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401 - 410 of 488 results for: all courses

PHIL 111: Aristotle's Logic (PHIL 211)

Last offered: Winter 2016 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum

PHIL 113: Hellenistic Philosophy (PHIL 213)

Epicureans, skeptics, and stoics on epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, and psychology.
Last offered: Winter 2008 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum

PHIL 117: Descartes (PHIL 217)

(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.
Last offered: Spring 2017 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum

PHIL 120: Leibniz (PHIL 220)

A polymath, Leibniz invented the calculus independently of Newton and made major contributions to virtually every science, including logic and computer science. In this course, we investigate Leibniz's philosophical system and its metaphysics: that God created the best of all possible worlds; that humans freely choose actions that are nevertheless pre-established; that space and time are idealizations and `imaginary'; and that true, fundamental reality consists of minds.
Last offered: Winter 2018 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum

PHIL 125: Kant's First Critique (PHIL 225)

(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.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, GER:DB-Hum

PHIL 134: Phenomenology and Intersubjectivity (PHIL 234)

(Graduate students register for 234.) Readings from Husserl, Stein, Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty on subjects related to awareness of others. Topics include solipsism, collective experience, empathy, and objectification of the other.
Last offered: Autumn 2016 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum

PHIL 135: Existentialism (PHIL 235)

Focus is on the existentialist preoccupation with human freedom. What constitutes authentic individuality? What is one's relation to the divine? How can one live a meaningful life? What is the significance of death? A rethinking of the traditional problem of freedom and determinism in readings from Rousseau, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, and the extension of these ideas by Sartre, Beauvoir, and Camus, including their social and political consequences in light of 20th-century fascism and feminism.
Last offered: Spring 2014 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-ER

PHIL 137: Wittgenstein (PHIL 237)

(Graduate students register for 237.) An exploration of Wittgenstein's changing views about meaning, mind, knowledge, and the nature of philosophical perplexity and philosophical insight, focusing on the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations.
Last offered: Autumn 2015 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

PHIL 163: Significant Figures in Philosophy of Science: Einstein (PHIL 263)

(Graduate students register for 263.)nThe influences of Hertz, Boltzmann, Mach and Planck on the development of Einstein's philosophical views regarding the scope and limits of physical theory. The distinction between principle theories and constructive theories from Poincaré and Lorentz, to Einstein. The impact of special and general relativity on logical empiricism. How Einstein's views changed in response to two core challenges, the advent of quantum mechanics and his three-decades long failure to extend general relativity to a "theory of the total field". We conclude by considering the lasting impact of Einstein's philosophical views, and whether they can be assimilated to contemporary currents in philosophy of science.nnPREREQUISITES: No detailed knowledge of physics or mathematics is presumed. Some background in philosophy, natural science or mathematics will be helpful. Students will benefit from possession of a modicum of mathematical maturity (roughly equivalent to a familiarity with elementary single-variable calculus or the metatheory of first-order logic).
Last offered: Spring 2018 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum

PHIL 165: Philosophy of Physics: Space, Time and Motion (PHIL 265)

Graduate students register for 265. The problem of absolute vs. relative motion from Descartes, Newton and Leibniz to Einstein and beyond. The principle of relativity: space and time to space-time. Mach¿s critique of Newton, his agenda to relativize inertia and its influence on Einstein in formulating the general theory of relativity. Space-time substantivalism and relationalism. The seeming conflict of determinism and general covariance in Einstein¿s Lochbetrachtung. ¿Background independence¿ as a requirement for fundamental physical theory.nNOTE: Phil 165/265 alternates topics yearly between "Philosophical Issues in Quantum Mechanics" and "Philosophical Problems of Space, Time and Motion". The course may be repeated with a different subject matter. nnIn Winter 2017-18, the subject is ""Philosophical Issues in QM"nnI. TOPICS: After introducing a simplified version of Dirac's 'bra-ket' vector space formalism for the quantum state (a.k.a. function), the first third of the term is a historical overview of Heisenberg's uncertainty relations, wave-particle duality, the problem of quantum measurement, and the non-classical nature of spin. We survey the treatment of these issues within Bohr's doctrine of complementarity and the so-called Copenhagen interpretation of QM. We review Einstein's several arguments for the incompleteness of QM, leading up to the famous EPR (Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen) paper of 1935, the resulting issue of quantum entanglement as discussed by Einstein and Schrödinger, and the complexities of Bohr's response to EPR. In the second third of the term, we examine a well-known 'no go' theorem on EPR-type experimental set-ups stemming from Bell in the 1960s, according to which no hidden variables theory satisfying a certain locality condition (apparently assumed by EPR) can reproduce all the predictions of QM. In the last third, we survey current variations of, or interpretive options for, standard QM: Bohmian mechanics (a.k.a. pilot wave theory), spontaneous collapse theories, and Everett's relative-state interpretation with its many worlds/ many minds variants. We end by scrutinizing the recent decoherence program (a.k.a.localization induced by the scattering of environmental particles) that purports to explain the quantum-to-classical transition, i.e., the emergence of the world of classical physics and macroscopic objects and properties from quantum physics. We consider whether decoherence is justifiably viewed as solving the quantum measurement problem. nnII. PREREQUISITES: No detailed knowledge of quantum physics or advanced mathematics is presumed. Some background in philosophy, natural science or mathematics will be helpful. Students will benefit from possession of a modicum of mathematical maturity (roughly equivalent to a familiarity with elementary single-variable calculus or the metatheory of first-order logic).
Terms: Win | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-SMA | Repeatable for credit
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