We will read, among others, selected papers by Carnap, Hempel, Quine, Goodman, Kuhn, Elgin, Hacking, Misak, Putnam, Rorty, and Haack. We will begin with Washington's classic article "Industrial Education for the Negro" and DuBois' classic "The Talented Tenth". This site was launched in Spring of 2020, and includes death notifications beginning January 1, 2020. What is the mind? . What constitutes my knowledge of myself as a person, and does that knowledge differ in any significant respect from my knowledge of physical objects and of other people? What form of government best serves the people? to the structure of arguments for and against relativism, as well as to the philosophical motivations and perceived consequences of its endorsement or rejection. To do this we will explore topics that might traditionally be considered "women's issues" in healthcare, such as medicine and body image (e.g., cosmetic surgery, eating disorders), reproductive and genetic technologies, and research on women and their health care needs. We will begin by reading some of Plato's early dialogues and his, probing and intimate reflections on the meaning of human life, the nature of God and mind, time and eternity, will and world, good and evil, love and sexuality have challenged every generation since Augustine's own. If they are conscious, will AI's have dignity and rights? In this course, we will investigate dynamic communicative phenomena and discuss competing theoretical explanations about how they're interpreted. Love it or hate it, you cannot ignore it. In this tutorial we will exploit this characteristic of biomedical ethics by using a case-based approach to examining core concepts of the field. How do logic and language relate? A number of things follow from this happy assumption. But is the best conclusion we can come to with respect to our intellectual endeavors that skepticism always carries the day and that nothing at all is true? [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. Among the authors we will read are: Aristotle, Frege, Russell, Quine, Kripke, Putnam, Field and Fine. In this course, we will examine some central texts in ancient Greek and Roman moral philosophy. We will then discuss philosophies of science which emerged out of various criticisms of this view - especially those of Popper, Lakatos, Kuhn and Feyerabend - and the challenges to the assumptions of scientific objectivity and rationality their works provoked. This is a formal course, but no prior logical or mathematical background will be expected. [more], Put simply, metaphilosophy is reflection on the nature of philosophy: Can it be defined? Thus, Plato described the philosopher as "the one who beholds all Time and all Being." Thus, Plato described the philosopher as "the one who beholds all Time and all Being." Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Moreover, the ethical issues that are implicated in responses to the pandemic reflect the range of those manifested across the field of public health as a whole. Throughout the course, our focus will be on the best theoretical and practical knowledge we now have to diagnose, explain, and alleviate mental illness. Is a sentence's relation to previously uttered sentences similar to its relation to extra-linguistic events? In order to hit the ground running, students will be expected to read The Women Are Up to Something: How Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch Revolutionized Ethics by Benjamin J. Understood in this way, critical theory is identified closely with the intellectual tradition of the Frankfurt School. Along the way, we will need to come to grips with the following surprising fact. "Phil Walsh was a man of boundless energy and enthusiasm, and his death is a tragic loss. Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Marx, J.S. Are we rationally justified in drawing causal inferences? We will examine a variety of philosophical and scientific theories of emotion, as well as some issues concerning normative aspects of emotions: the role of emotions in a good life, and the concept of emotional maturity. . Topics will depend to some extent on student interest, but are likely to include concerns that fall under such headings as euthanasia, conscientious eating, abortion, the ethics of protest, and Covid-19. [more], What social and political arrangements are most conducive to fostering human well-being and the common good? Is the happy life a life of virtue? According to one, there is a single group of students that had their hands extremely full this semester. Do particular case histories offer good explanations of psychopathology? Specific issues will include the ethics of placebo research, deception in research, studies of illicit/illegal behavior, genetic research, experimentation with children, pregnant women and fetuses, and persons with diminished mental capacity, among other topics. Our aim is to enrich our understanding of the discipline in order to evaluate its value and limitations. Why do we seek to experience through film fear and anguish that we avoid in our daily lives? This introduction will be of use to students interested in language from a variety of perspectives, including philosophy, cognitive science, and computer science. (i) You are psyched. In this course, we will examine some central texts in ancient Greek and Roman moral philosophy. Is there a room for the notion of collective intention in filmmaking? We will then turn to a variety of more recent attempts to give a clear characterization of causation. We will continue with the contemporary inheritors of the tradition: Cornel West, Richard Rorty, and Hilary Putnam. Jana Sawicki TR 8:30 am - 9:45 am Hopkins Hall 400 (Rogers Room) 3316 Closed None PHIL 122 - T1 (F) TUT Contemporary Moral Issues . The reason for this is that there are two underlying structures that the original sentence can realize. The course will, I hope, provide the students an opportunity and the tools to intellectually examine deeply emotional and contentious issues. We will concentrate both on making precise the philosophical problem of consciousness and on understanding the role of the relevant neuroscientific and cognitive research. Introduction to Critical Theory: The Enlightenment and Its Critics. as resources to be harvested, as testing grounds for science, and as religious sacrifice. The seminar will be structured around a close, critically engaged reading of the, Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations", action, knowledge, ethics, religion, aesthetics, culture, and of course, philosophy itself. We will closely analyze classical arguments by Augustine, Avicenna, Aquinas, Anselm, Maimonides, Descartes, and others. In addition to key concepts of death, dying, and terminal illness, we will develop and refine notions of medical futility, paternalism and autonomy, particularly within the context of advance directives and surrogate decision making. How do you expect to learn? This tutorial aims to provide students with the skills necessary for careful, serious and thorough reading of Wittgenstein's later philosophy. Here are a few: Rorty challenged the very concept of morality and questioned all moral theory. [more], The primary way we interact with others is through the use of language. (iv) It is possible that you are reading. Ninah T. Pretto. Phil Williams / WTVF-TV: Tennessee Congressman Andy Ogles didn't want you to see his college transcript! 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. In this tutorial you will read from a selection of Foucault's texts (books, lectures, interviews) in order to acquire a firm grasp of his method of "critique" and his way of looking at the interconnections between forms of power and the knowledge associated with particular disciplines. [more], Martinican psychiatrist, philosopher, and revolutionary Frantz Fanon was among the leading critical theorists and Africana thinkers of the twentieth century. 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. This course serves as an introduction to formal methods in the scientific study of language. that future is nothing short of an existential threat to human beings. Mental Health and Illness: Philosophical Considerations. Required fields are marked *. There will be a series of short response papers in which you provide a careful analysis of particular arguments in our texts. We will examine the wager in its original home of Pascal's Pensees, and look at William James' related article, "The Will to Believe." Or do our laws somehow enhance or enable our freedom? 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. This course introduces philosophy students to these and related questions through a parallel reading that brings together 19th century German philosopher Hegel and a tradition of Africana philosophy running through Douglas, Du Bois, Fanon, Gilroy, Hartman and Wynter. We will examine several different approaches in depth, including realism, constructivism, expressivism, and skepticism. Our texts will include Gottlob Frege, The Foundations of Arithmetic, Bertrand Russell, Principles of Mathematics, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. "The only thing that is different with this is that he has a high profile. 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. Starting from scratch, students will learn the building blocks of current-day linguistic research. In this way, we come to appreciate the importance of considering the biology on which mental processes are based and the light that this approach throws on the nature of consciousness. In this way the goal of the course is significantly different from that of Logic and Language (PHIL 203). The goals of this course are to improve the critical thinking of the students, to introduce them to sentential and predicate logic, to familiarize them with enough formal logic to enable them to read some of the great works of philosophy, which use formal logic (such as Wittgenstein's Tractatus), and to examine some of the connections between logic and philosophy. Taking this as our starting point, in this course we will examine a number of conceptual and ethical issues in the use and development of technologies related to human reproduction, drawing out their implications for such core concepts as "motherhood" and "parenthood," family and genetic relatedness, exploitation and commodification, and reproductive rights and society's interests in reproductive activities. Hence, being with others, being dependent on others, is regarded as a key structuring feature of human existence. The aim of this course is to explore and evaluate a number of rival conceptions of persons and personal identity over time. Frederick Rudolph, Williams College 1793-1993: Three Eras, Three Cultures, Michael S . To this end, each week we will (1) read philosophical material focused on one principle or concept, and (2) consider in detail one bioethics case in which the principle or concept has special application or relevance. Although it has influenced both analytic and continental philosophy, pragmatism is a powerful third philosophical movement. Attention to the writing process and developing an authorial voice will be a recurrent focus of our work inside and outside the classroom. Some maintain that these issues are solely the provinces of philosophy, using traditional a priori methods. Is moral objectivity like scientific objectivity, assuming that we have a clear sense of what that involves? We'll also work on writing lucid prose that displays precisely the logical structure of arguments, engages in focused critique of these arguments, and forcefully presents arguments of our own. While Hegel studies tends to occur in isolation from philosophers in the Africana tradition, many of the above explicitly refer to and take up questions in Hegel. When should we give morality priority over personal commitments and relationships, and why? Beyond this common ground, however, epistemologists are much divided. health and disease, and then apply them to human psychology. Readings will be drawn from recent work in the Frankfurt School and poststructuralist traditions of critical theory as well as anti-racist, anti-colonial, feminist and queer theories that draw upon them. 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? claimed it offended Christians, and the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center was prosecuted for exhibiting allegedly obscene photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe. subject. (Foot also invented the infamous trolley car thought experiment.) [more], It is a generally held belief, in our time and culture, that science is the best source of our knowledge of the world, and of ourselves. You are psyched to be reading this course description right now. We will read the great 20th century philosopher who saw education as the foundation of democracy: John Dewey. Where have you been taught them? If there are such things--we'll call them propositions--what are they like? And right now there are autonomous vehicles deciding how to behave in traffic, and autonomous weapons capable of delivering lethal force. Should we revise logic in light of empirical discoveries in, for example, physics or psychology? [more], How are individual and social subjects formed, and how do they connect to questions of race? questions by studying the history of controversies in American higher education, concentrating especially on debates about the curriculum. Our readings will come primarily from philosophy, but will be supplemented with material from anthropology, physics, psychology, and linguistics. Some of the questions which we will discuss are: What is a person? Starting with early film theorists (such as Munsterberg, Arnheim, Bazin, and Soviet formalists), we will examine how their insights and disagreements influenced later developments in continental and analytic philosophy of film, and in film theory. What is essential to human being is not any fixed set of characteristics, but rather what a human being becomes and how it defines and creates itself under conditions it does not choose. [more], Bertrand Russell claimed that Ludwig Wittgenstein was "perhaps the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived--passionate, profound, intense, and dominating." Is it moral for us to pass along these sorts of decisions to AI's? Is there a room for the notion of collective intention in filmmaking? In school? Your email address will not be published. Assigned works will include Booker T. Washington. [more], This will be a course in the philosophy of language at it has developed over the past century and a half in the analytic tradition. Yet, other lesser known experiments are equally important landmarks in research ethics, as well, such as the Willowbrook experiment, in which residents of a state home for mentally impaired children were intentionally infected with a virus that causes hepatitis, and the Kennedy-Krieger Lead Abatement study, which tested the efficacy of a new lead paint removal procedure by housing young children in partially decontaminated homes and testing those children for lead exposure. nature and origins of the mother-child bond, and to replace--or to let us think we can replace--chance with choice." We will continue with J. S. Mill's Utilitarianism and Kant's Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, considering these books as works in the philosophy of education. Walsh's wife Meredith was taken to a nearby hospital for cuts to her leg. Rather than seeing philosophy as an esoteric discipline, the pragmatic philosophers (with the possible exception of Peirce) see philosophy as integral to our culture and see themselves as public intellectuals. We will then turn to contemporary controversies such as campus free speech. 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. 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. On the sports field? We will continue with the contemporary inheritors of the tradition: Cornel West, Richard Rorty, and Hilary Putnam. While answers to such questions are implicit in historically important accounts of morality, these issues became the topic of explicit, sustained debate in the twentieth and twenty-first century. In the second part of the course, we will read On Certainty, and selections from other of Wittgenstein's posthumously published works: Zettel, Philosophical Grammar, Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, Culture and Value, Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief, and The Big Typescript. 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