2019-2020 2020-2021 2021-2022 2022-2023 2023-2024
Browse
by subject...
    Schedule
view...
 

1 - 10 of 343 results for: PHIL

PHIL 1: Introduction to Philosophy

Is there one truth or many? Does science tell us everything there is to know? Can our minds be purely physical? Do we have free will? Is faith rational? Should we always be rational? What is the meaning of life? Are there moral truths? What are truth, reality, rationality, and knowledge? How can such questions be answered? Intensive introduction to theories and techniques in philosophy from various contemporary traditions.
Terms: Aut | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: Hussain, N. (PI)

PHIL 2: Introduction to Moral Philosophy (ETHICSOC 20)

A survey of moral philosophy in the Western tradition. What makes right actions right and wrong actions wrong? What is it to have a virtuous rather than a vicious character? What is the basis of these distinctions? Why should we care about morality at all? Our aim is to understand how some of the most influential philosophers (including Aristotle, Kant, and Mill) have addressed these questions, and by so doing, to better formulate our own views. No prior familiarity with philosophy required. Fulfills the Ethical Reasoning requirement.
Terms: Win | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-EthicReas, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

PHIL 6N: Pictures and the Imagination

Paintings, drawings, and photographs often function as pictures or images of the preexisting things they take as subjects. They represent these subjects from specific spatial vantage points in ways that may be more or less definite, more or less detailed, and more or less faithful to what the subjects are actually like. One longs to know how this works: how vision, imagination, and background knowledge come together when we experience a picture as a picture. Certain forms of imagining and remembering involve mental picturing, mental imagery. Sometimes we imagine or remember things in visual terms from a specific spatial vantage point, with the result that we feel brought face to face with the things imagined or remembered, however far away they may actually be. How is the physical picturing that goes on in paintings, drawings, and photographs both like and unlike the mental picturing that goes on when things swim before the mind's eye? What role does mental picturing play in physical picturing? What kinds of artistic value and interest attach to paintings, drawings, and photographs in virtue of what they picture and how they picture it?
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: Hills, D. (PI)

PHIL 8N: Free Will and Responsibility

In what sense are we, or might we be free agents? Is our freedom compatible with our being fully a part of the same natural, causal order that includes other physical and biological systems? What assumptions about freedom do we make when we hold people accountable morally and/or legally? When we hold people accountable, and so responsible, can we also see them as part of the natural, causal order? Or is there a deep incompatibility between these two ways of understanding ourselves? What assumptions about our freedom do we make when we deliberate about what to do? Are these assumptions in conflict with seeing ourselves as part of the natural, causal order?nWe will explore these and related questions primarily by way of careful study of recent and contemporary philosophical research on these matters.
Last offered: Winter 2011 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

PHIL 15N: Freedom, Community, and Morality

Preference to freshmen. Does the freedom of the individual conflict with the demands of human community and morality? Or, as some philosophers have maintained, does the freedom of the individual find its highest expression in a moral community of other human beings? Readings include Camus, Mill, Rousseau, and Kant.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-EthicReas, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER
Instructors: Friedman, M. (PI)

PHIL 20S: Introduction to Moral Philosophy

What makes right actions right and wrong actions wrong? Must right actions promote some further good? What is the role of consequences in the evaluation of actions as right or good? Focus is on traditional attempts to account for what determines which actions are right, what is worth promoting, and what kind of person one ought to be. Readings from primarily historical figures such as Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Mill, and others.
Last offered: Summer 2010

PHIL 23A: The Applicability of Mathematics in Natural Sciences: a Philosophical Problem

Why does mathematics work so well in describing some parts of the world? Can we give an explanation for its effectiveness or is it a completely ¿unreasonable¿ phenomenon? The purpose of this tutorial is to examine two class of questions concerning the effectiveness and the reasonableness of the widespread employment of mathematics in the study of nature (e.g. chemistry, biology, and esp. physics). We will start our discussion by Eugene Wigner¿s seminal paper, ¿The unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in Natural Sciences¿ (1960), in which he suggests that the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences borders on a ¿mystery¿ and a ¿miracle¿. Following that, we will read Hamming¿s (1980) much cited rejoinder to Wigner, where he attempts to give a more clear philosophical formulation of the phenomenon. Neither Wigner , nor Hamming, claimed to have done much to resolve the problem but rather to give illustration to the phenomenon. The issue remains intriguing, controversial, and instructive.nnIn recent years Mark Colyvan (2009) and Penelope Maddy (2009) have made substantial contributions to Wigner¿s problem, drawing attention to interdisciplinary nature of the problem and the need for further study of relevant history (Quantum mechanics, Maxwell equations etc).
Terms: Spr | Units: 2
Instructors: Islami, A. (PI)

PHIL 23B: Truth and Paradox

Philosophical investigation of the concept of truth is often divided along two dimensions: investigation of the nature of truth and investigation of the semantics of truth claims. This tutorial will focus on the second kind of concern. One key impetus for a philosophical interest in the semantics and definability of truth is the challenge posed by semantic paradoxes such as the Liar paradox and Curry¿s paradox. Despite each having the initial appearance of a parlor trick, philosophers and logicians have come to appreciate the deep implications of these paradoxes. The main goal of this tutorial is to gain an appreciation of the philosophical issues -­ both with respect to formal and natural languages ­¿ which arise from consideration of the paradoxes. To this end, we will study some of the classic contributions to this area including Tarski¿s famous result that, in an important sense, the semantic paradoxes render truth indefinable, and Kripke¿s much later attempt to provide a definition of truth in the face of Tarski¿s limitative result. Further topics include the debate between paracomplete and paraconsistent solutions to the semantic paradoxes (notably defended by, respectively, Field and Priest); the relationship between deflationism about truth and the paradoxes; and the notion of ¿revenge problems¿ (roughly, the claim that any solution to the paradoxes can be used to construct a further paradox).nnThe tutorial will avoid excessive technical discussions, but will aim to engender appreciation for some philosophical interesting technical points and will assume a logic background of PHIL150 level.
Instructors: Hawke, P. (PI)

PHIL 23P: Personal Responsibility: Moral and Civic

What do we as individuals owe to other people? Should we be spending our free time toiling in local politics and volunteering in soup kitchens? Should we be sending every extra penny (goodbye new shoes) to people who barely eek out a living on less than a dollar a day? Maybe we ought to spend tons of our time fighting to protect future generations from the predicted devastating effects of climate change. In this course we will explore how local, distant, and future circumstances affect our responsibilities as individuals. We'll discuss questions about what and how much we owe to others, and whether our responsibilities are part and parcel of being a morally good person, or whether they are things we owe others as good citizens of the community (and for that matter, which community do we owe them to--local, national, or global?).

PHIL 27S: Human Nature and its Discontents

In different ways, Thucydides, Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant, and Schopenhauer all emphasize a just so, descriptive account of human beings that, on the surface at least, reveals a profound pessimism with respect to their views about human nature. One of the themes running throughout Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, for example, is the suggestion that human nature is motivated solely by passions of fear, envy, greed, and ambition. Thucydides highlights the ways in which he sees Athens as appealing to these passions while attempting to justify its unspeakable crimes against humanity in the name of "democracy." The aim of this course will be to work through some of the more salient examples of what I will call psychological or anthropological pessimism as outlined in the works of these thinkers, asking about the role their pessimism about human nature plays in their positive philosophical project. Our guiding question will be to explore whether and how each of these thinkers reconciles their philosophical optimism with their psychological pessimism about human nature.
Terms: Sum | Units: 3
Instructors: McLuckie, A. (PI)
Filter Results:
term offered
updating results...
teaching presence
updating results...
number of units
updating results...
time offered
updating results...
days
updating results...
UG Requirements (GERs)
updating results...
component
updating results...
career
updating results...
© Stanford University | Terms of Use | Copyright Complaints