printer friendly pagePHIL 189: Examples of Free Will (PHIL 289)
Examples drawn from three domains: choice, computation, and conflict of norms. Conceptually, a distinction is made between examples that are predictable and those that are not, but skepticism about making a sharp distinction between determinism and indeterminism is defended.
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
PHIL 193H: The Art of the Movies: Story, Drama, and Image
A philosophical study of how movies coordinate and transform elements they borrow from older arts of literary narrative, live theater, and graphic illustration. Examples from the career of Alfred Hitchcock.
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
PHIL 194A: Rationality Over Time
Our beliefs and intentions seem to be subject to norms of rationality that enjoin consistency and coherence at a given time. Are there also norms of rationality that concern the relations among and changes in our beliefs and intentions over time? What might such norms of rationality over time be, how might we defend them (or argue that they are not defensible), how are they related to norms of rationality at a time, and how does our approach to these rationality norms affect our overall understanding of the kind of thinkers and actors we are? Our focus will be primarily on potential norms of practical rationality concerning intention, but we will also consider potential norms of theoretical rationality concerning belief. We will proceed by studying contemporary work on these issues, including Richard Holton's Willing, Wanting, Waiting.
PHIL 194B: Reason and Passion
An influential strand of the Western philosophical tradition maintains that human beings are composites of two motivational sources: reason and passion (sometimes called 'feeling,' or 'emotion'). What are the philosophical reasons for positing this division? If there is such a division, how are we to conceive of passion? In what ways is it like and/or unlike reason? In what ways does it interact and/or fail to interact with reason? And how are both sources related to the self as a whole? We will explore these questions by drawing on both classical and contemporary readings.
PHIL 194C: Time and Free Will
Classic and contemporary reading on free will, with special attention to the consequence argument for incompatibilism, and issues involving causation and time.
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
PHIL 194D: Capstone Seminar: Analyticity
Survey of philosophical work on analyticity. We will start with some of the classic works on the topic, including papers by Frege, Russell and Quine. Next, we'll look at the cutting edge of research on analyticity, including work by Amie Thomasson, Agustín Rayo, and Paul Boghossian.
Instructors:
Donaldson, T. (PI)
PHIL 194G: Philosophical Issues in Language
PHIL 194N: Philosophical Issues in Cognitive Science
Philosophers generally do not perform systematic empirical observations or construct computational models. But philosophy remains important to cognitive science because it deals with fundamental issues that underlie the experimental and computational approach to mind. Abstract questions such as the nature of representation and computation. Relation of mind and body and methodological questions such as the nature of explanations found in cognitive science. Normative questions about how people should think as well as with descriptive ones about how they do. In addition to the theoretical goal of understanding human thinking, cognitive science can have the practical goal of improving it, which requires normative reflection on what we want thinking to be. Philosophy of mind does not have a distinct method, but should share with the best theoretical work in other fields a concern with empirical results.
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
PHIL 194R: Epistemic Paradoxes
Paradoxes that arise from concepts of knowledge and rational belief, such as the skeptical paradox, the preface paradox, and Moore¿s paradox. Can one lose knowledge without forgetting anything? Can one change one's mind in a reasonable way without gaining new evidence?
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
PHIL 194T: Practical Reason
Contemporary research on practical reason, practical rationality, and reasons for action. Enrollment limited to 12. Priority given to undergraduate Philosophy majors.
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