Philosophy

One of the hallmarks of being human is that we can suffer as well as flourish. Focusing on positive psychology and clinical psychology, psychiatry, and psychotherapy, this course offers a sustained investigation of the conceptual and philosophical problems at the heart of the study of human well-being and human ill-being. Central topics include the nature of happiness and well-being; the nature and classification/diagnosis of mental disorder; the relation between mental health and mental illness (is happiness more than the mere absence of suffering?); differing perspectives on mental disorder (neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, existentialism, phenomenology); the implicit philosophical assumptions behind major psychotherapeutic traditions, especially concerning the good life. One guiding assumption of the course is that studying well-being and ill-being side by side can be mutually illuminating. By the end of the semester, students are equipped to interpret psychological theories and therapeutic practices through a philosophical lens, as well as consider how conceptions of the good life both inform and are informed by the science and practice of psychology.

This course focuses on understanding the basic methodological principles of the science of Economics. It starts with an introduction to the history of the notion of Economics, and then it specializes in the basic economic thought throughout the centuries. The second part of the course focuses in the general philosophy of science with an interest in the philosophy of social sciences. The course discusses in depth the basic methodological principles of the major Economic theories and the philosophers/scientists who evolved these theories (i.e. Rousseau, Hume, Locke, Hobbes, Mill, Proudhon, Smith, Ricardo, Marx).

This course focuses on the philosophical issues which arise when the nature of aesthetic appreciation and judgement is considered. These are some of the questions which are discussed in the course: What is mimesis? Does art simply mirror nature? Is beauty merely “in the eye of the beholder”? What differences might there be between aesthetic appreciation of art and aesthetic appreciation of nature? What is the relation between art and society? What is the difference between the sublime and the beautiful? These and other questions are explored through the work of philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Dewey, Heidegger Foucault and Lyotard.

This course introduces artificial intelligence (AI) applications, with particular attention to the current use of AI systems in the humanities. It reflects on the ethical implications of AI in teaching and learning contexts (e.g. for text production, translation, and language learning) as well as in a series of real-world cases. Contexts and cases focus on English language use, learning and teaching. The course introduces how generative AI systems work, including its reliance on the English language and Anglophone cultures, and the general issues covered in the course. The structure of the course consists of four blocks: bias, hallucinations and transparency; the workings of generative AI systems (LLMs and prompting), as well as data security and privacy; social inclusion and exclusion caused by the application of AI systems; and environmental impacts of using generative AI. Each block introduces students to a series of ethical issues surrounding AI use in the humanities and within the context of the English degree. These examples allow students to analyze the implications of AI in society. Throughout, important ethical issues concerning AI use are presented and critically discussed in class.

The course examines selected topics in Chinese philosophy. The specific content of the course varies from semester to semester. Offerings with different subtitles can be taken for credit, up to a maximum of two times.

This course offers an overview of the main philosophical trends that emerged in the 20th century. It discusses the structure, chronology, evolution, key ideas, and interrelationships of current philosophical trends. Topics include: pragmatism; phenomenology, existentialism, and hermeneutics; critical theory and post-Marxist dialects; post-structuralism, deconstruction, and neo-Nietzschean thought.

This course introduces Chan Buddhism from historical, philosophical, and textual approaches. With respect to historical developments, it examined the transition of this tradition from India to China. With regard to philosophical and doctrinal aspects, it explored the characteristics of Chinese Chan through a comparative study with Indian, Tibetan, and Japanese Buddhist traditions. Besides lectures, seminars are arranged to read and discuss selected core texts.

Drawing on interdisciplinary resources, this course uses philosophy to investigate how money is related to themes like religion, politics, morality, nature, and care. Focusing on key concepts such as debt, gift, trust, power, and commodity, the course discusses classical philosophical texts by Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Spinoza, Locke, Smith, Marx, and Nietzsche, relating them to present-day issues concerning student-debt, care-economy and eco-capitalism.

This course has two components, each exploring a different topic in philosophy.

Component 1: Transformative Experience. This course explores several challenging philosophical questions regarding transformative experience. Considering becoming a parent, getting married, going to university, choosing a career, or emigrating to a new country involves major life decisions that are typically transformative choices. They concern transformative experiences that change who people are and what they care about, and it may not be possible to know what it would be like for at the time of choosing. But, if so, how can a rational decision be made to become a parent, for example, if doing so changes what is cared about, and it is only possible to know what it would will be like once it occurs? Would it be wrong for a friend, family member, or romantic partner to try to stop someone from making a transformative choice, such as getting married? What role do transformative choice and experience play in other dimensions of life, such as art, religious experience, and social identity, as well as in broader philosophical debates over skepticism, the possibility of moral knowledge, and medical ethics?

Component 2: Emotion and Rationality. This course examines a few philosophical theories of emotion, drawing where appropriate on work in cognitive science, to enrich the philosophical investigation. An ancient picture of our psychology contrasts rationality with emotion. Both are central to human life. To be rational involves, in part, being sensitive to reasons on which people reflect and deliberate. But what is it to have emotions like fear, anger, joy, guilt and so on? How do they relate to other states of mind like belief, pleasure, intention, or desire? What’s the point of having various emotions? Do emotions inform people in some way about the world? Are emotions themselves rational or justified, and can they contribute to making certain actions rational? Or are emotions a distorting form of interference in an otherwise orderly psychology? Confronting these questions about the nature of emotion sheds light on and forces people to consider issues about the nature of rational agency.

Paradoxes are arguments which proceed from highly plausible assumptions, through highly plausible and usually simple steps to highly implausible conclusions. Some examples: Zeno’s paradoxes of motion, Kant’s antinomies, the Liar and the paradox of the surprise examination. What such paradoxes show is that there is something deeply wrong with some of our most fundamental ways of thinking. This course helps explore solutions to certain of these paradoxes. Students are expected to know some elementary formal logic before studying this course. To prepare for the course, they can either take PHIL2006, or study the online material on logic produced by the department.