Philosophy

This course examines selected topics in the theory of knowledge and of reality. For example: What is a physical object? Are you the same physical object now that you were 10 years ago? What makes the black squiggles you're now reading mean something? Are meanings ideas? Do deep metaphysical statements, such as ‘I am the only conscious being in the universe’ or 'Everything is fated', really say anything? Do males and females have different ways of knowing? What is time? Do humans have free will? Is cause-and-effect real, or just a way of looking at things? 

This course examines perspectives on biomedicine through the lens of art. Students follow a series of original podcasts that bring together leading Australian scientists and artists to discuss how real-world scientific problems can be solved through artists’ creative thinking. The topics investigated represent the most pressing biomedical concerns including death, stem cell technology, the brain and consciousness, cancer, personhood and infectious diseases.

This course offers a study of the development of medieval Christian, Islamic, and Judaic thought from early antiquity to the fourteenth century. Topics include: Carolingian renaissance; Arab and Jewish philosophy; 12th century Platonism; recovery of Aristotle and Greek and Arabic science; condemnation of 1277 and transformation of scholastic philosophy; political philosophy.

This course introduces students to the core ethics concepts needed to build better technology and reason about its impact on the economy, civil society, and government. In the first half of the course, students consider ethical questions raised by different steps in the data science pipeline, such as: What is data, and how can we design better (ethical?) data governance regimes? Can technology discriminate? If so, what are promising strategies for promoting fairness and mitigating algorithmic bias? Can we understand black-box AI systems and explain their decisions? Why is it morally important that we do so? In the second half of the class, students consider ethical questions raised by the use of AI systems to manage our work, political, and social lives.

This course examines Western European thought from Augustine to the 14th century. Possible topics and authors include: Augustine; Abelard; the influence of Islam; the rediscovery of Aristotle; Aquinas; Scotus; Ockham.

This course focuses on philosophically interesting questions surrounding religion, including such issues as the evidential value of religious experiences and testimony of miracles; the existence of God; and the dependence or independence of morality and meaning on religious foundations.

This course provides philosophical support for understanding the present technological ubiquity and contemporary discourses about technology. It explores topics linked to contemporary technological development, especially its ethical dimensions. 

This course examines study abroad/overseas exchanges, aiming to integrate individual and collective insights for transformative learning. The course draws upon three main student experiences: 1) Pre-Departure (students intending to go on exchange or an equivalent experience) 2) Re-Integration (students returning from exchange or an equivalent experience) and 3) On- Going (incoming exchange students to HKU from overseas). It will first examine the concepts of transformation, experience, and learning, and how they can be integrated from interdisciplinary perspectives (e.g., the metaphor of metamorphosis; the morality of human development; the phenomenology of perception and stereotypes). It will then examine the structures and theories of unfamiliar places, rootedness, mobility, cross-cultural encounters, reciprocity, and service learning in the context of students’ unique identities and experiences. It will conclude with reflections on transformation of the “whole person” as an embodied, transnational process.