Department of Philosophy

Employers show a preference for effective communicators with strong analytic or logical reasoning skills. An immersion in analytic and expressive communication provides you with the opportunity to develop both oral and written communication abilities grounded in reasoned argument, which in turn contributes to your individual confidence and empathetic thinking. Courses in this immersion may rely in part upon great or transformative texts selected for their relevance for learning rhetoric, argument, critical thinking, and/or ethics, and have the option to incorporate activities in RIT’s Expressive Communication Center.

The ethics immersion teaches students to identify and critically consider ethical issues on both the theoretical and applied levels, including contemporary issues related to artificial intelligence and emerging technologies. Students gain insights into how ethical problems can emerge from complex social structures and learn how strategic changes in these structures can help prevent ethical dilemmas.

The ethics minor provides students with the ability to recognize ethical issues and to think critically to resolve them, both generally and within their chosen discipline. Students also learn how ethical problems can result from complex social structures and how changing structural features may avoid ethical problems. Three courses in philosophy are required plus two electives from the approved list, at least one of which must be outside philosophy. Only one 100-level course may be counted as part of the minor.

The global justice immersion examines attempts to create lasting peace and social justice on the international scale. Courses in philosophy and the social sciences help students to understand concepts of human rights, world poverty, and global solidarity. The immersion is well suited for students considering careers in law, politics, or public policy related fields.

The philosophy immersion provides students with an opportunity to study the nature, methods, problems, and achievements of philosophical inquiry. The immersion emphasizes the following goals: the ability to think rationally and critically, an awareness of ethical values, an appreciation of aesthetic values, an awareness of how the past affects the present and future, and an understanding of the relationship between individuals and the social settings with which they interact.

The philosophy minor provides students with the critical skill of philosophical analysis while they take courses on a wide variety of issues central to everyone’s existence. Students get a solid grasp of the major philosophers, movements, and topics of philosophical debate that continue to shape our lives and how we act.

Religion plays a major role in human affairs. To understand more fully the nature of the relationship between society and the individual, it is essential to have some understanding of religion. The religious studies immersion engages students in the study of religion from the perspective of major Western and non-Western traditions through courses in disciplines such as anthropology, history, literature, philosophy, and psychology.