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11 - 20 of 459 results for: PHIL

PHIL 13N: "Can good people like bad music?" and other questions

Think of a musical artist you just can't stand to listen to. Chances are, this artist has thousands, if not millions, of adoring fans. That is, what's "bad music" to you is "good music" to others. This fact is not shocking: we all know that people have different tastes in music, and in art more generally. But what does this fact tell us about art, other people, and ourselves? Are some of us right and others of us wrong about what's good and bad music? Is there reason to think that some music is "objectively" better than other music? Can we say that those who like "bad music" are missing something, or mistaken in their tastes? If so, why not think it's us that are mistaken? How much are our own tastes bound up with "who we are"? And what might this mean for our capacity to appreciate tastes which are not our own?nThis seminar is an investigation into these and other questions. Through the specific lens of music, we will explore the nature of artistic taste more generally. Our main course text will be Carl Wilson's Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste, a popular introduction to our topic. We will also look at and discuss actual album reviews, pieces of music journalism, and news stories. Class meetings will be heavily discussion-based, and students should come to class ready to share, debate, and scrutinize their own musical tastes. Outside of class, students will develop their understanding through a variety of informal and creative writing assignments, such as exploratory journal entries and mock fan letters. Your taste in music may very well change as a result of this seminar, but this is not its aim. The goal is to understand what it means to disagree about art, through which you will learn how to respond more intelligently and empathetically to such disagreements as they come up in your everyday life.
Terms: Aut | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: Costello, W. (PI)

PHIL 14N: Belief and the Will

Preference to freshmen. Is there anything wrong with believing something without evidence? Is it possible? The nature and ethics of belief, and belief's relation to evidence and truth. How much control do believers have over their belief?
Last offered: Autumn 2014 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, 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.
Last offered: Winter 2014 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-EthicReas, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

PHIL 20S: Introduction to Moral Philosophy

Moral philosophy is the area of philosophy concerned with how we ought to live our lives. This includes questions such as: what makes an action right or wrong? what makes for a virtuous versus a vicious character? and what sort of obligations, if any, do we have to other people or animals? Our aim is to understand how influential philosophers (including Plato, Aristotle, Mill, Hume, and Kant) have answered these questions and how they have justified their positions. We will also focus on developing student skills in argument and rigorous academic writing.
Terms: Sum | Units: 3
Instructors: Magnani, M. (PI)

PHIL 21S: Introduction to Ancient Philosophy

This course will focus on the philosophical thought of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. We¿ll analyze the questions they asked and the arguments they made to answer them, which are still very much alive today. In ethics, they asked questions like: what is the good life for a human being? What is a virtuous person like? Why should we want to be virtuous? Plato and Aristotle also asked questions about the foundations of ethical and scientific inquiry: when we know ethical or scientific truths, what it is that we know and how do we know it? This course will help students read complex texts, analyze arguments, and write concisely and clearly about difficult issues.
Terms: Sum | Units: 3

PHIL 22S: Self, World, Freedom

Some of philosophy¿s deepest and most persistent questions are about our place in and our interactions with the natural world. Are we ourselves part of that world, or are we somehow outside of it? How can we know about the world, if we can at all? Do we have the freedom to choose our own actions, or are our choices settled in advance? This course provides an introduction to philosophy with a special focus on these questions, which we will discuss in both historical and current forms. We will also ask after the role and value of philosophy in addressing them. What, if anything, makes philosophy a distinctive and distinctively valuable tool for their investigation?
Terms: Sum | Units: 3
Instructors: Tulipana, P. (PI)

PHIL 23A: The Cognitive Science of Mathematics

Mathematics has two features which, taken together, are quite puzzling: (i) itsnobjects (numbers, functions, derivatives, manifolds, and the like) are very unlike everyday concrete material objects, yet (ii) it seems to be the source of our most certain knowledge. In this course, we will examine the role in which findings from empirical theories of mathematical cognition can help address and possibly dissolve this puzzle. The course will be broken up into three units: Philosophical Foundations, Numerical Cognition, and Metaphor and Higher Mathematical Thought
Last offered: Autumn 2013

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).nThe 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.
Last offered: Autumn 2012

PHIL 23C: Counterfactuals

Reasoning about counterfactual conditionals plays an important role in contemporary philosophy. Not only have counterfactual analyses been proposed for central philosophical notions, including causation, laws of nature, free will, and knowledge, but also counterfactuals have become objects of interest in their own right, both in the philosophy of language and in logic. This tutorial will introduce the standard approaches to the semantics of counterfactuals, focusing on the work of David Lewis and Robert Stalnaker. Prerequisite: one logic course (e.g., 50, 150, or 151) or consent of instructor.
Last offered: Winter 2011

PHIL 23D: Principia as Paradigm: Mechanics After Newton

Newton's Principia is widely and rightly acknowledged as a landmark achievement in physics that has had a profound impact on the subsequent development of science. This tutorial will focus on what sorts of influence the Principia had on the development of mechanics in roughly the first century following its publication. The work of Euler, Lagrange, and Laplace will serve as the primary examples of this development. Kuhn's description of paradigms in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions provides a starting point for understanding some of these forms of influence. In particular, this tutorial will try to explore two central areas of influence. The first is Newton's conceptual framework and how it was modified in the further development of mechanics during this period. The second is how projects suggested by residual problems within the Principia shaped ongoing study.
Last offered: Winter 2015
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