We will read classic works (such as John Stuart Mill, On Liberty and H. L. A. Hart, The Concept of Law), contemporary articles, and United States Supreme Court cases. But we also question the value of these tools based on first person approaches by relating them to the third person studies of the mind. This is unfortunate, but at least there isn't a heap of sand on my desk. [more], This course is an introduction to philosophy through three major themes: The nature of the universe, the existence of gods, and the mind/body problem. How have you already been taught the academic and civic virtues? We will then turn to a variety of more recent attempts to give a clear characterization of causation. Are we justified in believing in God? seek answers to the following kinds of questions: When is it rational to have a particular belief? Existentialists investigate deeply irrational phenomena of human life, including anxiety, boredom, tragedy, despair, death, faith, sexuality, love, hate, sadism, masochism, and authenticity. Or might it be that our skepticism and relativism are the result of our own laziness and failure? But how often do we ask: What is freedom? The second, longer part of the seminar will try to isolate and follow some of the pragmatist currents which run through epistemology and philosophy of science in the 20th and 21st centuries. Other topics could include: Zeno's paradoxes of motion and plurality, the liar's paradox, the surprise-exam paradox, paradoxes of material constitution, Newcomb's Problem , and the Prisoner's Dilemma. We will prove soundness and completeness, compactness, the Lowenheim-Skolem theorems, undecidability and other important results about first-order logic. this course, we will consider the relationship between freedom and social order. What is the nature of audience's response to film? Finally, we will consider how the concept of freedom is applied in contemporary social contexts, such as speech, religion, voting, and sexuality and gender. philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome were among the first thinkers to develop rigorous arguments in response to such musings. We will read classic works (such as John Stuart Mill, On Liberty and H. L. A. Hart, The Concept of Law), contemporary articles, and United States Supreme Court cases. In this course we will seek to comprehend the dimensions in which Existentialism is a distinctive intellectual tradition. We ordinarily claim that sentences are true or false, but are there other entities whose truth and falsity explains the truth and falsity of sentences? health and disease, and then apply them to human psychology. Both stances face severe difficulties. What is the basis on which current psychiatric diagnostic manuals are organized? If there are such things--we'll call them propositions--what are they like? [more], At the beginning of the last century Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. We will discuss major works (philosophical, literary, visual) by such figures as Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Richard Wright, Ingmar Bergman and Jean-Luc Godard. We will then turn to several of Plato's dialogues, examining Plato's portrayal of Socrates and his development of a new and profoundly powerful philosophical conception. What we have here is an example of the sorites paradox. With few exceptions, thoroughgoing skepticism and relativism have not been the prevailing views of the greatest minds in the history of philosophy. Why then should we spend our time studying people who in addition to having these surprising beliefs have been dead for 2500 years? Locke is the first great Empiricist Realist, and Leibniz the greatest Rationalist Idealist. We will first get clear on the formal semantics of first-order logic and various ways of thinking about formal proof: natural deduction systems, semantic tableaux, axiomatic systems and sequent calculi. I may also pair some Nietzsche texts with readings from representatives of both the Anglo-American and European critical reception of his work (Bataille, Heidegger, Habermas, Foucault, Irigaray, Deleuze, Derrida Williams, Rorty, Reginster, Hussain, and so forth). [more], The status of economics as a predictive science has been most prominently brought into question, historically, by three unpredicted yet extremely important economic events: the Great Depression of the 1930s, stagflation of the 1970s, and bursting of the mortgage bubble in 2008. Schick, Theodore and Lewis Vaughn. To what extent do these myriad force relations limit, enable, or deform our participation as political citizens, and our capacity to transform and improve them? What is the basis on which current psychiatric diagnostic manuals are organized? One must grasp the meanings of the various parts of the sentence. The first, shorter part will focus on the writings of the three classics of American pragmatism--Charles S. Peirce, William James and John Dewey--and analyze their reaction against traditional epistemology, as well as the positive philosophical ideas that they had to offer. Can we know anything through reason alone? We will begin with questions about how to define death, as well as reflections on its meaning and function in human life. We will examine this issue in Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, classic sources and contemporary articles. We'll attempt to answer this question by examining recent philosophical work on the nature of free will and responsibility. Of particular interest will be the extent to which discourse dynamics are built into the meanings of linguistic expressions vs. the extent to which they're consequences of our rational cognition. [more], This course is a survey of 17th- and 18th-century European philosophy, with a focus on metaphysics and epistemology. So, some relationships with other people--such as friendships, familial ties, love, patriotism--seem to be ethically desirable, central to the quality of our lives, and yet prima facie in tension with the widely held belief that morality requires impartiality and equal treatment of all human beings. Why read the history of philosophy? Are we ever justified in having more concern, and doing more, for our friends, family, community or nation? Possible additional topics would include: modal logic, the theory of counterfactuals, alternative representations of conditionals, the use of logic in the foundations of arithmetic and Godel's Incompleteness theorems. Special attention will be given to the philosophical foundations of cognitive science, representation and computation in symbolic and connectionist architectures, concept acquisition, problem solving, perception, language, semantics, reasoning, and artificial intelligence. We will pay special attention to the first amendment and questions concerning free speech and hate speech. In this course we address key themes and figures from two of the most influential movements in twentieth century European philosophy, namely, existentialism and phenomenology, a philosophical approach to which existentialism is indebted. If there aren't such things, how do we characterize meaningfulness instead? What, you may ask, is the philosophy of logic? that we have a clear sense of what that involves? [more], Put simply, metaphilosophy is reflection on the nature of philosophy: Can it be defined? While engaging these texts, we will continually reflect on their relevance for thinking about the problems facing liberal democracies today, particularly in the U.S. [more], In this tutorial we will examine a number of prominent and controversial social issues, using our study of them both as an opportunity to better understand the moral dimensions of those issues in and of themselves, and to consider the ways in which selected classical and contemporary moral theories characterize and address those moral dimensions. In this course, we will study the most important and influential chapters of the, Topics in Philosophy of Race: Hegel and Africana Philosophy, double? Perhaps, then, economics is not primarily a predictive science, but instead a descriptive, historical, and/or mathematical one. Tutorial partners will have an opportunity to spend the end of the semester working on a special topic of their choosing including, for instance, consciousness and free will, pain and anesthesia, consciousness and artificial intelligence, or disorders of consciousness. However, the status of loyalty as a virtue has always been suspect: it has been argued that it is incompatible with impartiality, fairness and equality, and claimed that it is always exclusionary. How important are honor, money, love, work, friendship and our connections to others to our happiness? What is the mind? If there aren't such things, how do we characterize meaningfulness instead? Morality and Partiality: Loyalty, Friendship, Patriotism. They have three adult children: Shevaun, Jessica, and Cameron. How could proponents of each be claiming to follow in the footsteps of Socrates? Walsh, 55, died from multiple stab wounds at the scene despite attempts by ambulance officers to revive him. What do you expect to learn? What is offensive art? Which characteristics of persons give them moral status? Finally, there are those who do not think philosophy can contribute much at all to answering such questions and others who question its claims to universality given its associations with colonialism, racism, sexism, etc. To name just a few ways: We treat animals as companions, as food, as objects of wonder in the wild, as resources to be harvested, as testing grounds for science, and as religious sacrifice. Is film today really distinct from a number of new, emerging visual media? We will concentrate both on making precise the philosophical problem of consciousness and on understanding the role of the relevant neuroscientific and cognitive research. Who is equal? Should we revise logic in light of empirical discoveries in, for example, physics or psychology? Can science contribute to our understanding of these issues? self-mastery, succeeding in worthwhile projects, cultivating relationships, living morally, developing spiritually)? How did you develop your character? In this class, we will attempt to carry on the noble tradition of corruption by philosophy. Could the world be made up of sensory properties only? What does it mean to be "philosophical" or to think "theoretically" about politics? Are there metaphysical and ideological assumptions in contemporary psychiatry, and if so, could and should they be avoided? [more], The seminar involves a critical engagement with key Africana political leaders, theorists and liberationists. While Plato and Aristotle differ on many points, they share the belief that the cosmos and the human place within it can be understood by rational means. What are the main sources of uncertainty here? We start with some of the Hindu views about the self and the mind and consider their ethical implications. Consequently, many philosophers deeply influenced by pragmatism do not recognize the fact, while, on the other hand, some self-proclaimed pragmatists of our days can hardly be seen as continuing the tradition to which they pledge allegiance. Associate Dean of Students / Director of International Student Services. S. Peirce, and John Dewey. Each identified the limits, whether historical or innate, of our human capacity to know ourselves and our world, and to live harmoniously with others. How do our thoughts refer to objects? demand, promise, praise, blame, threaten, command, insinuate, evoke, express feelings, and sometimes just to play. How do we create legal and policy frameworks that cover a new kind of thinking being? How do our thoughts refer to objects? Is democratic rule always best? It was the Crow's first game since the death of their coach Phil Walsh. Unfortunately, the relevance of Hume's ideas and arguments for particular philosophical disciplines has too often led to a piece-meal reading of his work: the three books of Treatise ("Of the Understanding," "Of the Passions" and "Of Morals") are typically considered in isolation from one another. The philosophical study of what we do in language, and how we understand one another, is called pragmatics; within the analytic tradition, the main philosophical contributions to the study of pragmatics in language came from Peirce, Wittgenstein, Austen, Grice and Searle. Among the authors we will read are: Aristotle, Frege, Russell, Quine, Kripke, Putnam, Field and Fine. Emboldened by our confidence in skeptical arguments, we claim that knowledge is inevitably limited, that it depends on one's perspective, and that everything one believes is relative to context or culture. Starting from scratch, students will learn the building blocks of current-day linguistic research. As we read through these plays, we will also examine a number of philosophical works about tragedy. Other philosophers and literary theorists have used some of their ideas recently to throw light on the nature of textual meaning and the interpretation of literary texts. German philosopher Martin Heidegger thought he represented the culminating point of Western metaphysics; French Nietzscheans such as Foucault, Derrida and Deleuze as well as French feminist Luce Irigaray appropriate Nietzschean themes and concepts in their critical engagements with the Western philosophical tradition; and Anglo-American moral philosophers such as Bernard Williams, Alisdair MacIntyre, and Phillippa Foot (as well as Rorty) respond to and engage his critique of modern morality. arts education by nurturing in students the academic and civic virtues, and their related traits of character." We will continue with J. S. Mill's, course is to examine the origins, grounds, and nature of this belief. Gulliver's Travels, Part III, chapter 10. Is the happy life a life of virtue? Against the first, people often don't seem to reason very well. Is there a room for the notion of collective intention in filmmaking? Some maintain that these issues are solely the provinces of philosophy, using traditional a priori methods. In fact, it seems like you can't change a heap of sand into something that isn't a heap of sand by removing one grain of sand. We will read, among others, selected papers by Carnap, Hempel, Quine, Goodman, Kuhn, Elgin, Hacking, Misak, Putnam, Rorty, and Haack. [more], Why are you here? We will see how a focus on language affects our understanding of many traditional philosophical questions, ranging from epistemology and metaphysics to aesthetics and ethics. This course will offer a selective overview of the debates that characterized philosophy of film since the early 20th century. more broadly, what it is like to have a first person, waking perspective at all--resists explanation in any terms other than the conscious experience itself in spite of centuries of intense effort by philosophers and, more recently, by scientists. In this course we address the question: How is the present we find ourselves living today different from the one that the author Foucault wrote about in the 1960s, 70s and early 80s before his untimely death in 1984? [more], Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Amelie Rorty, and Cora Diamond all challenged the prevailing philosophical tenets of their times. What distinguishes that kind of life from others? [more], Although Kant initially planned for his magnum opus to comprise theoretical and practical chapters, his metaphysics and epistemology take up all of his Critique of Pure Reason while his ethics is spread out over a series of works--Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Critique of Practical Reason, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, and The Metaphysics of Morals. Understood in this way, critical theory is identified closely with the intellectual tradition of the Frankfurt School. "Phil Walsh was a man of boundless energy and enthusiasm, and his death is a tragic loss. More particularly, it concerns itself with the difference between good and bad reasoning, between strong and weak arguments. If loyalty is a virtue, what are the proper limits of its cultivation and expression? . Or are some of our beliefs true in virtue of their meanings alone? What if they are biased, unbeknownst to us? Despite these rather grim pronouncements, tragic drama has continued to fascinate and educate generations. Are there incompatible but equally true ways of describing the world? We will also read more recent work by Foucault inspired scholars on topics such as the biopolitics of gender, the genealogy of terrorism, the informational person (how we become our data), and neoliberal subjects. Furthermore, they share the conviction that the most important components of a successful life are within the control of the individual human being. Wilfrid Sellars regarded as uncontroversial the view that it is "an attempt to see how things, in the broadest possible sense of the term, hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term." public health policies and activities. While he never wrote any philosophical works of his own, Socrates is one of the most influential thinkers in the western tradition. [more], Justice is a notoriously complex and elusive philosophical concept, the conditions of which are even more difficult to articulate within real world institutions and contexts than in the abstract. If not, should this concern us? The debate between Realism and Idealism concerns whether reality is composed of mind-independent matter, or mind-like substances. Mental Health and Illness: Philosophical Considerations. He hoped it would occasion a public debate between Locke and himself, and prompt the intellectual community to decide, once and for all, between Empiricism and Rationalism, Realism and Idealism, and on related issues concerning the mind, language, truth, God, natural kinds, causation, and freedom. We doubt, we point out that no one can be certain in what she believes, and we are suspicious of declarations of transcendent reason or truth (unless they are our own). In this tutorial we'll closely examine a series of contemporary and historical cases of human experimentation (roughly, one case per week) with an eye toward elucidating the moral norms that ought to govern human subjects research. Phil holds a Diploma in Horticulture (Massey University) and enjoys a long career in the horticultural sector. The choice of literary works and films to be discussed will to some extent depend on students' interest. We'll examine these criticisms in depth. Thus, Plato described the philosopher as "the one who beholds all Time and all Being." There will be a series of short response papers in which you provide a careful analysis of particular arguments in our texts. What are other models for understanding moral objectivity? Frederick Rudolph, Williams College 1793-1993: Three Eras, Three Cultures, Michael S . and keto reduced-sugar products has been linked to blood clotting, stroke, heart attack and death, according to a new study. Which characteristics of persons give them moral status? Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Marx, J.S. Swift, Jonathan. Some understand its aim to be to answer normative questions about the nature of truth, justice, goodness and rationality. Throughout, we will appeal to reason and evidence in forming our best beliefs. This theoretically oriented work will provide the background for subsequent examination of specific topics, which may include, among others: justice in health care financing and reform; justice in health care rationing and access to health care, with particular attention to the intersections of rationing criteria with gender, sexuality, race, disability, and age; justice in the procurement and allocation of organs for transplantation; obesity and personal responsibility for illness; and justice in medical research, including "double standards" for research conducted in low resource settings. Second, we will engage in some current philosophical debates concerning the concept of freedom in metaphysics, ethics, and political philosophy. As we go through these results, we will think about the philosophical implications of first-order logic. The objective is the preparation and writing of a senior thesis (maximum 75 pages). Perhaps, then, economics is not primarily a predictive science, but instead a descriptive, historical, and/or mathematical one. Pleasure? 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We will examine these (and other questions) in the context of the great philosophical revolution at the beginning of the last century: the linguistic turn and the birth of analytic philosophy. His thought influenced the thought of subsequent generations of philosophers. In our attempts to make headway in answering such daunting questions, we investigate recent debates in critical theory concerning subjection and resistance, intersubjective recognition and redistribution, social pathologies and the idea of a political unconscious. While looking at film as art, as document, as experiment and as entertainment, we will always keep in sight specific theoretical assumptions that underlie different understandings of film, and different critical approaches to the medium. Further, even where there is agreement as to the proper way of answering epistemological questions, there is a stunning variety of possible answers to each question. Among the questions that we will address: What is justice? 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