91 - 100 of 317 results for: PHIL

This class is a broad survey of the philosophy of logic. Topics to be covered include: the nature of logical consequence, logical constants, quantification and generality, second-order logic, substitutional quantification, the law of excluded middle, the law of non-contradiction, the liar paradox, logical pluralism, logical inferentialism, and logical conventionalism.Successful completion of PHIL 151 is a prerequisite for taking this class. And successful completion of PHIL 152 is strongly recommended.

Science is phenomenally successful at predicting and explaining the world we live in including our own biology. Without the technological advances brought about by science, our lives would be radically different: no electricity, no cars, no smart phones, no plastics, no arthroscopic surgery, no antibiotics, no GPS, and on and on. Science tells us what the fundamental structure of reality is like: space and time, the soup of fundamental particles occupying it and composing us, and the fundamental forces that govern their behavior. Many suspect that the world the sciences show us leaves no space for God(s), and maybe doesn't leave much space for things like morality or free will either. But does science really succeed in all of these ways or only in some of them? When it succeeds, what accounts for its success? What does it take for a way of investigating the world to count as scientific?

Graduate students register for 261C. In this seminar we look into what makes a good explanation through three complementary perspectives. Philosophy attempts to define the normative criteria that make a scientific theory explanatory. Cognitive science looks into the criteria implicit in our common sense choices of explanations. Explainable AI tries to operationalize these principles into protocols for rendering black-box models interpretable. We look into how the normative criteria of philosophers inform our cognitive theories, and how both provide perspective into the goals and methods of XAI.

Prerequisite: PHIL150 or consent of instructor. This is a general overview of the philosophy of mathematics, focusing on the nature of mathematical truth and knowledge, the metaphysics of mathematical objects, and issues arising from mathematical practice. Topics to be discussed will include logicism, intuitionism, formalism, Goedel's incompleteness theorem, platonism, nominalism, fictionalism, structuralism, the nature of mathematical rigor, the role of diagrams in mathematics, and mathematical beauty.

Graduate students register for 264. Scientific realism is the view that we should think that the sciences basically get it right about the fundamental structure of reality: there really are electrons out there as part of objective reality. Various forms of antirealism question various dimensions of the realist position. Some of those who question strong forms of realism are uncomfortable with the label antirealism for their own positions. We will attempt to make sense of the various positions, arguments, and methodological and substantive issues supposedly at stake in these debates. Instructor Permission Required. Prerequisites: PHIL 60, PHIL 80, PHIL 150, and one course in contemporary theoretical philosophy ( PHIL 180 to PHIL 189); or equivalent courses.

Graduate students register for 265. The topic for 25-26 is Philosophical Issues in Quantum Mechanics.

How can we explain the mind? With approaches ranging from computational models to cellular-level characterizations of neural responses to the characterization of behavior, neuroscience aims to explain how we see, think, decide, and even feel. While these approaches have been highly successful in answering some kinds of questions, they have resulted in surprisingly little progress in others. We'll look at the relationships between the neuroscientific enterprise, philosophical investigations of the nature of the mind, and our everyday experiences as creatures with minds. Prerequisite: PHIL 80. By application; please write a paragraph about why you want to be in the class and your background, including classes or research experience in neuroscience/biology/psychology. Send this to the instructor at rosacao@stanford.edu including the course number in the subject line.

This course will explore important topics in Darwin's theory of evolution and in the twentieth- and twenty-first-century theories that grew out of it. These topics include fitness, adaptation, altruism, intragenomic conflict, units of selection, genetic drift, the randomness of mutation, gradualism, common ancestry, taxonomy, race, phylogenetic inference, and optimality models. The course will bring these and other biological topics 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 course will be built around my 2024 book, The Philosophy of Evolutionary Theory, published by Cambridge University Press; there will also be other readings. PREREQUISITES:  A course in philosophy of science, epistemology, or evolutionary biology. Grads enroll in 267E. Undergrads enroll in 167E.

Ethical theories are in the business of telling us which actions are right and which are wrong. This course surveys important questions raised by the project of ethical theorizing, such as what counts as an objection to a moral theory, which moral theory is best, and whether we should expect to successfully theorize morality in the first place. Some background in moral philosophy will be assumed. Undergraduates who have not taken PHIL 2 should get permission from the instructor to enroll. Graduate students should enroll in PHIL 270.