University of St Andrews

This course provides an introduction to philosophical issues in metaphysics and philosophy of mind. These include questions such as: What is the relation between the mind and the material world? Is the mind a part of the scientific, law-governed material world? If so, can I really act freely? If the mind is part of the material world, how could a material thing be conscious? What, fundamentally, are material things and their properties? What is it for one event to cause another? What is time, and what is change? How can physical objects persist through change? Can a person persist through time and change and still be the same person?

Prompted by decolonization, postcolonialism, globalization, and the globalized contemporary art world of the present day, many have suggested that narratives of modern art focused on Western cities such as Paris and New York are now provincial or inadequate. This course examines the rise of early- to mid-20th century "modern" art in a range of countries not usually considered in Western survey courses. With the 1900-1960 date range setting its boundaries, the course involves both close examinations of individual works by key figures, and broad comparative examination of movements and styles across times and places. As well as introducing students to some of the figures and movements that have been taken to show the distinctive nature of modernisms around the world, it asks broader theoretical questions about the status of art history and the study of modernism.

This course introduces the essential concepts and techniques of critical reasoning, formal propositional logic, and basic predicate logic. Among the central questions are these: what distinguishes an argument from a mere rhetorical ploy? What makes an argument a good one? How can we formally prove that a conclusion follows from some premises? In addressing these questions, students also cover topics such as argumentative fallacies, ambiguity, argument forms and analyses, induction versus deduction, counterexamples, truth-tables, truth-trees (tableaux), natural deduction, and quantification.

This course introduces students to the relations between philosophy and theology in thought about God, with particular attention to the Western tradition from Plato to the present, including themes in metaphysics and epistemology. It examines traditional and revisionary approaches to thinking about the reality of God, and the interplay of claims that God is both knowable and ultimately beyond comprehension.

This course provides fundamental information on climate dynamical processes and how we study them - currently and in the past. The course examines both strengths and limitations of terrestrial and marine proxy climate records used to study past climate of the late Holocene and Quaternary as well as introducing students to the fundamentals of modelling the climate system.

This course examines a selection of the major themes in economic history. Students read academic articles written by economists that use novel historical data, state-of-the-art micro econometric methods, and economic theory. The reading list covers a broad range of historical periods and geographic regions that provide unique settings to answer questions that are usually difficult to address in contemporary settings. The course begins with a discussion of the evolution of economic history and the main empirical methods used in applied microeconomics and their application in economic history. Then, students examine interrelated themes including the ultimate determinants of economic prosperity; culture and religion as drivers of social and economic change; the origins of gender inequality; the impact of ethnic animus and conflict in the long run; and the persistent effects of immigration and technology adoption on the economy.