Philosophy - Mt Hood Community College

Philosophy from Mt Hood Community College is a Campus Associate Philosophy degree that prepares you for a Liberal Arts career. Philosophers are interested in trying to provide plausible answers to life?s most profound questions. 1. What, ultimately, is going on? Is there a God who created us for some purpose? Must we grasp this purpose and take specific actions or be on the losing side of some great spiritual battle? Is God perhaps merely interested in watching the show? Is nature all there is and God a mere figment of our imaginations? 2. What kind of thing is a human being? Are we creatures of God possessing an immortal soul, or are we merely animals? Were we created by intelligent design, or are we the product solely of naturalistic evolutionary processes? Do we have sufficient freedom of the will to be truly deserving of praise and blame for what we do, or are we only complicated physical systems like computers and storms that are not responsible morally for what they do? 3. How should a human being live? Should I seek mainly my own happiness? How concerned with the welfare of others should I be? How should I treat others and expect others to treat me? It is true that philosophers rarely reach a consensus about which answer is indisputably the right one for any given philosophical question. But it is still the case that, as with other noble pursuits, the connoisseur of ideas can at least identify the few best answers, and from these few he or she can sometimes reach personal closure - an intelligent and informed personal closure. So why let others answer these questions for you? Why settle for being a second-hand person? Isn?t it time to own your mind? Curricular Outcomes At the completion of this curriculum, the student should be able to: Identify questions addressed in the three main areas in philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology (including logic) and ethics Recall some of the contributions of the major philosophers (e.g., Socrates, Plato, Descartes, Kant, Nietzsche, Mill, Rawls, et cetera) Examine some of the main problems and proposed solutions/criticisms in philosophy , along with the concepts instrumental to participating in the philosophical dialogue regarding these problems Define the basic vocabulary of logic Translate an argument from its original context into a more concise and orderly summary (i.e., an argument standardization or diagram) Distinguish the main valid forms from invalid impostors Assess the strength of the concise restatement of the argument, with particular attention given to the strength of the inference. View more details on Mt Hood Community College . Ask your questions and apply online for this program or find other related Philosophy courses.