Philosophy

This course fosters critical thinking by discussing key philosophical questions and encouraging reflection upon the connections between the ontological, epistemological, and ethical aspects of those questions. The course follows a thematic approach, going back and forward in the history of thought. Different thinkers, such as Arendt, Benjamin, Heidegger, Kant, and Hadot, guide our discussions.

This course looks at human nature and society and examines the lives and philosophies of Eastern thinkers. It discusses topics that are central to the design of a well-ordered society. Particular attention is given to the ways in which they contribute to a broader conversation about freedom, justice, virtue, democracy, citizenship, and so on. 

This course examines principles to tell science from pseudo-science, truth from falsehood, logic from rhetoric, sound reasoning from wishful thinking, effective medicine from quackery, and good evidence from lies, fraud and fakery. Topics covered include the fallibility of the senses, the fallibility of memory, the placebo effect, the tricks of the cold reader’s trade, confirmation bias, the Barnum effect, relativism, mind viruses, the basics of logic, formal and informal fallacies, and the scientific evaluation of competing hypotheses.

This course examines practical questions of ethics and justice at the personal, professional, social and global levels. The course reflects on these topics in the light of philosophical theories about justice, liberty, rights, and different approaches to ethics that emphasize roles, rules, virtues and consequences.

This course examines the origins of the environmental crisis and develop alternative models of thinking and acting. It covers key philosophical and ecological concepts (e.g., nature, culture, society, responsibility, biodiversity, sustainability), explores the possibility of an ethics beyond the human, and considers new conceptions of agency, responsibility and multi-species justice.

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.