UNC Greensboro close to offering entire undergrad philosophy curriculum online

The University of North Carolina at Greensboro’s philosophy department already offers online courses in 8 of the subjects in its program and has recently adapted two more that are awating approval from the University, Inside Higher Ed reports.  If these courses are approved, their addition to the online catalog will make it possible for students to get their undergrad in philosophy entirely online.

To facilitate the teaching of philosophy online, the idea of which would likely launch a thousand philosophical debates amongst actual philosophers, Wade Maki, a lecturer at UNC Greensboro has developed a computer program called Virtual Philosopher, which presents students with ethlical dilemmas to “solve.”

“It’s not as ironic as it seems if you reflect on the fact that computers — both hardware and software — derive from logicians in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,” department chair Gary Rosenkrantz says. Threads of inquiry that use the “if-then” protocol of formal logic are the “foundation of both the computer chip and basic computer software functions.”

Read the full story at Inside Higher Ed.