Philosophy

This course provides an interdisciplinary approach to ethical and legal issues stemming from recent advances in biomedical practices. Topics discussed include: fundamental principles of bioethics; the environment, animal welfare; birth, reproduction, and end of life; informed consent, organ transplants, and clinical trials; bioethics and gender, children, the elderly, and disability; genetic advancements and intervention.

This course provides an overview of the foundations that the main trends of the Western ethical tradition have provided and that still constitute the theoretical basis for the interpretation and resolution to the challenges and issues that arise from the complexities of modern life.

This course examines the past three decades' explosive surge in neuroscientific explanations of human nature, promising clear-cut biological answers to commonplace philosophical questions concerning rationality, emotion, behavior, values, and ethics. It explores to what extent such a promise is warranted, in particular concerning existential questions such as anxiety, responsibility, and religious faith.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by permission of the instructor. This course explores the main theories, concepts, and approaches developed by social studies of science and technology (STS), and analytically compares them and discusses their pros and cons. The course examines basic issues about the materiality of and governance by data infrastructures, and their social and philosophical implications. Students develop experience in designing research on data infrastructures. Throughout the course, interactive moments are devoted to developing empirical research design skills, ranging from research question design to research methodologies. Such moments are finalized to support the STS research design to be submitted as part of the course assessment. The last week of the course focuses on data infrastructures and addresses some sociopolitical implications of data infrastructures. All topics are tackled by reading, presenting, and commenting on leading international literature and empirical case studies.

This course offers a systematic introduction to the central themes of the philosophy of mind. It is divided into three parts. The first part deals with fundamental problems. In addition to more traditional distinctions such as that between dualism and monism, newer empirical theories of consciousness and the conflicts that exist between them are also discussed. The second deals with methodological questions and central concepts such as emergence or supervenience. The third part deals with particularly important individual problems. This includes the problem of free will, theories of embodied and extended cognition, and questions of self-confidence. The lecture will fundamentally also take empirical findings from psychology and neuroscience into account.

This course is an introduction to the burgeoning field of philosophy of psychiatry. Against a solid historical background, the course sets out to present, examine, and discuss concepts fundamental to our understanding of mental illness (mind, body, self, person, rationality, emotion, normality/disorder), the meaning of psychopathology, the relationship between biology (genetics, evolutionary biology, and neuroscience in particular) and subjectivity, and the question of therapy (the values and norms of well-being).

In this course we will explore a wide range of alternative logical systems for modelling different phenomena. We will look at the semantics and proof theory for modal logics (the logic of possibility and necessity), intuitionistic logic (the logic of constructive mathematics), “gappy” logics (where some truth values are underdetermined), the logic of paradox (where paradoxes can be true without the logic being trivial), deontic logic (the logic of actions and obligations), and dynamic epistemic logic (logics for tracking our knowledge in a changing epistemic environment). For each we will look at the philosophical motivations and payoffs that the logic has, as well as strengths and weaknesses of the formalisation.

The best possible introduction to philosophy as a subject is through engagement with Ancient Greek Philosophy. In this course, students look at some of Plato's writings about his friend and mentor Socrates, in particular those writings that bear on the trial and death of Socrates. These include Plato's APOLOGY, EUTHYPHRO, and CRITO, a series of short, lively dialogues that offer excellent introductions not only to Socrates, but to the practice of philosophy itself. Students also look back at the earliest Greek philosophers, such as Parmenides and Heraclitus, and forward to Aristotle and beyond. But the central focus of this course is on the figure of Socrates, and his impact on philosophy.

This course investigates the concepts of liberty, equality, and reconciliation. The course approaches these concepts by studying a sequence of authors including Hobbes, Locke, Wollstonecraft, Betham, Mill, Nozick, and Rawls. Students also explore important considerations of class, gender, and race, with readings from Marx and Engels, MacKinnon, and Delaney.