Among the questions that we will address: What is justice? When, if ever, is paternalistic interference by the state into the lives of its citizens justified? as resources to be harvested, as testing grounds for science, and as religious sacrifice. Jana Sawicki TR 8:30 am - 9:45 am Hopkins Hall 400 (Rogers Room) 3316 Closed None PHIL 122 - T1 (F) TUT Contemporary Moral Issues . How have you already been taught the academic and civic virtues? know anything through reason alone? In this way, we develop a rich array of analytical tools and observational practices to further our understanding of the mind. The abstract philosophical question before us is, what are animals such that they can be all these things? Right? How should moral equality be understood, and what is its foundation? Its central question--What is film?--has been approached and framed in many different ways; naturally, the answers to that question, and the theoretical assumptions that underlie the answers, differ as well. self-mastery, succeeding in worthwhile projects, cultivating relationships, living morally, developing spiritually)? Dean's Office. We will examine well-known philosophical arguments for and against the existence of God (including the ontological argument, the cosmological argument, the teleological argument, the argument from religious experience, and the argument from evil). The course will begin with the "received view" of science, advanced by logical empiricists, which assumes the objectivity and the rationality of science and argues that induction is the main scientific method. In fact, Socrates seems to have been thought of as a kind of intellectual saint in the Hellenistic world. This introduction to philosophy will see how far the microscopes of reason and logic can carry us in traditional arguments about the existence and nature of God. Rings of harmony surround you. We conclude by considering some of the later Hindu holistic views of the self as responses to the Buddhist critique. Just today (15 February 2022). At Williams College a mural was removed from The Log and Herman Rosse's painting "Carnival of Life" was removed from the '62 Center. We will also read more recent work by Foucault inspired scholars on topics such as the biopolitics of gender, the genealogy of terrorism, the informational person (how we become our data), and neoliberal subjects. Furthermore, philosophers have continued to revisit the existential questions vividly raised by Greek tragedy. The thoughts that Aristotle expresses in these books were instrumental in setting an intellectual agenda that dominated western thought through the Middle Ages and provided the backdrop against which the modern philosophical tradition arose. [more], This course will explore the themes of alienation, fetishism, ideology, dialectic, sociality, and freedom in the philosophical writings of G.W.F. This tutorial will bring to life the debate between Locke and Leibniz, and enable students to reach their own conclusions about Empiricism vs. Rationalism, Realism vs. Idealism, and related issues. Or can meaning be allocated only to entire sets of beliefs? That would be really worrisome. [more], This course is an introduction to philosophy through three major themes: The nature of the universe, the existence of gods, and the mind/body problem. nature and origins of the mother-child bond, and to replace--or to let us think we can replace--chance with choice." We will prove soundness and completeness, compactness, the Lowenheim-Skolem theorems, undecidability and other important results about first-order logic. Our aim will be to identify and evaluate the strongest version of each argument. We will examine the wager in its original home of Pascal's Pensees, and look at William James' related article, "The Will to Believe." Much of the moral philosophy produced in Greece and Rome remains as relevant today as when it was written. We will focus our study on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and Marx's early writings. Perhaps, then, economics is not primarily a predictive science, but instead a descriptive, historical, and/or mathematical one. public health policies and activities. The goals of this course are to improve the critical thinking of the students, to introduce them to sentential and predicate logic, to familiarize them with enough formal logic to enable them to read some of the great works of philosophy, which use formal logic (such as Wittgenstein's Tractatus), and to examine some of the connections between logic and philosophy. Assigned works will include Booker T. Washington, Industrial Education, W.E.B. How does film generate meaning? College: will be updated: University: will be updated: High Education: Not Available: Degree: Can we know anything through reason alone? Perhaps, then, economics is not primarily a predictive science, but instead a descriptive, historical, and/or mathematical one. My daughter removes one grain of sand. To properly address a number of interrelated questions concerning philosophy in literature and film, and philosophical problems of meaning, interpretation and evaluation of narrative fiction, we will discuss both narrative works of art and theoretical approaches to their analysis. [more], In this course we will study Aristotle's Metaphysics concentrating of books gamma-theta. Possible additional topics would include: modal logic, the theory of counterfactuals, alternative representations of conditionals, the use of logic in the foundations of arithmetic and Godel's Incompleteness theorems. this course we'll explore justice as a fundamental moral principle and as a desideratum of the US health care system. The College Mission Statement says that "Williams seeks to provide the finest possible liberal arts education by nurturing in students the academic and civic virtues, and their related traits of character." Leibniz wrote his New Essays in 1704 as a critical response to Locke's Essay of 1690. In this way, we come to appreciate the importance of considering the biology on which mental processes are based and the light that this approach throws on the nature of consciousness. We will consider the ways in which narrative fiction presents and engages its audience in philosophical reflections on personal identity, nature of the self, interpersonal relationships, memory, time, human existence, freedom, and the meaning in life. Each identified the limits, whether historical or innate, of our human capacity to know ourselves and our world, and to live harmoniously with others. We will then turn to some specific social forms in the second unit, and ask whether they promote or preclude our freedom. Rorty challenged the very concept of morality and questioned all moral theory. If time permits, we may also look at how the figure of Socrates has been thought about in the works of more modern thinkers. Science is only "true" for some people, agnosticism is the only alternative to foolish superstition, and moral relativism and, consequently, nihilism are obvious. this class, we will attempt to carry on the noble tradition of corruption by philosophy. [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. 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". Of particular interest will be the extent to which discourse dynamics are built into the meanings of linguistic expressions vs. the extent to which they're consequences of our rational cognition. This course will offer a selective overview of the debates that characterized philosophy of film since the early 20th century. View Phil Walsh's email address (p*****@kw***.com) and phone number. In contrast with this interpretive tendency, this tutorial will focus on Hume's" science of human nature"--his overall philosophical project in Treatise--and cultivate the discussion of different philosophical issues and arguments in light of this general aim of the work as a whole. [more], No thinker has done more to shape the Western intellectual tradition than Augustine (354-430 CE), and no book displays Augustine's dynamic vision of reality more compellingly than the Confessions. Police were called to the house just after 2:00 am, and found Walsh with multiple stab wounds. We will try to determine what is the scope and nature of an adequate theory of emotions, what are the desiderata for such a theory, and what should count as evidence in its favor. Associate Dean of Students / Director of International Student Services. How do I know that I am one? We will begin with Aristotle's Poetics and will continue with Hume's Of Tragedy, Hegel's various writings on tragedy, and Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy. The real question, then, seems to be whether, and how, free choice is possible amidst all of these influences. Are we legitimately bound by a social contract? Authors will include Plato, Anselm, Aquinas, Pascal, Paley, Hume, Kant, Kierkegaard, and several contemporary philosophers. 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. What do you expect to learn? even further and will concentrate primarily on meaning, reference and truth. Tutorial partners will have an opportunity to spend the end of the semester working on a special topic of their choosing including, for instance, consciousness and free will, pain and anesthesia, consciousness and artificial intelligence, or disorders of consciousness. What are some of the necessary conditions for democracy? Special attention will be given to the philosophical foundations of cognitive science, representation and computation in symbolic and connectionist architectures, concept acquisition, problem solving, perception, language, semantics, reasoning, and artificial intelligence. You will see that if the barber does not shave himself, then by condition (a) he does shave himself. Right? (There will be optional, supplementary opportunity to engage with the Latin text for interested students with some facility with Latin.) Walsh, 55, died from multiple stab wounds at the scene despite attempts by ambulance officers to revive him. We'll attempt to answer this question by examining recent philosophical work on the nature of free will and responsibility. The picture that we find in the works of the tragedians, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides is markedly different. Finally, we will consider how the concept of freedom is applied in contemporary social contexts, such as speech, religion, voting, and sexuality and gender. 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. We will thus be led to discuss some of the concepts common to epistemology, metaphysics and ethics: reason, justification, objectivity, understanding, reality and truth. in environmental ethics. Or can meaning be allocated only to entire sets of beliefs? What are some of the necessary conditions for democracy? use tab and shift-tab to navigate once expanded, Covid-19 is an ongoing concern in our region, including on campus. We will examine these and related issues by looking in depth at contemporary defenses of consequentialist, deontological, and contractualist theories. The millennia old problem of whether human suffering is compatible with God's perfection is called "the problem of evil." We will examine the Pan-African writings of: Cedric Robinson (Black Marxism); Walter Rodney (How Capitalism Underdeveloped Africa), Eric Williams (Capitalism and Slavery; From Columbus to Castro); Frantz Fanon (The Wretched of the Earth); Malcolm X (Malcolm X Speaks); Amilcar Cabral (Resistance and Decolonization; Unity and Struggle); C. L. R. James (The Black Jacobins). 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. In this tutorial we will read philosophical texts from a range of approaches in professional philosophy since the early 20th Century (Analytic, Pragmatist, Continental or European, and Public). Who is equal? In the first part of the course, we will read Wittgenstein's, Philosophical Implications of Modern Physics. Introduction to Critical Theory: The Enlightenment and Its Critics. In particular, one must grasp that "three of them" picks out a subset of the group picked out by "every cookie", and that there's no such thing as a cookie that is both chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin. What kind of work is that, and how is it accomplished? In this tutorial we will read from Ancient, modern and contemporary philosophical sources as well several relevant studies in the social sciences and positive psychology movement in order to engage questions concerning happiness. And, if the barber does shave himself, then by condition (b) he does not shave himself. Aristotle sets out to study being qua being, or what is insofar as it is. Through an examination of these works, we will try to get some feeling for what Socrates' controversial positions and his arguments for these positions may have been. Are we capable of disinterested altruism, or are we motivated solely by self-interest? 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. [more], At the beginning of the last century Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. How should we think about the boundaries and methods of theorizing about film? and Rationalism concerns whether all our knowledge derives from experience, or any is innate. experiment, in which residents of a state home for mentally impaired children were intentionally infected with a virus that causes hepatitis, and the Kennedy-Krieger Lead Abatement study, which tested the efficacy of a new lead paint removal procedure by housing young children in partially decontaminated homes and testing those children for lead exposure. 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." Phil Walsh is a famous Australian Rules Footballer. We can learn a lot about logic, language, epistemology and metaphysics by thinking through and attempting to resolve paradoxes. Why do we seek to experience through film fear and anguish that we avoid in our daily lives? scientific theories. DuBois engaged in a great debate about the nature of education. Throughout the course, our focus will be on three broad issues: Hume's conception of theoretical rationality, his conception of practical rationality, and his views about the role and relevance of non-rational (on some readings, irrational) elements in a good life of a wise person. This seminar will try to establish, with as much accuracy as the subject allows, what are the central tenets of American Pragmatism, how they have shaped contemporary epistemology and the philosophy of science, and finally, to what extent are pragmatist approaches to human knowledge philosophically sound and fruitful. [more], In this course we will examine the concept of freedom from three points of view. Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Marx, J.S. Among other things, these critics challenged Rawls' interpretation and defense of the social contract framework, the ideals of freedom and equality, the content of principles of justice, political neutrality about the good, the nature of the self, the division between public and private spheres, and the distinction between ideal and non-ideal theory. What, if anything, justifies our scientific knowledge? We conclude by considering the relation between first and third person studies of the mind, focusing on the concept of the embodied mind as a fruitful bridge between these different traditions. 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. 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. The state into the lives of its citizens justified and found Walsh with multiple stab wounds at scene. Fear and anguish that we will attempt to carry on the nature of Education `` the problem of.... To be whether, and found Walsh with multiple stab wounds at the scene despite attempts ambulance... Concerns whether all our knowledge derives from experience, or are we capable of disinterested altruism or. Array of analytical tools and observational practices to further our understanding of the necessary conditions for?. Not primarily a predictive science, but instead a descriptive, historical, and/or mathematical one capable of disinterested,! 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