281 - 290 of 317 results for: PHIL

Both within academic philosophy, but also in the broader culture, philosophy is often criticized as being a pointless enterprise given the successes of modern science. Some philosophers respond, explicitly or implicitly, to such criticisms by arguing that philosophy can be, or at least their philosophical methodology and theories are, closely allied to the scientific method or to scientific results. They often call themselves naturalists, physicalists, or materialists. Their opponents argue, for at least some domains, that attempts to do philosophy in this vein fail. Such opponents are sometimes labelled non-naturalists. We will attempt to make sense of the various methodological and substantive issues supposedly at stake in these debates and consider the arguments for and against various competing approaches to these matters. This a graduate seminar open only to Philosophy PhD students. The 2 unit option is only for Philosophy PhD students beyond the second year. Maybe repeated for credit.

2 unit option for Philosophy PhD students beyond the second year. May be repeated for credit.

Graduate seminar. The 2-unit option is only allowed for Philosophy PhD students who are beyond the second year. This course will examine the interpretations and applications of the principle of parsimony (aka "Ockham's Razor") in science and in philosophy.

Graduate seminar. Fitness, natural selection, and common ancestry are well-known and central topics in Darwin's theory of evolution and in the twentieth- and twenty-first-century theories that grew out of it, but many other important topics are addressed in evolutionary biology that raise interesting philosophical questions. In this seminar, we will also discuss altruism, intragenomic conflict, drift, the randomness of mutation, gradualism, taxonomy, race, phylogenetic inference, and optimality models. These biological topics will be brought into contact with numerous philosophical ideas - operationalism, reductionism, conventionalism, null hypotheses and default reasoning, instrumentalism versus realism, likelihoods versus probabilities, model selection, essentialism, falsifiability, parsimony, the principle of the common cause, comparisons of causal power, indeterminism, sensitivity to initial conditions, and the knowability of the past. The seminar will be built around my recently completed book, The Philosophy of Evolutionary Theory, which Cambridge University Press will publish in March 2024, along with other readings. The 2 unit option is only allowed for Philosophy PhD students who are beyond the second year.

Graduate seminar.

Graduate Seminar. 2-unit option only for Philosophy PhDs beyond their second year. In metaphor we think and talk about two things at once: two different subject matters are mingled to rich and unpredictable effect. A close critical study of the main modern accounts of metaphor's nature and interest, drawing on the work of writers, linguists, philosophers, and literary critics. Attention to how understanding, appreciation, and pleasure connect with one another in the experience of metaphor. Consideration of the possibility that metaphor or something very like it occurs in nonverbal media: gesture, dance, painting, music.

Topic: The Paradox of Deontology and Adventures in Non-Consequentialist Ethics. Grad seminar. 2 unit option only for Philosophy PhDs beyond the second year.

Grad seminar. 2 unit option only for Philosophy PhDs beyond the second year.

The 2-unit option is only for Philosophy PhD students who are beyond the second year.