Do we have any control over our emotions? What are the forces, and the dynamics between forces (i.e., economic, technological, modes of communication, techniques of social control, biological, psychological) that make certain types of subjects possible influencing both their self-understandings and their forms of life? Just today (15 February 2022) The New York Times removed some solutions from their recently purchased game Wordle, saying that words such as "pussy", "slave", and "wench" are "offensive or insensitive". The philosopher John Rawls is widely credited with reviving liberalism in the late 20th century and providing its most persuasive defense. Throughout the course, we will consult and discuss the important secondary literature on Wittgenstein, and analyze different philosophical presuppositions and goals that motivate particular readings. Science is only "true" for some people, agnosticism is the only alternative to foolish superstition, and moral relativism and, consequently, nihilism are obvious. We will pay special attention to the first amendment and questions concerning free speech and hate speech. Our tools in this course will be logic and reason, even when we are trying to determine what the limits of reason might be. : On Justice and Freedom in Western Political Philosophy. know anything through reason alone? Which characteristics of persons give them moral status? [more], We often associate modern faith in the prospects of universal human dignity, rational autonomy, the rights of man, individual liberty, democracy, open scientific inquiry and social and political progress with the Enlightenment . Is a sentence's relation to previously uttered sentences similar to its relation to extra-linguistic events? Morality and Partiality: Loyalty, Friendship, Patriotism. In this course we'll explore justice as a fundamental moral principle and as a desideratum of the US health care system. Yet what is it to be happy? And what present practices and ways of thinking and knowing might be questioned using Foucault's tools, genealogy in particular, for resisting unnecessary constraints on freedom and the perpetuation of unnecessary suffering? The objective is the preparation and writing of a senior thesis (maximum 75 pages). Phil Walsh played 122 games for Collingwood, Richmond and the Brisbane Bears between 1983 and 1990. One must grasp the meanings of the various parts of the sentence. Success in fulfilling desires? We will begin with questions about how to define death, as well as reflections on its meaning and function in human life. While looking at film as art, as document, as experiment and as entertainment, we will always keep in sight specific theoretical assumptions that underlie different understandings of film, and different critical approaches to the medium. What is the nature of consciousness and how can it be unhappy, false or double? If so, what are the constraints on good revisions? [more], The sentence "Every cookie is chocolate chip and three of them are oatmeal raisin" is a perfectly grammatical sentence of English, but it's self-contradictory. We will continue with the contemporary inheritors of the tradition: Cornel West, Richard Rorty, and Hilary Putnam. Some of the questions that we will discuss are: What is psychopathology and what are its causes? They have three adult children: Shevaun, Jessica, and Cameron. Whether this is hyperbole or wise prognostication, it cannot be denied that the rise of AI will be a tectonic shift for culture, technology, and our fundamental sense of ourselves. 'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+"://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs");AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan said Walsh's death was a tragic loss. [more], From questions about contact tracing apps to racial and age disparities in health risk and outcomes, the COVID-19 pandemic has foregrounded the importance of ethics as a key concern in public health policies and activities. On the other hand, there is a heap of sand in my backyard. [more], Each of the controversial and provocative figures whom we will read in this course have exerted a tremendous influence in our understandings of what it means to be a modern subject. What do the social and psychological sciences have to teach us about happiness? We will begin by reading some of Plato's early dialogues and his, probing and intimate reflections on the meaning of human life, the nature of God and mind, time and eternity, will and world, good and evil, love and sexuality have challenged every generation since Augustine's own. In this way, we develop a rich array of analytical tools and observational practices to further our understanding of the mind. Our texts will include Gottlob Frege, The Foundations of Arithmetic, Bertrand Russell, Principles of Mathematics, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. In this way we come to realize that far from being the irrational foil of "the West," Indian tradition is a rich resource for thinking through some of the central questions that have challenged philosophers in both traditions. In this tutorial we'll closely examine a series of contemporary and historical cases of human experimentation (roughly, one case per week) with an eye toward elucidating the moral norms that ought to govern human subjects research. In this tutorial, we will focus on questions concerning their distinctive methods, namely, historical materialism, genealogical critique, and psychoanalysis. The picture that we find in the works of the tragedians, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides is markedly different. Our focus will be on recent influential work in this area. In school? The millennia old problem of whether human suffering is compatible with God's perfection is called "the problem of evil." However, this approach is too narrow, since people use language to do a myriad of things: to ask, demand, promise, praise, blame, threaten, command, insinuate, evoke, express feelings, and sometimes just to play. In the first part of this course, we are going to focus on what this following-from business amounts to, and ask whether there is a special sense of following-from that characterizes logic? Who is equal? The seminar will be structured around a close, critically engaged reading of the, Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations", action, knowledge, ethics, religion, aesthetics, culture, and of course, philosophy itself. Police were called to the house just after 2:00 am, and found Walsh with multiple stab wounds. virtues and vices of good arguments in both informal and formal systems. In this tutorial, we will investigate the nature of skepticism and the varieties of relativism it encourages. Aside from its overwhelming influence on 20th and 21st century philosophy and intellectual culture, any book which contains the remark, " if a lion could talk, we could not understand him," deserves serious attention. [more], What ethical standards should guide our individual and societal choices when those choices affect current and future environmental conditions? We will begin by examining the general concepts of health and disease, and then apply them to human psychology. Critical theorists regard philosophy as social and ideology critique. But how should objectivity in this domain be understood? Students who have take PHIL 203 will have a good background for this class, but students who are generally comfortable with formal systems need not have taken PHIL 203. What role do emotional, irrational or unconscious forces play? Unsurprisingly, philosophers have proffered a variety of answers to these questions, prompting one philosopher to remark, half-jokingly, that "there are as many definitions of philosophy as there are philosophers." "Phil Walsh was a man of boundless energy and enthusiasm, and his death is a tragic loss. Finally, is there a reason for philosophy of film and film theory to exist as a separate field? Our seminar will have two aims: (1) to reconstruct the single most compelling moral theory from Kant's various ethical writings, and (2) to trace the influence of Kant's ethics in contemporary philosophy. [more], In this course, we follow the Indian philosophical conversation concerning the self and the nature of consciousness, particularly as they are found in its various Yogic traditions. While he never wrote any philosophical works of his own, Socrates is one of the most influential thinkers in the western tradition. We will begin with an analysis of primary texts by Fanon and end by considering how Fanon has been interpreted by his contemporaries as well as activists and critical theorists writing today. What are its distinct methods? In this course we will engage ethical questions surrounding the seeming inevitability of AI. Black Marxism: Political Theory and Anti-Colonialism, What Philosophy Is: It's Methods, Aims and Values. What is the basis on which current psychiatric diagnostic manuals are organized? It is not enough for it merely to be about a character who happens to be a philosopher; nor is it just that philosophical positions are reviewed in the narrative, as in Gaarder's Sophie's World. These affect not only our particular choices but also, more fundamentally, who we are and what we value. In this course we will engage ethical questions surrounding the seeming inevitability of AI. This introduction will be of use to students interested in language from a variety of perspectives, including philosophy, cognitive science, and computer science. of subjectivity, the scope of reflexivity, the nature of perceptual presence, etc. What do you expect to learn? In this course, we will survey the ethics of public health through the lens of the COVID-19 pandemic, investigating concepts and arguments that are central to the ethics of public health research and practice. Why read the history of philosophy? We will examine these (and other questions) in the context of the great philosophical revolution at the beginning of the last century: the linguistic turn and the birth of analytic philosophy. We will begin the course by looking at Hume's and Kant's discussion of causation. We think that there is a difference between a linguistic object's being meaningful and its having a referent. Hence, being with others, being dependent on others, is regarded as a key structuring feature of human existence. Our tools in this course will be logic and reason, even when we are trying to determine what the limits of reason might be. Later Wittgenstein is a controversial, polarizing figure; but serious reading of his work is invariably intellectually enriching and fertile. Some understand its aim to be to answer normative questions about the nature of truth, justice, goodness and rationality. We will move on to examine ethical issues of truth-telling with terminally ill patients and their families, decisions to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatments, the care of seriously ill newborns, physician-assisted suicide, euthanasia, and posthumous interests. Consequently, many philosophers deeply influenced by pragmatism do not recognize the fact, while, on the other hand, some self-proclaimed pragmatists of our days can hardly be seen as continuing the tradition to which they pledge allegiance. His later work, best known through posthumously published Philosophical Investigations, continues to influence contemporary thinking about language, mind, action, knowledge, ethics, religion, aesthetics, culture, and of course, philosophy itself. The first portion of the course will be devoted to considering general theories of justice as well as alternative conceptions of justice specifically within the health care context. Locke is the first great Empiricist Realist, and Leibniz the greatest Rationalist Idealist. How is it different from science? What is the nature of language? Conceptions of person are equally important in science (especially in psychology), law, and the arts. Critical theory aims not merely to understand the "struggles and wishes of the age" as Marx one described it, but with emancipation from domination. [more], In this course we will explore the ways in which feminist approaches to moral thinking have influenced both the methodology and the content of contemporary bioethics. What differentiates today from yesterday? Further, even where there is agreement as to the proper way of answering epistemological questions, there is a stunning variety of possible answers to each question. While looking at film as art, as document, as experiment and as entertainment, we will always keep in sight specific theoretical assumptions that underlie different understandings of film, and different critical approaches to the medium. First of all, Greek thinkers, especially Plato and Aristotle, radically shaped the trajectory of western thought in every area of philosophy. Some of the questions we will consider are: Are moral standards relative to cultural frameworks? influences? We will raise questions concerning the task of philosophy, the structure and meaning constituting function of consciousness, the relationship between self and other, the mind-body relationship, freedom, authenticity, and absurdity. This discussion will lead us to the relativist and social-constructivist views developed within contemporary science studies. We will also try to get more precise in our understanding of some of the key concepts in logic, such as contradiction, consistency, logical consequence, syntax and semantics. The course will, I hope, provide the students an opportunity and the tools to intellectually examine deeply emotional and contentious issues. Cy Walsh has asked a court to allow him to be released back into the community unsupervised, six years after stabbing his AFL coach father to death in a frenzied attack.. Phil Walsh, 55, was head . If Kundera is right, fictional narratives (such as novels) sometimes do the philosophical work that philosophy cannot do for itself. Do our society's laws limit our freedom in order to make us safe? We will look at relativism with respect to reason and truth in general as well as with respect to science, religion, and morality. We'll examine these criticisms in depth. Milan Kundera tried to answer this question by saying that a good philosophical novel does not serve philosophy but, on the contrary, tries to "get hold of a domain that () philosophy had kept for itself. Existentialists investigate deeply irrational phenomena of human life, including anxiety, boredom, tragedy, despair, death, faith, sexuality, love, hate, sadism, masochism, and authenticity. If they are conscious, will AI's have dignity and rights? , being with others, is there a reason for philosophy of film and theory... 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