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. Are we rationally justified in drawing causal inferences? Some maintain that these issues are solely the provinces of philosophy, using traditional a priori methods. 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. [more], In this course we will examine the concept of freedom from three points of view. Thus, Plato described the philosopher as "the one who beholds all Time and all Being." In this course we address key themes and figures from two of the most influential movements in twentieth century European philosophy, namely, existentialism and phenomenology, a philosophical approach to which existentialism is indebted. When, if ever, is paternalistic interference by the state into the lives of its citizens justified? 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? Other questions are pressing and immediate: Artificial intelligence techniques are used today to help decide whether someone gets a bank loan, is eligible to be released on bail, or in need of particular medical treatment. Williams, Bernard. However, few (haters gonna hate) would say that the expression has a referent. That would be really worrisome. We will read several complete dialogues in translation, and will also read a wide variety of secondary source material. Topics will include: What can we know through our senses? Is happiness an emotional or mental state or is it a social construct? Can we know anything through reason alone? Phil Walsh is a famous Australian Rules Footballer. Associate Dean for Sophomore Year Students and Director of Transfer and Non-Traditional Students Services. Where have you been taught them? Can we be mistaken about how well our lives are going, or about what has value? The answer is not merely that they ask the question, "What gives meaning to a human life?" What, if anything, justifies our scientific knowledge? We will then turn to a variety of more recent attempts to give a clear characterization of causation. 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). Throughout the course, our focus will be on the best theoretical and practical knowledge we now have to diagnose, explain, and alleviate mental illness. Persons are subjects of experiences, have thoughts and feelings, motivation and agency; a person is thought of as continuous over time, and as related to, recognized and respected by other persons. More than this, Existentialists emphasize the subjective relation we bear to our belief systems, moral codes, and personal identities. We turn first to two of Plato's most famous dialogues, Philosophical Approaches to Contemporary Moral Issues. to the structure of arguments for and against relativism, as well as to the philosophical motivations and perceived consequences of its endorsement or rejection. The son of Adelaide Crows coach Phil Walsh has been charged with his murder, after the 55-year-old was found dead in his home, South Australian police . In addition, we will devote several class meetings interspersed throughout the semester to reading foundational sources in ethical theory. After working through these arguments, we will reflect more generally on the proper roles of reason and faith in justifying religious belief. One possible answer which we will examine is that, while many philosophers recognize that there are intimate connections between what we believe, feel and do, philosophical argumentation by its very nature appeals to belief alone; narrative art, by contrast, can simultaneously engage our reason, emotions, imagination and will, thus resulting not only in deepening our understanding, but also in transformation of the self. By which methods should we pursue these questions? Indeed Nietzsche's influence has been pervasive. How do logic and language relate? It will be very helpful, though not absolutely necessary, for you to have some familiarity with logic and some experience in reading philosophy. Should we value other things (say justice or passionate commitment and curiosity) over happiness? Political parties. Some of them explicitly engage meta-philosophical debates; others exemplify particular philosophical styles and methods. These questions are typically asked within a framework where the overarching goal is attaining truth and avoiding falsity. Aristotle sets out to study being qua being, or what is insofar as it is. [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. Messing with People: The Ethics of Human Experimentation. We coordinate our lives through sounds from mouths, signs from hands, and squiggles on paper because somehow sounds, signs, and squiggles have, Why Obey the Law? [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." In this way, we develop a rich array of analytical tools and observational practices to further our understanding of the mind. questions will be: What makes a thinker an "Existentialist"? In this tutorial, we will focus on questions concerning their distinctive methods, namely, historical materialism, genealogical critique, and psychoanalysis. These affect not only our particular choices but also, more fundamentally, who we are and what we value. In this class, we will attempt to carry on the noble tradition of corruption by philosophy. We will examine this issue in Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, classic sources and contemporary articles. subject. In fact, Socrates seems to have been thought of as a kind of intellectual saint in the Hellenistic world. modernity and of politics offered by such thinkers as Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Marx, Mill, and Freud. By the early 20th century, in the works of Freud, we encounter the idea of the intra-psychic features of subjects and the importance of understanding and regulating psychic forces both within and between subjects in order to adapt to the demands of living at any given time, born as we are both dependent upon and vulnerable to others. S. Peirce, and John Dewey. Attention to the writing process and developing an authorial voice will be a recurrent focus of our work inside and outside the classroom. What role do emotional, irrational or unconscious forces play? We will read Adam Smith and Karl Marx on capitalism, Simone de Beauvoir on gender, and Charles Mills on race. We will see how a focus on language affects our understanding of many traditional philosophical questions, ranging from epistemology and metaphysics to aesthetics and ethics. You will see that if the barber does not shave himself, then by condition (a) he does shave himself. 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. The real question, then, seems to be whether, and how, free choice is possible amidst all of these influences. What if they are biased, unbeknownst to us? Student interest will be taken into consideration in deciding what additional topics to cover. Authors will include Plato, Anselm, Aquinas, Pascal, Paley, Hume, Kant, Kierkegaard, and several contemporary philosophers. Its 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. [more], Very few people believe that everything is water, that we knew everything before birth, that philosophers ought to rule the state, or that the earth is at the center of the cosmos. Most of the authors will come from this list, however: Sartre, de Beauvoir, Kafka, Dostoyevsky, Thomas Mann, Camus, Ecco, Kundera, Borges, Charlie Kaufman, Bergman, Tarkovsky, Resnais, Kurosawa, Bunuel, Kubrick, Godard, Visconti and Guillermo del Toro. 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. Nevertheless, comparatively few people realize that the views we commonly think of as "Platonic" represent only one strand in Plato's thought. 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. influences? In this tutorial, will read works in critical theory from the 18th century to the present, some from the Frankfurt tradition, and some not. And, Existentialists express their thought in philosophical treatises as often as in literary works. How do we create legal and policy frameworks that cover a new kind of thinking being? 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. How can it be known and pursued? More particularly, it concerns itself with the difference between good and bad reasoning, between strong and weak arguments. know anything through reason alone? We will examine a variety of philosophical and scientific theories of emotion, as well as some issues concerning normative aspects of emotions: the role of emotions in a good life, and the concept of emotional maturity. With what limits and justifications? What sorts of things can be true or false? What makes an individual's life go well? Topics will depend to some extent on student interest, but are likely to include concerns that fall under such headings as euthanasia, conscientious eating, abortion, the ethics of protest, and Covid-19. We will end the course with a discussion of some of these alternatives. A person incapable of loyalty is often characterized as fickle, cold, self-serving and sometimes even pathological. Does freedom require leading (or avoiding) a political life? We will examine basic questions in the philosophy of law: What is the relationship between law and morality? Some of them explicitly engage meta-philosophical debates; others exemplify particular philosophical styles and methods. If not, should this concern us? What do the social and psychological sciences have to teach us about happiness? The view of the tragedians can lead to a thoroughgoing nihilism according to which --the best thing of all [for a human being] is never to have born-but the next best thing is to die soon (Aristotle's Eudemus as quoted in Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy; see also Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus)." In this class, we'll work together to think through some ancient and contemporary paradoxes. Much of the moral philosophy produced in Greece and Rome remains as relevant today as when it was written. Who gets to decide the answer to these questions; indeed, who gets to decide what questions to ask? Throughout, we will appeal to reason and evidence in forming our best beliefs. Each questioned the emancipatory effect of reason and freedom as well as idealist accounts of moral progress in human history. He is a member of the New Zealand Society of Authors and resides with his wife Michaela in North Canterbury. Loyalty is frequently expected by family, friends and lovers, and demanded by institutions, religious, political and ethnic communities, as well as by the state. Conversation is dynamic--the back and forth exchange of information is a process that grows and adapts to the surrounding context. How should we think about the boundaries and methods of theorizing about film? What is it for a sentence or a proposition to be true? (iv) It is possible that you are reading. To submit an obituary, please send it to Alumni Records, Williams College, 75 Park Street, Williamstown, MA 01267. [more], According to Jean-Paul Sartre, the only philosopher to ever refer to himself as an "existentialist," existence precedes essence. [more], Some of the discoveries made by physicists over the last century seem to show that our common sense views are deeply at odds with our most sophisticated and best confirmed scientific theories. What is knowledge (as opposed to mere opinion)? Philosophy of Education: DuBois versus Washington, deepest questions in philosophy: consequentialism versus deontology, the goals of happiness versus dignity, long term versus short term goals, and more. Our subjects will include hate speech, press censorship, pornography, controversial art, sacrilegious speech and campus controversies. Philosophy? Our aim is to enrich our understanding of the discipline in order to evaluate its value and limitations. Finally, is there a reason for philosophy of film and film theory to exist as a separate field? We will read several complete dialogues in translation, and will also read a wide variety of secondary source material. On the other hand, there is a heap of sand in my backyard. We will examine these and related issues by looking in depth at contemporary defenses of consequentialist, deontological, and contractualist theories. Assigned works will include Booker T. Washington, Industrial Education, W.E.B. Later Wittgenstein is a controversial, polarizing figure; but serious reading of his work is invariably intellectually enriching and fertile. One of our guiding questions will be: What makes a thinker an "Existentialist"? We will pay special attention to the first amendment and questions concerning free speech and hate speech. Diamond investigated the methodology of moral philosophy, paying special attention to the role of literature. We also introduce the practice of meditation as a way to observe the mind and raise questions concerning the place of its study in the mind-sciences. The course will present the essential ideas of relativity theory and quantum theory and explore their implications for philosophy. We will ask, for example, what these theories tell us about the nature of space, time, probability and causality. We will then examine how these notions may be exploited in the consideration of various long-standing issues in the theory of literary interpretation. Starting from scratch, students will learn the building blocks of current-day linguistic research. In pursuing the answers to these questions, we will discuss both classic and contemporary theories from philosophy and linguistics. We begin by examining some of the central concepts of Buddhist psychology, its treatment of the mind as a selfless stream of consciousness, its examination of the variety of mental factors and its accounts of the relation between cognition and affects. B. Lipscomb before the first meeting, preferably over the summer. What are emotions, and how should we think about them? We will focus particularly on how subjects are positioned in relation to his writings on power and knowledge with particular attention to the later so-called ethical writings in the years before his untimely death in 1984. 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. 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. (v) Either you are reading or you are a fish. claimed it offended Christians, and the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center was prosecuted for exhibiting allegedly obscene photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe. Ninah T. Pretto. Our main goal will be to prove things about this logical system rather than to use this system to think about ordinary language arguments. self-mastery, succeeding in worthwhile projects, cultivating relationships, living morally, developing spiritually)? Is film today really distinct from a number of new, emerging visual media? [more], Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is perhaps the most significant text in the history of philosophy. This first-year seminar will examine the philosophy of education through educational autobiographies: works that tell the story of a moral and intellectual education. By repeated application of the same reasoning, it seems that even after she removes 99,997 grains of sand--I don't know what she wants with all this sand, but I'm starting to worry about that girl--there is still a heap of sand in my backyard. As we read through these plays, we will also examine a number of philosophical works about tragedy. Is that principle of organization justifiable or not? We will begin with Washington's classic article "Industrial Education for the Negro" and DuBois' classic "The Talented Tenth". 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. We will read Adam Smith and Karl Marx on capitalism, Simone de Beauvoir on gender, and Charles Mills on race. that we have a clear sense of what that involves? Is film today really distinct from a number of new, emerging visual media? "Our industry is grieving today, and we send our love and support to the Walsh family, the Crows staff and players, Phil's wider circle of friends, the other clubs he worked with, and his many colleagues across the AFL," he said. We also introduce the practice of meditation as a way to observe the mind and raise questions concerning the place of its study in the mind-sciences. We will also study contemporary philosophers who have written on education, such as Martha Nussbaum and Cornel West. [more], American Pragmatism left a deep legacy in contemporary epistemology and the philosophy of science, but it is--more often than not--a legacy difficult to disentangle from other intellectual influences. 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). Of particular interest will be how language can be used to establish, reinforce, and resist power relationships involving race and gender. If there are such things--we'll call them propositions--what are they like? Phil Walsh!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)? What are the purposes of liberal arts colleges in America? What are the limits of language? Some challenges we face are broad and about the future, though perhaps not the far future. For example, we will examine the ethics of disease surveillance, treatment and vaccine research, resource allocation and rationing, compulsion and voluntariness in public health measures, and social determinants of health outcomes, among other topics. How do logic and language relate? This course introduces philosophy students to these and related questions through a parallel reading that brings together 19th century German philosopher Hegel and a tradition of Africana philosophy running through Douglas, Du Bois, Fanon, Gilroy, Hartman and Wynter. 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. We'll examine these and related questions through historical and contemporary readings. 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. more broadly, what it is like to have a first person, waking perspective at all--resists explanation in any terms other than the conscious experience itself in spite of centuries of intense effort by philosophers and, more recently, by scientists. the course will address the emergence of the "Ethics of Care," critically assessing its origins in feminist theory, its development within the context of the caring professions, and its potential as a general approach to bioethical reasoning. Conceptions of person are equally important in science (especially in psychology), law, and the arts. Without challenging the centrality of such projects for philosophy, this tutorial will focus on a less emphasized, but equally essential aspect of our lives: emotions. Are we rationally justified in drawing causal inferences? In this course, we will investigate dynamic communicative phenomena and discuss competing theoretical explanations about how they're interpreted. Or can meaning be allocated only to entire sets of beliefs? (Foot also invented the infamous trolley car thought experiment.) PHIL 119 - 01 (S) SEM Justice, Democracy and Freedom Division II Writing Skills. As the music wails in the background, we will study the classic pragmatists: William James, C. S. Peirce, and John Dewey. . Or might it be that our skepticism and relativism are the result of our own laziness and failure? Rorty challenged the very concept of morality and questioned all moral theory. This course is an advanced seminar devoted to a comprehensive examination of Fanon's political thought. View Phil Walsh's email address (p*****@kw***.com) and phone number. arts education by nurturing in students the academic and civic virtues, and their related traits of character." Science is only "true" for some people, agnosticism is the only alternative to foolish superstition, and moral relativism and, consequently, nihilism are obvious. What makes an individual's life go well? 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. Can science contribute to our understanding of these issues? Why do we seek to experience through film fear and anguish that we avoid in our daily lives? Walsh's wife Meredith was also in Flinders Medical Centre - her husband dead, her son charged with murder, her daughter returning from overseas, and herself suffering leg injuries. (There will be optional, supplementary opportunity to engage with the Latin text for interested students with some facility with Latin.) [more], It'd be perfectly natural to say "I might've left the stove on", then check the stove, then say "I didn't leave the stove on". Frederick Rudolph, Williams College 1793-1993: Three Eras, Three Cultures, Michael S . Save. It is at the same time the most intimately known fact of our humanity and science's most elusive puzzle. To do this, we will need to become familiar with key ethical theories; think deeply about such concepts as privacy, paternalism and autonomy, exploitation, cost-benefit analysis and justice; and compare the function of these concepts in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic with the way they work in responses to other public health concerns. Gulliver's Travels, Part III, chapter 10. Some maintain that these issues are solely the provinces of philosophy, using traditional a priori methods. There will be a series of short response papers in which you provide a careful analysis of particular arguments in our texts. Does the fact that our lives will end threaten their meaning? We will begin with questions about how to define death, as well as reflections on its meaning and function in human life. [more], Plato is one of the most important and influential thinkers in the history of the western tradition. Specific issues will include the ethics of placebo research, deception in research, studies of illicit/illegal behavior, genetic research, experimentation with children, pregnant women and fetuses, and persons with diminished mental capacity, among other topics. Roger Federer gets stumped by famous saying. If not, should this concern us? [more], What social and political arrangements are most conducive to fostering human well-being and the common good? We will discuss major works (philosophical, literary, visual) by such figures as Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Richard Wright, Ingmar Bergman and Jean-Luc Godard. Is it moral for us to pass along these sorts of decisions to AI's? At home? In this course, relying on works by economists and philosophers, we examine the status of economics as an academic discipline, focusing on its assumptions, methods, and results. In this course we will investigate the the broad topics of consciousness and thought by surveying the many approaches to mind that yield the contemporary debates. If there are such things--we'll call them propositions--what are they like? As we go through these results, we will think about the philosophical implications of first-order logic. The first, shorter part will focus on the writings of the three classics of American pragmatism--Charles S. Peirce, William James and John Dewey--and analyze their reaction against traditional epistemology, as well as the positive philosophical ideas that they had to offer. Understanding of the mind it moral for us to pass along these sorts of things can true... 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