the class is especially important to you. You can get up-to-date advising from Cam Batptiste – cambatiste@fullerton.edu. You may also search classes on the CSUF Schedule of Classes webpage.
| Professor | Course | Time |
| Calarco | Existentialism (PHIL 323) | Tuesday/Thursday 1:00 p.m. |
| Coplan | Aesthetics: Philosophy of Art and Beauty (PHIL 311) | Tuesday 4:00 p.m. |
| Coplan | Philosophy of Sex and Love (PHIL 325) | Tuesday/Thursday 2:30 p.m. |
| Coplan | Philosophy, Literature, and Cinema (PHIL 349) | Wednesday 7:00 p.m. |
| DiPaolo | 1st Course in Symbolic Logic (PHIL 368) | Monday/Wednesday 10:00 a.m. |
| DiPaolo | Epistemology (PHIL 430) | Monday/Wednesday 11:30 a.m. |
| Heiner | Contemporary Moral Issues (PHIL 320) | Tuesday/Thursday 11:30 a.m. |
| Heiner | Social and Political Philosophy (PHIL 345) | Tuesday/Thursday 10:00 a.m. |
| Heiner | Philosophy and Law in America (PHIL 355) | Tuesday/Thursday 2:30 p.m. |
| Howat | Explore Core: Truth (PHIL 133) | Tuesday/Thursday 2:30 p.m. |
| Howat | American Philosophy (PHIL 379) | Tuesday/Thursday 11:30 a.m. |
| Lambeth | Rationalism and Empiricism (PHIL 300) | Tuesday/Thursday 1 p.m. |
| Lambeth | Philosophical Argument & Writing (PHIL 315) | Tuesday/Thursday 10 a.m. |
| Lee | Introduction to Philosophy (PHIL 100) | Tuesday/Thurdsay 10 a.m. & 11:30 a.m. |
| Lee | Phil. Approaches to Race, Class, & Gender (PHIL 377) | Online asynchronous |
| Liu | Introduction to Philosophy (PHIL 100) | Tuesday/Thursday 1:00 p.m. & 2:30 p.m. |
| Liu | Asian Philosophy (PHIL 350) | Tuesday/Thursday 11:30 a.m. |
| Nichols | Seminar in Contemporary Philosophy (PHIL 490) | Tuesday/Thursday 1:00 p.m. |
Fall 2024 Course Descriptions
Calarco: Existentialism (PHIL 323)
This course is an introduction to existentialist perspectives on such themes as potentiality, meaning, authenticity, community, and bad faith and their relationship to ontology, ethics, and politics. To this end we will examine the writings of seminal existentialist philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger before turning to an analysis of subsequent developments, applications, and critiques of their thought in the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, Emmanuel Levinas, Frantz Fanon, and Simone de Beauvoir. The course will be conducted primarily in lecture/discussion format.
Coplan: Aesthetics: Philosophy of Art and Beauty (PHIL 311)
Course description forthcoming.
Coplan: Philosophy of Sex and Love (PHIL 325)
This topic-based course on philosophy of sex and love will examine a variety of philosophical and psychological accounts of love and sex, as well as depictions of romantic love in poetry and film. The first part of the course will concentrate on historically important discussions and accounts of love and sexual desire, including work by Plato, Shakespeare, Augustine, and Freud. The second part will focus on theories of love and desire developed in contemporary psychology, contemporary philosophy, and 20th century existentialist philosophy and will analyze and evaluate representations of love, desire, and gender roles in contemporary popular culture. In the third part of the course, we will closely examine the love relationship at the center of Michel Gondry’s 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, paying special attention to the ways in which the film’s depiction of this relationship challenges and revises standard Western notions of love.
Coplan: Philosophy, Literature, and Cinema (PHIL 349)
Course description forthcoming.
DiPaolo: First Course in Symbolic Logic (PHIL 368)
Logic is the study of reasoning. Symbolic logic (AKA “formal” logic) uses symbols to improve the study of reasoning by studying the form of natural language. This course introduces you to symbolic logic. We will examine two formal systems: propositional logic and predicate logic.
We will start from scratch. No background in logic will be assumed. At the beginning, the course may be very challenging. The course will remain challenging throughout the semester: it is fast paced and every week we will be pushing the limits of your abilities. But your skills will grow remarkably quickly if you work hard. By the end of the semester, you will be able to look back at what challenged you early in the class and think: “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I struggled with that!” But don’t be fooled: all of this material is difficult. The only reason the early material will appear easy is because you will have learned so much by the end of the semester!
DiPaolo: Epistemology (PHIL 430)
Epistemology is the study of knowledge and rational belief. It asks how we should form and manage our beliefs if want to believe the truth and avoid error. The course will introduce students to the basics of epistemology and will delve deep into a range of specific epistemological issues. Some questions we might address include: What is the function of reason and reasoning? Should we trust experts or think for ourselves? How should we manage our beliefs and our social arrangements in light of the fact that we must depend on others for information about everything from the mundane to the personal to the profound? If you and I disagree, should I doubt my beliefs? Are there downsides to doubt--can self-doubt go too far? How does identity impact knowledge? What is epistemic injustice, and what problems arise from giving certain people too much or too little credibility?
If you plan to enroll in this class and there are specific topics you'd like to address, feel free to let DiPaolo know by the beginning of Summer 2024. No guarantees, but he's open to suggestions!
Heiner: Contemporary Moral Issues (PHIL 320)
Course description forthcoming.
Heiner: Social and Political Philosophy (PHIL 345)
Course description forthcoming.
Heiner: Philosophy and Law in America (PHIL 355)
Course description forthcoming.
Lambeth: Rationalism and Empiricism (PHIL 300)
The early modern period saw an incredible amount of progress, both in natural science and philosophy. Throughout this course, we will engage with a question that preoccupied early modern philosophers: how can we reconcile an increasingly scientific worldview with religious convictions? Can we spell out a convincing connection between the physical body and the spiritual mind, as rationalists like Descartes, Leibniz, and Spinoza attempted? Should we abandon our commitment to absolutes, and build up our philosophy from empirical observations, as empiricists like Locke and Hume attempted? In addition to reviewing mainstream rationalist and empiricist views, this course will pay special attention to the contributions of philosophers who have traditionally been underrepresented in the early modern canon, including Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and Anton Wilhelm Amo.
Lambeth: Philosophical Argument & Writing (PHIL 300)
Course description forthcoming.
Lee: Introduction to Philosophy (PHIL 100)
Course description forthcoming.
Lee: Philosophical Approaches to Race, Class, and Gender (PHIL 377)
Despite the history of analyzing race, class, and gender as separate phenomena, the three are integrally connected. Perhaps because our present analysis predominantly treats them as three wholly separate entities, we have yet to achieve an encompassing understanding of them. This class will focus on the interstitial connections among the three.
Students will gain knowledge of texts regarding the formation of race, class, and gender. Students will be introduced to the structure of power in the social construction of identifying features such as sexuality. Beginning from the binary that usually defines studies of race — the black-white binary — we shall continue to ask how gender, class, sexuality, and the Latin-American and Asian-American identities disrupt and force the dialogue to change and expand its parameters.
Liu: Introduction to Philosophy (PHIL 100)
Nature, methods and some of the main problems of philosophy. Primarily for freshmen and sophomores. Not a prerequisite for advanced courses.
Liu: Asian Philosophy (PHIL 350)
This course will teach Asian philosophies with heavy emphasis on Chinese philosophy such as Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism (especially Zen), and Neo-Confucianism. We will study the different worldviews, conceptions of human nature and the good life from these philosophical perspectives, and where suitable, make comparisons with Western philosophies, religions and values. The course will be conducted in the lecture/discussion format.
Nichols: Seminar in Contemporary Philosophy (PHIL 490)
Cultural Evolution in China. There are many features or traits we associate with Chinese culture and its people. This is to say that, for a small but notable set of traits, inclusive of traits of people, of society, of cognition, of emotion, of family structure, etc., these traits were more frequent in historical China, and the cultures it has historically influenced, than elsewhere, say, than in Africa or South America or Australia. For example, footbinding only occurred in China, lasted 900 years, and affected the lives of upwards of 50 million women. Following some philosophy of science background about cultural evolutionary theory and gene-culture co-evolution, we will embark on our journey through intellectual history, taking with us our very contemporaneous conceptual tool box. Our broad question will be: How did China become Chinese? One issue we are sure to tackle is Chinese art. Here we will spend up to one month focusing on i) historical Chinese art production, e.g. How and why were terra cotta warriors produced?, ii) purposes of Chinese art production, e.g. What motivated historical Chinese musicians, and how did that compare with European and African counterparts?, and iii) issues of perspective in Chinese painting, e.g. Why is it that in China adopted and maintained the ‘floating perspective’ rather than making the shift to perceptual realism? (I would be thrilled if we can drum up an art experiment, and, if we do, I will happily submit for IRB approval to run such a study and get us participants.) Skills: Skills that will be developed in this course include: holistic and analytic thinking skills, integrating empirical and experimental sources of information into contexts of philosophical reasoning, and efficiently adopt problem-solving and hypothesis-testing approaches to philosophy. Book: If there is a textbook, it will be this, which just came out last month. If used copies are not available at under $50, I may not require this book.
