And on what grounds can we justify confidence in our provisional answers to such questions? All three have had a profound influence on literature, social theory, and critical theories of the 20th and 21st centuries. Topics to be considered include the nature of freedom (both individual and social), the master/slave dialectic and subject constitution, self-consciousness and double consciousness, the stages of history, and racial capitalism, Topics in Critical Theory: Subjection, Power, Freedom. The seminar will fall into two unequal parts. The order in which you say things matters, and it matters for what you communicate what actions you take and what events happen around you. How do logic and language relate? 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. Who is equal? [more], Martinican psychiatrist, philosopher, and revolutionary Frantz Fanon was among the leading critical theorists and Africana thinkers of the twentieth century. Among the questions that we will address: What is justice? (iv) It is possible that you are reading. Understood in this way, critical theory is identified closely with the intellectual tradition of the Frankfurt School. Are we capable of disinterested altruism, or are we motivated solely by self-interest? We will thus be led to discuss some of the concepts common to epistemology, metaphysics and ethics: reason, justification, objectivity, understanding, reality and truth. We will focus our study on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and Marx's early writings. "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. While you're debating whether to take this class, consider the following puzzle. : On Justice and Freedom in Western Political Philosophy. "Near-Death Experiences." In How to Think About Weird Things. We will then turn to several of Plato's dialogues, examining Plato's portrayal of Socrates and his development of a new and profoundly powerful philosophical conception. We will read works by three of Socrates' contemporaries: Aristophanes, Xenophon, and especially Plato. My daughter removes one grain of sand. In this course, we will spend the first third of the semester attempting to understand the metaphysics and epistemology in Plato's middle dialogues. There are metaphysical problems, problems of human existence, that philosophy has never known how to grasp in all their concreteness and that only the novel can seize." Phil was stabbed to death by his son, who habitually used hallucinogenic drugs, in one of the most shocking tragedies in . [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". claimed it offended Christians, and the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center was prosecuted for exhibiting allegedly obscene photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe. We will examine these and related issues by looking in depth at contemporary defenses of consequentialist, deontological, and contractualist theories. That would be really worrisome. in environmental ethics. But perform those exact same steps in a different order--check the stove, say "I didn't leave the stove on", then say "I might've left the stove on"--and something's gone quite wrong. For clarification and discussion of the points made in Treatise, we will read parts of Hume's later works, especially the two Enquiries. Williams College Catalog Phone Number 413-597-4286 [email protected] 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. [more], "Faith is a fine invention," according to Emily Dickinson's poem, "when gentlemen can see; but microscopes are prudent in an emergency." What role do emotional, irrational or unconscious forces play? But now we have a problem. Why read the history of philosophy? The second, longer part of the seminar will try to isolate and follow some of the pragmatist currents which run through epistemology and philosophy of science in the 20th and 21st centuries. this class, we will attempt to carry on the noble tradition of corruption by philosophy. After several weeks on the Republic we will turn to Shakespeare's last play: The Tempest. In addressing these substantive questions, we will also consider which methodological approach--if a single one can be privileged--we should adopt for examining emotions. We will begin the course by looking briefly at some of the Presocratic philosophers active in the Mediterranean world of the seventh through fifth centuries BCE, and some of the sophists active in the fifth century. 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 will pay special attention to the first amendment and questions concerning free speech and hate speech. ", Get immediate help for depression or anxiety. We will then examine how these notions may be exploited in the consideration of various long-standing issues in the theory of literary interpretation. We will then turn to some specific social forms in the second unit, and ask whether they promote or preclude our freedom. What is the nature of audience's response to film? In this way the goal of the course is significantly different from that of Logic and Language (PHIL 203). 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. Authors will include: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. health and disease, and then apply them to human psychology. 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 . 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. Is philosophy of film really autonomous, independent from traditional philosophical disciplines which help generate its central questions, such as aesthetics, philosophy of art, epistemology, ontology, semiotics, ethics, social and political philosophy? Do our beliefs have their meanings one-by-one? In fact, it seems like you can't change a heap of sand into something that isn't a heap of sand by removing one grain of sand. We will then turn to a variety of more recent attempts to give a clear characterization of causation. Are we rationally justified in drawing causal inferences? justice or passionate commitment and curiosity) over happiness? Can we know anything through reason alone? Our texts will include Gottlob Frege. use tab and shift-tab to navigate once expanded, Covid-19 is an ongoing concern in our region, including on campus. Is democratic rule always best? Must they inhere in substances? Tamanika T. Steward. 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. to the structure of arguments for and against relativism, as well as to the philosophical motivations and perceived consequences of its endorsement or rejection. 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. Logicians and mathematicians have done a good deal of work developing extensions of and alternatives to classical logic. Our aim is to enrich our understanding of the discipline in order to evaluate its value and limitations. Students should be aware that, in the classic tradition, this class resembles a logic course. In school? What is knowledge (as opposed to mere opinion)? 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)." [more], Logic is the study of reasoning and argument. Does it advance our thinking and increase our knowledge of the world? Who gets to decide the answer to these questions; indeed, who gets to decide what questions to ask? In this course we will seek to comprehend the dimensions in which Existentialism is a distinctive intellectual tradition. In school? [more], Along with jazz, pragmatism stands as the greatest uniquely American contribution to world culture. Leibniz wrote his New Essays in 1704 as a critical response to Locke's Essay of 1690. Last offered Fall 2017 . and includes death notifications beginning January 1, 2020. . The aim of this course is to explore and evaluate a number of rival conceptions of persons and personal identity over time. In this course we address the question: How is the present we find ourselves living today different from the one that the author Foucault wrote about in the 1960s, 70s and early 80s before his untimely death in 1984? The abstract philosophical question before us is. Diamond investigated the methodology of moral philosophy, paying special attention to the role of literature. 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. 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. some of the Hindu views about the self and the mind and consider their ethical implications. [more], Intellectually, we are ready skeptics and relativists. Critical theory aims not merely to understand the "struggles and wishes of the age" as Marx one described it, but with emancipation from domination. We then consider a range of Buddhist critiques of these views, focusing more particularly on the Madhyamaka, which radicalizes the critique of the self into a global anti-realist and skeptical stance. Questions about persons are of central importance for a myriad of our theories and practices, and for the ways in which we live our lives. demand, promise, praise, blame, threaten, command, insinuate, evoke, express feelings, and sometimes just to play. Our readings will include the relevant works of Plato, Sextus Empiricus, Carnap, Quine, Davidson, Goodman, Elgin, Hacking, Krausz, Foot, and Williams, among others. Philosophy? Are there metaphysical and ideological assumptions in contemporary psychiatry, and if so, could and should they be avoided? Finally, is there a reason for philosophy of film and film theory to exist as a separate field? In this course, we will study the most important and influential chapters of the, Topics in Philosophy of Race: Hegel and Africana Philosophy, double? [more], The nature of consciousness remains a fundamental mystery of the universe. Is happiness an emotional or mental state or is it a social construct? The reason for this is that there are two underlying structures that the original sentence can realize. Cognitive science synthesizes research from cognitive psychology, computer science, linguistics, neuroscience, and contemporary philosophy. How much inference goes into interpreting what's said? Does philosophy yield knowledge? We will examine several different approaches in depth, including realism, constructivism, expressivism, and skepticism. [more], At the beginning of the last century Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. How do logic and language relate? We will conclude by considering some critical appropriations of Marx by 20th Century philosophers, including Georg Lukacs, Max Horkheimer, and Theodor Adorno. What should be the goals of Williams College? This course is an advanced seminar devoted to a comprehensive examination of Fanon's political thought. How do I know that I am one? Gulliver's Travels, Part III, chapter 10. This raises the question whether a more complete account of the emergence of subjects must address both psychic, historical and social dimensions of subjectivity, the ways in which they are intertwined, and their importance for not only psychological well-being, but also relatively well-regulated socio-political relations. Do we have any control over our emotions? We'll attempt to answer this question by examining recent philosophical work on the nature of free will and responsibility. [more], Philosophy is often described as thinking about thinking: variously conceived inquiries into the nature, scope and limits of human reasoning have always been at its heart. We ordinarily claim that sentences are true or false, but are there other entities whose truth and falsity explains the truth and falsity of sentences? Phil Walsh's death a family tragedy. This course will offer a selective overview of the debates that characterized philosophy of film since the early 20th century. Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Marx, J.S. [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. 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. What constitutes my knowledge of myself as a person, and does that knowledge differ in any significant respect from my knowledge of physical objects and of other people? 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