Philosophy

This course provides both a first contact with the law and a critical reflection on it. It takes certain generalizations about the law that are often encountered in philosophy, politics, or economics, and shows that what may seem obvious is in fact more complex. Rather than presenting what the law is supposed to be or do, the course reveals its paradoxes by constructing problems dialectically. Course readings are chosen by preference from the corpus of philosophy and art (literature, cinema) to provide material for reflection and discussion that is common and interesting to all. It also addresses a few points of legal theory and technique to demonstrate the complexity of the issues and the difficulty of finding non-simplistic solutions. In all cases, the choice of texts demonstrates the diversity, even contrariness, of the opinions expressed and the theories elaborated, to avoid confirming unquestioned convictions.

This course explores the origin of quantum physics within the philosophical, historical, scientific, and socio-political framework of the 20th century. It discusses the interpretative problems of quantum mechanics, the possible solutions within its philosophical framework, and the consequences of the quantum revolution for the logic of the living and our conception of the world.

This course introduces students to key thinkers and ideas in the history of western philosophy. Since ancient philosophy is so central to this history, the first half of the course is devoted to some of its most important achievements in the work of the pre-Socratics, Plato and Aristotle. Attention is then turned to aspects of medieval philosophy, and the great rationalist and empiricist traditions of modern philosophy. Lectures are also offered on Nietzsche, and the American Pragmatists. 

This course reviews and discusses the history of the notion of philosophy (as tetsugaku) within the history of modern Japan. In doing so, difficult questions relating to the very notion of philosophy itself will be asked. What is philosophy and what can make it “Japanese”? Is all philosophy done on Japanese shores “Japanese philosophy”? Otherwise, are there certain core or essential characteristics that make philosophy Japanese? In tackling these questions, the course seeks to learn more about the history of philosophical thought in modern Japan and seeks to reach a deeper understanding of the notion of philosophy itself. 

This course introduces various types of linguistic mechanisms and ways of thinking that can be harmful or defective. It considers pejorative terms that are used to denigrate other people based on their social identity, such as race, ethnic group, nationality, religious group, and sexual orientation. The course also discusses issues related to conceptual ethics, which considers concepts that are not the most useful for describing reality and how to revise or modify them to achieve different theoretical or practical objectives. Finally, the course examines the mechanism of silencing, which consists of speech acts aimed at incapacitating the audience from performing certain types of speech acts, altering the meaning of their words or the type of actions they can perform with them. 

This course introduces students to contemporary feminist ideas and key feminist debates, specifically feminist legal theory. The course illustrates the ideas by focusing on specific campaigns that relate to women and girls’ human rights and gender justice in both Irish national and global arenas. The course focuses on some important areas of contention, debate, and power struggles to see how feminist approaches to legal issues are deployed in important campaigns relating to: reproductive justice; prostitution/sex work; lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) issues; and redress and restorative justice for survivors of trauma and abuse relating to gender violence. Through case studies the course offers an introduction to feminist concepts and to international conventions relevant to gender justice such as the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), United Nations Conventions on Human Rights and relevant Security Council Resolutions as well the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the Yogyarkarta Principles. The case studies are also used to introduce and illustrate key concepts of feminist legal theorists such as Martha Fineman, Catharine MacKinnon, Suan Moller Okin, Martha Nussbaum, and Janet Halley.

When you talk to ChatGPT, does it talk back? Does it really understand, or is it just a sophisticated sort of autocomplete? When DALL*E makes an image from your description, in the style of an author you like, is it plagiarizing that artist? Could a machine be conscious? Will AI revolutionize the economy? These are among the most interesting questions to ask at the moment. In this class, we'll ask them. We'll take a tour through 70 or so years of philosophical thought about artificial intelligence, from Turing to OpenAI, learning the concepts and theories that have been used to make sense of artificial intelligence. In the first part of the course, we'll look at more 'technical' material, about the nature of meaning and mind; in the second part, we'll turn to applied ethical and social issues. 

This course explores the relationship between Transcendentalism and women's rights, family relations, and perceptions of childhood and education. It draws almost exclusively on writings from the period.

An individual project on the ethics of nature.

This course is intended for students who wish to gain an introduction to Indian philosophy that looks carefully at the high standard of logic, epistemology, metaphysics and linguistics that grounded the various philosophical systems. The course examines the schools of Mīmāmsā, Sānkhya, Nyāya and Vaiśeshika, and assesses their defence against attacks from the schools of Buddhism, Jainism, and Advaita Vedānta. The examination of these schools makes use of translations of the primary texts and focuses upon the vigorous debate over conceptual analysis and argumentative strategies by which the schools presented their philosophical positions, defended them against attacks by other schools, and mounted in turn their own attacks.