Department of Philosophy
The Department of Philosophy serves the mission of the College of Arts and Sciences and the University of Portland through excellence in teaching, scholarship, and service. Our department offers an undergraduate major and minor that prepare students for graduate work, occupations in the helping professions, and many other career paths.
The philosophy major at the University of Portland is designed to provide the following learning goals and outcomes:
- Engage with significant philosophical problems.
- Engage in the art of dialogue.
- Write technically competent philosophical essays.
- Integrate diverse views in developing their positions on an issue.
- Demonstrate proficiency in the basic concepts of logic.
- Distinguish between arguments and non-arguments.
- Distinguish between deductive and inductive arguments.
- Evaluate arguments in terms of their soundness or cogency.
- Identify common formal and informal fallacies.
- Translate ordinary language statements into various systems of logic (e.g. categorical logic, propositional logic, and/or predicate logic).
- Use various systems of logic to check arguments for validity (e.g. the square of opposition, rules for categorical syllogisms, truth tables, natural deductions).
