271 - 280 of 317 results for: PHIL

This seminar will examine the notion of normativity in Plato and Aristotle. Advanced grad seminar. Open to Philosophy PhD students only.

Explanation is a topic of longstanding interest in philosophy and psychology, and has recently attracted renewed attention due to novel challenges in interpreting and interacting with relatively opaque AI systems. In this graduate seminar, we will study the science and engineering of explanations, combining perspectives from philosophy, psychology, AI, and the legal sciences. We will ask questions like: When do we ask for explanations? What makes a good explanation? How can we build machines that can understand and explain? This interdisciplinary seminar is co-taught by Thomas Icard (Philosophy) and Tobias Gerstenberg (Psychology). We will meet twice a week (Tuesdays and Thursdays 10:30am-11:50am) to discuss research articles from a range of disciplines. Students are expected to write responses based on their readings, lead the discussion on one of the papers, and actively participate in the discussion otherwise. As a final project, students will outline a novel study on explanation that makes an empirical, modeling, or theoretical contribution. Participation is restricted to a maximum of 12 graduate students (by application). The course website, with information about application, can be found here: phil350.stanford.edu

The statement that the cardinality of the real numbers is the next infinite cardinality after the cardinality of the natural numbers, namely Cantor's Continuum Hypothesis (CH), was at the top of David Hilbert's 1900 list of the most significant open problems in mathematics. The work of Kurt Gödel (1940) and Paul Cohen (1963) demonstrate that CH is neither provable nor refutable from the standard axioms of set theory (ZFC). This independence result has significant implications in mathematics, logic, and philosophy. Following a nutshell overview of background material in logic and set theory (including Gödel's Completeness and Incompleteness Theorems, Zermelo-Fraenkel axioms, Axiom of Choice, ordinal and cardinal number systems), this course explores independence results in set theory in general, as well as some of the key methods for proving them. Topics include Gödel's model L for ZF with CH, and Cohen's method of forcing for a model of ZF with the negation of CH. Time permitting, additional topics may include independence results associated with large cardinal axioms, existence of measurable sets, and axioms of determinacy. 2 unit option is only for Philosophy PhD students beyond the second year.

Mathematics is extremely useful in science. In fact, it is often said that mathematics is "unreasonably" effective at applying to the natural world. This is philosophically puzzling, largely because pure mathematics seems to consist of a priori, necessary truths about acausal, eternally existing mathematical objects (numbers, sets, functions, etc.). It is very difficult to see what any of this has to do with the natural world. In this class we will investigate the philosophical puzzles of applied mathematics. Special attention will be paid to the so-called Field program and related projects for explaining the applicability of mathematics. Detailed case studies will be made of classical mechanics, quantum mechanics, and the arithmetization of syntax. 2-unit option is only for Philosophy PhD students beyond the second year.

Seminar on current logic research topics, cotaught by Johan van Benthem and Thomas Icard. Prerequisite: serious background in logic (at least 151 level). This course is repeatable.

The philosophy of social science is both descriptive and prescriptive. It describes the philosophical assumptions that form the basis of social inquiry and its practices, and it criticizes them to secure their ability to explain and/or predict social phenomena. This seminar will focus, primarily, on social scientific methodology. The main goal of the seminar is to clarify our answers to the question: should social scientific methodology be different from the methodology employed in the 'hard' sciences? To answer this question, first, we will focus on economic methodology. We will assess topics such as: the epistemic virtues of economic models, whether macroeconomic models need microfoundations, ceteris paribus clauses, randomized control trials, etc. For the second part of the seminar, we will focus on the epistemic value of ethnographic research methods in Anthropology, which is fundamentally different from any method used in the natural (hard) sciences. Although the use of ethnographies has become more popular in the last decades, philosophers of science have failed to focus on their epistemic import. Because of this, we will ponder on questions such as: what type of knowledge is produced by ethnographies? Is this knowledge scientific enough? If not, what is lacking? If yes, should ethnographies be used in other scientific domains?

Graduate Seminar. This course, based around a book manuscript with Chris Smeenk, will survey a range of philosophical issues connected to the four main pillars of the "Standard Model" of cosmology. The thread running through the term will be the following questions: How do background views about what science is, or should be, influence cosmologists' choices about what theoretical projects to pursue most vigorously, especially under conditions of limited empirical testing? And do we have reason to think that those background philosophical commitments are useful epistemic guides?

2 unit option only for Philosophy PhD students beyond the second year.

Graduate seminar. A perennial theme in cognitive science is the idea that the mind/brain can be studied at different levels of abstraction, leading to influential frameworks positing levels of analysis and of explanation. The aim of this seminar is to revisit this theme in light of new methods and tools, both theoretical and empirical. Topics will include formal and philosophical theories of (causal) abstraction, discussion of techniques for analyzing (deep) neural networks, and related ideas involving approximation, abstraction, emergence, criticality, and other themes. Note: Enrollment is limited and by application only. Please send an email to the instructors with a few words about your research areas and your interest in the seminar themes.