Philosophy

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.

This course offers a critical analysis and introduction to the fundamental concepts of feminist theories including citizenship, body, mind, rights, equality, freedom, patriarchy, and the sex/gender system.

This course examines philosophical issues about food and its relation to ethics, objectivity, and values. Topics include moral issues such as the debate about animal rights, world hunger, the use of genetic engineering in agriculture, and the justification of health policies about food and drugs. It also looks at the relationship between food and art, and the objectivity of taste. 

This course offers an introduction to critical thinking and problem-solving. Topics include: theoretical foundations of thinking; the human brain and decision-making; models of thinking; phases of the analysis process and the creative process; parallels and divergences; creative and critical problem-solving; proactivity and innovation.

This course introduces students to a variety of philosophical thinking from around the world. It prompts students to explore some key questions and concepts in philosophy across different religious traditions and time periods. The religious traditions to be explored in this course may include, but are not limited to: Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism.  

Intellectual history of antiquity and the Middle Ages is typically conducted with sparse attention to women authors, and women thinkers whose works are not preserved. This course challenges that approach, by focusing on the achievements and contributions of female thinkers spanning a period from classical antiquity, with figures like Aspasia and Diotima, down to Christine de Pizan at the dawn of the European Renaissance. Some attention is paid to other cultural traditions, especially India and the Islamic world, though the richest materials are to be found in the Greek and Latin textual traditions. Many of the figures covered are, in a broad sense of the term, “philosophers,” but figures more usually described as “mystics,” such as Rabia and Hildegard of Bingen are also included.

This course examines the following questions: What is intelligence, and can machines really possess it? Could it be that—as many have argued—we ourselves are no more than intelligent machines (designed by evolution rather than engineers)? How do technologies such as artificial neural networks and machine learning change our understanding of the mind? Others are ethical, social, and political. What are the risks associated with these technologies, and how can we minimise them? What are their benefits, and how can we ensure that they are equitably shared? Conversely, assuming that true A.I. is possible, what are our own moral obligations towards our non-human but intelligent creations?

In this course, students examine various important positions on the nature of consciousness including physicalism, dualism, eliminativism, and idealism. Students review both sides of various philosophers’ opinions on whether consciousness can be explained solely in terms of brain activity and if consciousness can arise from the purely physical. The course requires students to take prerequisites.

This course examines the thought, values and practices of Buddhism through the application of its fundamentals of philosophical theories and principles. In this course, the basic Buddhist teachings of dependent arising, the relationship of mind and body, human behaviors and their consequences, the human condition and its causes, the concept of happiness, etc. will be investigated on the basis of the earliest Buddhist literatures namely the Pali Nikayas and Chinese Agamas.