151 - 160 of 426 results for: PHIL

People as different as Jesus Christ and Justin Timberlake think that love is crucial to living the good life. But what is love? What part should it play in our lives? Is it just one value among many? This course will consider questions about the nature of love, the role it plays in moral philosophy, and its effect on individual autonomy. Readings will be from both contemporary and historical sources.

Does the current generation have a duty of justice to bear the brunt of the burden of combating climate change for the sake of future generations? If so, who should pay the costs of adapting to climate change and reducing greenhouse gas emissions? Should the costs of combating climate change be distributed according to historical emissions, to wealth, or to an equal per capita emissions principle? We¿ll explore these questions through readings at the intersection of political philosophy and climate change. The course includes readings on the following topics: global distributive justice, human rights, historical responsibility, economic efficiency, environmental justice, sustainability, and catastrophe. Throughout the course we¿ll reflect upon what role considerations of justice should play in seeking solutions to climate change.

The Self: Fiction or reality? Bundle of perceptions? Pragmatic role-concept? Fleeting moment of consciousness? Social invention? Narrative construct? Various philosophical conceptions of the self will be explored with a particular focus on the notion of the `narrative self.¿ Literature from neuroscience, psychology and philosophy will be considered.

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?).

This course is about two questions:The first question: what is an essay? In other words, what is it that we mean when we talk about an essay instead of a précis, a paper, a report, a chronicle, a scientific paper, an opinion piece, fiction or simply other kinds of academic writing. Call this first question, the demarcation question about the essay. Essays are particularly hard to pin down, to demarcate its boundaries is almost impossible. The essay represents a distinct challenge for both theory and criticism. Unlike other literary and academic genres, at least since their modern inception in Montaigne¿s hands, essays challenge notions and assumptions that in other genres are transparent or can be more easily set aside. n The second question is: what does essaying "the embarking upon the kind of things essayists claim to be doing" have to do with the cultivation of one's self, the examination of one's actions and deeds in ordinary contexts and the project of shaping it in self-reflective ways. Call this second question, the Socratic aspiration of the essay. To answer this question, we won¿t start from any pre-establish theory or framework, but rather work our way out directly from the readings of a sample of essays drawn from various sources. nBy the end of the course, the student will be in a better position to confront questions such as: why are the humanities part and parcel of our educational efforts, more generally, and how could they become part of my education, more particularly? What are the difficulties and advantages, the very point of, writing one's opinions in an attempt to address others? How is self-understanding connected to philosophical endeavors? What role, if any, could finding one's voice have for the purposes of reflective and critical thinking about one's self in relation to others?

Most people have many false beliefs. Yet, one routinely relies on one's own beliefs and on the views of others. Does that mean that one takes oneself to be exceptionally good at forming true beliefs, and exceptionally good at detecting false beliefs in others? When is it justified to place intellectual trust in oneself and in others?

In this tutorial, we will examine a cluster of questions concerning the relationship between cognitive states, such as beliefs and desires, and perception. We will examine the question of whether, and to what extent, concepts, beliefs, and desires can influence the content of perception. If these cognitive states can influence the content of perceptual states, how worried should we be about the ability of perception to justify belief, both in everyday life and in scientific inquiry?

May be repeated for credit.