About Philosophy

The FGCU Philosophy Program – Our program is part of the Department of Communication and Philosophy at FGCU.  Our program is interdisciplinary in orientation and focused on undergraduate education.  The Philosophy Major became part of the FGCU Catalogue in 2006.  We also offer a Philosophy Minor.  Besides the courses in Philosophy, our program offers courses in the field of Religious Studies.  Our faculty are likewise involved in the Communication program, the General Education program, the Collegium of Integrated Learning, and other parts of the FGCU Curriculum.

 We are a general program; nonetheless, there are certain emphases that give us a distinctive identity in relation to other Philosophy programs.  The American Philosophical Association has identified four basic patterns which define the shape of most American philosophy programs: a historical model focusing on figures, trends, and the relation of thought to its wider cultural setting; a field model covering philosophy in terms of subfields such as metaphysics, epistemology, etc; a problems model framing philosophy in terms of major questions such as the mind-body problem or the existence of God; and the activity model laying stress on the philosophical methods and on philosophy as an activity and process.  FGCU's Philosophy program could best be described as a combination of the historical model with the activity model. 

In addition,  contemporary philosophy is typically divided into Analytic or Anglo-American philosophy stressing logic and epistemology, and Continental philosophy stressing the history of philosophy and the connection of philosophy to other areas of intellectual endeavor.  FGCU's Philosophy program is more oriented toward the continental side, though not to the exclusion of analytic approaches.

The FGCU philosophy program likewise benefits from our departmental relationship to the Communication program.  One of our goals is to raise philosophy majors who are orally articulate and possess presentation and communication skills to match their argument and analysis skills.

Philosophy Learning Goals

The content specific Learning Goals and Outcomes for the Philosophy Major state that students graduating from the program should be able to:

• Follow extended arguments written in technical language
• Master movements, figures and themes in history and philosophy
• Produce scholarly research in philosophy
• Construct logically sound and persuasive arguments
• Critically analyze an argument to identify reasons and conclusions
• Construct strong inferential claims and be able to perform proofs in formal logic
• Apply moral principles to practical situations.