11 - 20 of 68 results for: PHIL ; Currently searching spring courses. You can expand your search to include all quarters

Major figures in early modern philosophy in epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of mind. Writings by Descartes, Leibniz, Hume, and Kant.

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.n(Not open to freshmen.)

We shall read some of the most important and difficult of Plato¿s `early¿ dialogues: the Charmides, parts of the Euthydemus, the Gorgias, the Hippias Minor, the Meno, and the Protagoras. Topics include: the nature of pleasure and its role in the good life, good luck and the good life, self-knowledge, the relation between knowledge and virtue, whether virtue can be taught, learning and recollection, rhetoric, the relations among the virtues, Socratic ignorance, and the Socratic method of the elenchus.

(Formerly 121/221.) Descartes's philosophical writings on rules for the direction of the mind, method, innate ideas and ideas of the senses, mind, God, eternal truths, and the material world.

(Graduate students register for 225.) The founding work of Kant's critical philosophy emphasizing his contributions to metaphysics and epistemology. His attempts to limit metaphysics to the objects of experience. Prerequisite: course dealing with systematic issues in metaphysics or epistemology, or with the history of modern philosophy.

Three day mini course on topics in Medieval Philosophy. This year's topic is "Introducing Ockham & His Razor: Mind & Metaphysics, Logic, Epistemology, & Ethics." Course runs June 2-4, 2017. Guest lectures by Peter King (Toronto), Elizabeth Karger (CNRS, Paris).n We begin with a general introduction to Ockham's place in the history of philosophy from Democritus to Descartes. Then we turn to Ockham's logic and his most popular work, the Summa logicae. In this connection we will discuss Ockham's distinction between absolute and connotative terms and his theory of supposition, a theory that corresponds roughly to modern reference theory. n On day two we take up Ockham's Epistemology, the distinction he drew between intuitive & abstractive cognition, his approach to problems of certainty and judgment, and his response to skeptical worries. In this connection we will discuss the razor in its application of sensible species. That afternoon our topic will be nominalist metaphysics & the razor as Ockham deploys the principle of parsimony to justify his denial of common natures and his rejection of some of the Aristotelian categories, such as motion and relation. More generally we see an approach to physics with minimal reliance on metaphysics.n Day three begins with philosophy of mind. Here we will see Ockham refusing to posit faculties of will and intellect distinct from the intellective soul itself, while admitting a distinction between the sensitive and intellective souls. The course will close with a discussion of Ockham's ethics and politics. In ethics we will consider the ground of the good and the connection of the virtues; in politics we will focus on property rights, a major source of controversy within the church.n Undergraduates are welcome to take the course, but must have the instructor's permission.

Approaches to effective computation: recursive functions, register machines, and Turing machines. Proof of their equivalence, discussion of Church's thesis. Elementary recursion theory. These techniques used to prove Gödel's incompleteness theorem for arithmetic, whose technical and philosophical repercussions are surveyed. Prerequisite: 151.