Philosophy

This course serves as an introduction to classical thought. By careful analysis of philosophical classics, it aims to present the profoundness and richness of ancient philosophy.

This course is about the philosophy of first contact - that is, philosophical problems generated by first encounters with alien phenomena, agents, and experiences. The course addresses special problems of categorization (e.g., How can we identify phenomena and experiences that do not fit standard frameworks?), translation and communication (e.g., How can we decipher the meaning of radically unfamiliar languages?), philosophical psychology (How should we emotionally respond to radically unfamiliar phenomena?), as well as ethics and politics (What do we owe to foreign agents in the context of first contact, and what special dangers do such situations pose?) raised by such encounters. The course begins by considering general questions of philosophical psychology, and then moves on to consider specific instances of first contact, and their significance. 

This course covers moral philosophy, the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature, extent, and foundation of obligations, duties, virtues, practical reasons, and moral rights. Precise topics vary from year to year; representative topics include: Where do moral obligations come from, and what motivates people to follow them? How do we know what we morally ought to do? Do people have moral right; what about animals? What reasons do we have to help those in need? Do we have moral duties to ourselves; to our loved ones? Is the aim of providing a fully general, informative, moral theory achievable? Is there a universal human morality?

Among the many fields of modern logic research, modal logic has been deeply applied in many fields from humanities to software design because of its good balance between expressiveness and complexity. In this course, the concepts and methods of modal logic will be introduced with its application in modeling time, knowledge, necessity, and social behavior. In this way, students will be brought into an environment similar to actual research and experience the interaction between different concepts and needs in theory and practice. This course will guide students to become familiar with classic textbooks, manuals, and important articles, and enable students to explore and learn deeper content on their own when they have further interest. 

This course investigates questions that are both central to political philosophy and of current political importance. They include: What does it take for a society to be just? How can we come to own natural resources? and more. 

The aim of this course is to familiarize the student with some of the cornerstones of modern logic: the completeness of first-order logic, Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, and Church and Turing’s results on undecidability. Proofs of these results are presented in some detail, including quick introduc)ons to basic model theory, primi)ve recursive and recursive func)ons, Peano arithme)c, and the method of ‘arithme)za)on’ of metalogic, on which the incompleteness and undecidability results rely. The philosophical implica)ons of these results, and the techniques used to prove them, are also discussed, and the intui)ve ideas behind the technical construc)ons are emphasized.

This course examines the historical precedence to some of the philosophical issues with reference to ancient Greek Philosophy. Three philosophers will be examined, with major emphasis on Plato and Aristotle. The focus will be mainly on metaphysical and epistemological aspects as discussed by those major classical philosophers.

This course takes a comparative perspective to look into early Chinese and Daoist philosophy. It starts with textual reading, follows with comparative ideas, including freedom and fate, illness and death, disabilities and social exclusion, war and peace, tolerance and toleration, language and social practices, etc. It focuses on group discussions, and research methodology.

This course examines some ethical questions concerning such issues as: medical paternalism, eugenics and designer babies, organ donation, experimentation on humans and animals, and refusal of medical treatment.