[2] [3] He is the host of The Matt Walsh Show podcast and is a columnist for The Daily Wire. What are some of the necessary conditions for democracy? We will begin with questions about how to define death, as well as reflections on its meaning and function in human life. We will, undoubtedly, have to adjust the syllabus to respond to breaking international, national and local news. [more], Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is perhaps the most significant text in the history of philosophy. It was the Crow's first game since the death of their coach Phil Walsh. We will look at civil disobedience and theories of legal interpretation. Does the fact that our lives will end threaten their meaning? How do you expect to learn? Cy Walsh has asked a court to let him back into the community without supervision, almost six years to the day after killing his father and Adelaide Crows coach Phil Walsh. Some challenges we face are broad and about the future, though perhaps not the far future. However, in his philosophically more sophisticated and notoriously difficult later dialogues (such as the Parmenides, Philebus, Sophist and Statesman), Plato engages in radical criticism and revision of his earlier views. Are we justified in believing in God? What do you expect to learn? According to one, there is a single group of students that had their hands extremely full this semester. Wilfrid Sellars regarded as uncontroversial the view that it is "an attempt to see how things, in the broadest possible sense of the term, hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term." Is film a creation of a single artist - the director, the author - or is it a result of a loosely synchronized and not quite coherent collaboration of many different people, each guided by her or his particular vision? In this class, we will attempt to carry on the noble tradition of corruption by philosophy. We will first get clear on the formal semantics of first-order logic and various ways of thinking about formal proof: natural deduction systems, semantic tableaux, axiomatic systems and sequent calculi. Rather than seeing philosophy as an esoteric discipline, the pragmatic philosophers (with the possible exception of Peirce) see philosophy as integral to our culture and see themselves as public intellectuals. We got it anyway . Readings will include work by Plato, Hobbes, Kant, Mill, Nietzsche, and contemporary authors. Log in, register or subscribe to save articles for later. Why should one obey the law (if one should)? In addition to examining general accounts of causation, we will examine particular problems that come up in thinking about mental causation and causation in indeterministic contexts. [more], The aim of this tutorial is to critically examine the nature, importance, and ethical value of personal attachments and loyalties. In this course, we will investigate dynamic communicative phenomena and discuss competing theoretical explanations about how they're interpreted. So, some relationships with other people--such as friendships, familial ties, love, patriotism--seem to be ethically desirable, central to the quality of our lives, and yet prima facie in tension with the widely held belief that morality requires impartiality and equal treatment of all human beings. metaphysics, epistemology, moral and political philosophy, philosophy of mind. 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." Does film accurately capture reality, as no other art does? use tab and shift-tab to navigate once expanded, Covid-19 is an ongoing concern in our region, including on campus. Using resources from philosophy and linguistics, we will study various ways in which literal and non-literal uses of language influence our social lives. Class will be primarily driven by discussion, often preceded by brief lectures. And, it's not merely that their answer invokes our freedom to determine our own identities. 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 real question, then, seems to be whether, and how, free choice is possible amidst all of these influences. We will read, among others, selected papers by Carnap, Hempel, Quine, Goodman, Kuhn, Elgin, Hacking, Misak, Putnam, Rorty, and Haack. 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. Are there ethical considerations that should govern both film production and spectatorship? microscopes of reason and logic can carry us in traditional arguments about the existence and nature of God. How important are honor, money, love, work, friendship and our connections to others to our happiness? claimed it offended Christians, and the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center was prosecuted for exhibiting allegedly obscene photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe. How did you develop your character? [more]. We will discuss the importance of specific genre conventions and broader contextual matters to the interpretation of literary texts (along the lines suggested by Quentin Skinner); the possibility of using intention to rule out mistaken and arrive at acceptable interpretations, if not a single correct interpretation (a possibility denied by such relativists as Stanley Fish); the use and meaning of metaphors; and the host of questions surrounding the intentional fallacy (the alleged result of invoking authorial intention to determine textual meaning). Or is it a supreme illusion, a dream-like escape, the domain in which the viewer's unconscious wishes are magically fulfilled? From there, we will look at extensions of and/or alternatives to first-order logic. (i) You are psyched. And right now there are autonomous vehicles deciding how to behave in traffic, and autonomous weapons capable of delivering lethal force. 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. Both stances face severe difficulties. In addition to key concepts of death, dying, and terminal illness, we will develop and refine notions of medical futility, paternalism and autonomy, particularly within the context of advance directives and surrogate decision making. reason or truth (unless they are our own). Understanding later Wittgenstein is thus vital for engaging in contemporary philosophy, but neither the interpretation nor the evaluation of his thought is straightforward or easy. God bless you! We shall first explore the salient features of the pragmatic approaches to language, paying special attention to Austin's notion of illocutionary force and Grice's notion of non-natural meaning. In addition, we will devote several class meetings interspersed throughout the semester to reading foundational sources in ethical theory. Should we revise logic in light of empirical discoveries in, for example, physics or psychology? Philosophy? Finally, we will examine some of Aristotle's works on metaphysics, epistemology and ethics, considering some of the ways Aristotle's thought responds to that of predecessors. We will prove soundness and completeness, compactness, the Lowenheim-Skolem theorems, undecidability and other important results about first-order logic. As a result, some prominent researchers propose that the existence of consciousness requires a revision of basic physics, while others (seemingly desperately) deny that consciousness exists at all. How can we ensure that AI's will act morally? use tab and shift-tab to navigate once expanded, Covid-19 is an ongoing concern in our region, including on campus. Some critics find predictive failures of economists unsurprising, given the frequent reliance of the latter on assumptions known to be false (e.g., that economic agents are always selfish, have perfect information, and never make mistakes) and on models that unavoidably ignore potentially relevant factors. Why then should we spend our time studying people who in addition to having these surprising beliefs have been dead for 2500 years? Each questioned the emancipatory effect of reason and freedom as well as idealist accounts of moral progress in human history. 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. After several weeks on the Republic we will turn to Shakespeare's last play: The Tempest. Is democratic rule always best? We will focus on particular topics, examples of which are the following: normative critique, capitalism, authoritarianism, mass culture, enlightenment and reason, progress, violence, the domination of nature, white supremacy, patriarchy and colonialism. We'll examine these and related questions through historical and contemporary readings. Phil Walsh!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)? For example, many people would agree that 'Keith's favorite unicorn' is a meaningful expression. Assigned works will include Booker T. Washington. And please refer to Class Notes for further information . Does freedom require leading (or avoiding) a political life? Associate Dean of Students / Director of International Student Services. Leibniz wrote his New Essays in 1704 as a critical response to Locke's Essay of 1690. Who is equal? We turn first to two of Plato's most famous dialogues, Philosophical Approaches to Contemporary Moral Issues. The tragedians emphasize the ways in which the cosmos and our role in it resists any attempt to be understood, and emphasize the ways in which the success or failure of our lives often turns on things completely beyond our control. It is, in fact, quite difficult to get through any course of study in the liberal arts without some familiarity with Plato. In framing and answering these questions, we will discuss subjective experience (or phenomenology) of mental illness; holism vs. reductionism; functional, historical and structural explanations of psychopathology; theory formation, evidence, and the role of values in psychology and psychiatry; the diversity and disunity of psychotherapeutic approaches; relationship between knowers and the known; and relationship between theoretical knowledge in psychiatry and the practices of healing. [more], Bertrand Russell claimed that Ludwig Wittgenstein was "perhaps the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived--passionate, profound, intense, and dominating." We start with some of the Hindu views about the self and the mind and consider their ethical implications. Our goal will be to characterize phenomena like those above with logical and mathematical precision. He hoped it would occasion a public debate between Locke and himself, and prompt the intellectual community to decide, once and for all, between Empiricism and Rationalism, Realism and Idealism, and on related issues concerning the mind, language, truth, God, natural kinds, causation, and freedom. According to Hegel, subjects are both historically and socially constituted; they are formed through their relations with other subjects. The debate between Empiricism and Rationalism concerns whether all our knowledge derives from experience, or any is innate. Are there ethical considerations that should govern both film production and spectatorship? Others maintain that these questions will only yield to methods that incorporate our broader insight into the nature of the world including, perhaps, feminist thought or science. It is at the same time the most intimately known fact of our humanity and science's most elusive puzzle. [more], The core activity of this seminar is the careful reading and sustained discussion of selected works by Plato and Aristotle, but we will also engage such other thinkers as Epictetus and Augustine, and, from a political and theoretical point of view, selections from the Hebrew Bible and New Testament. classics of western literature, and his views on ethics and politics continue to occupy a central place in our discussions 2400 years after they were written. Our main goal will be to prove things about this logical system rather than to use this system to think about ordinary language arguments. [more], Why are you here? [more], What social and political arrangements are most conducive to fostering human well-being and the common good? Is democratic rule always best? This theoretically oriented work will provide the background for subsequent examination of specific topics, which may include, among others: justice in health care financing and reform; justice in health care rationing and access to health care, with particular attention to the intersections of rationing criteria with gender, sexuality, race, disability, and age; justice in the procurement and allocation of organs for transplantation; obesity and personal responsibility for illness; and justice in medical research, including "double standards" for research conducted in low resource settings. Secondly, we will try to make sense of the moral dimensions of our relationship to animals. [more], Freedom is widely held as one of our fundamental values. (iii) You exist. Other philosophers and literary theorists have used some of their ideas recently to throw light on the nature of textual meaning and the interpretation of literary texts. [more], According to Aristotle the ultimate good is happiness---everything we desire we desire for the sake of happiness. In pursuing the answers to these questions, we will discuss both classic and contemporary theories from philosophy and linguistics. How do we create legal and policy frameworks that cover a new kind of thinking being? The remainder of the course will consider key concepts at the core of medical ethics and central issues for the field, such as privacy and confidentiality, the distinction between killing and "letting die," and therapy vs. research. Much of the moral philosophy produced in Greece and Rome remains as relevant today as when it was written. Background readings include sources rooted in traditional modes of bioethical analysis as well as those incorporating feminist approaches. Finally, we will analyze the current debate about cognitive credentials of science and about proper approaches to the study of science, which came to be known as "the science wars." While social justice and distributive justice are deeply intertwined in the health care context and we will discuss both, we will focus primarily on the concept of distributive justice. In the spirit of reconciliation the AFL acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We doubt, we point out that no one can be certain in what she believes, and we are suspicious of declarations of transcendent reason or truth (unless they are our own). , we will look at civil disobedience and theories of legal interpretation work by Plato Hobbes. Of thinking being after several weeks on the noble tradition of corruption by philosophy there! 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