Summer 2026 Courses

210-1     Reason in Communication                              May 18 – June 14            ONLINE
Instructor: Julia Pelletier
Online: Asynchronous.
Argument in familiar contexts; emphasis upon developing critical skills in comprehending, evaluating, and engaging in contemporary forms of reasoning, with special attention to the uses of argument in mass communication media.

211   Elementary Logic                                                          June 15 – July 12                ONLINE
Instructor: Crystal Seet
Online: Asynchronous
The formal characteristics of logical truth and inference.

241 Introduction to Ethics                                                  June 15 – July 12                ONLINE
Instructor: Dylan Beschoner
Online: Asynchronous.
Nature of moral problems and of ethical theory, varieties of moral skepticism, practical ethics and the evaluation of social institutions.

243 Ethics in Business                                                          June 15 – August 9         ONLINE
Instructor: Kate Lohnes
Online: Asynchronous.
Case studies of moral issues in business; types or reasons appealed to for settlement.

244 Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Data Ethics        June 15 – August 9         ONLINE
Instructor: Josephine Lovejoy
Online: Asynchronous.
Introduction to contemporary moral and political issues in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Data Ethics, integrating urgent problems, controversies, and continuously updated case studies. Introduces basic technical concepts such as the bias/variance tradeoff, the reference class problem, and inductive risk. Covers topics such as data and privacy, the impacts of automation on society, and the use of algorithms in medicine and criminal law.

341 Contemporary Moral Issues                                       May 18 – June 7               ONLINE
Instructor: Peter Vranas
Online: Asynchronous.
Under what circumstances, if any, is abortion morally permissible? Should the death penalty be abolished? What causes terrorism, and is it ever morally permissible to torture terrorists? This course teaches students how to think systematically about these fascinating questions. The emphasis is not on defending particular answers but is instead on providing students with the tools they need to reach their own answers.

441 Environmental Ethics                                                    June 1 – June 21      MWR     8:00 – 10:00am ONLINE
Instructor: Frederic Neyrat
Online: Class will be partly asynchronous and partly synchronous
Adequacy of ethical theories in handling such wrongs as harm to the land, to posterity, to endangered species, and to the ecosystem itself. Exploration of the view that not all moral wrongs involve harm to humans. Inquiry into the notion of the quality of life and the ethics of the “lifeboat” situation.