Philosophy

The course provides a study of the main concepts, discussions, and philosophical proposals in the field of philosophy of language. Topics and authors examined include semantics (Gottlob Frege); language analysis theory (Bertrand Russell); meaning theory (Ludwig Wittgenstein).

This course explores central and fundamental areas of contemporary metaphysics: the nature of ordinary material objects. Topics include free will and determinism, causation and laws of nature, change and time, events and persistence, personal identity, and substance and properties.

Students who complete a term paper are awarded one extra unit for each part. Total units possible for both parts are eight. The course focuses on the philosophy of contemporary language. The course has two parts: A and B. Students must take both parts. No partial credit is possible. Part A is an introduction to contemporary philosophy of language and focuses on truth and relativism. Part B focuses on logical reasoning and rational argumentation on the topic of post-truth. The course includes lectures, quizzes on the e-learning materials, and peer instruction based on the Kahoot model. Assessment is based on a final research paper on a pre-approved topic and an oral exam on class lectures, required readings, and special materials.

This course presents the main results in metalogic, including the soundness and completeness of first-order deductive systems, their expressive limitations and the central concepts of set theory, concentrating on the concept of cardinality. It also introduces the student to basic logical techniques, including inductive and recursive definitions and inductive proofs.

The first part of this course focuses on divine necessity and Anselm’s ontological argument for the existence of God. The second part is devoted to the problem of evil. The course then turns to religious epistemology, examining some contemporary approaches to the rational justification of religious belief.

The course continues the examination of philosophical problems related to language, emphasizing contemporary developments regarding the concepts, distinctions, and approaches to the philosophy of language . Topics and authors examined include Mill's theory of names; Frege's theory of conceptual terms; Russell's theory of the analysis of language; Wittgenstein's TRACTATUS; Kripke's semantics; Putnam's theory of natural kind terms.

This course focuses on the history of Buddhist philosophy, which spreads out over 2,500 years in India and East Asia. It covers the central themes of Buddhist philosophy, such as the Four Noble Truths and dependent origination. The course also includes aspects of the historical influence of Indian Buddhism on East Asian culture. 

 

 

This seminar is an initial foray into planning an exhibition that aims to trace the history of the Art of Memory which gave birth to the field of museology. The course adopts a global perspective. Beside the medieval and early modern European inheritance of Greco-Roman mnemotechnics, some other weekly topics of discussion include: papermaking, writing, and memory in Han Dynasty China; memorization, contemplation, and revelation in Tibetan Thangka images; repetition and recognition in Islamic calligraphy and geometric ornament; ethnic memory, cultural identity, and the emergence of ethnology. The course also examines some modern memories, e.g., Bergson's MATTER AND MEMORY; Philip K. Dick's DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?; Nabokov's autobiographical SPEAK, MEMORY; Joseph Beuys's false memories, Gordon Matta-Clark's displaced fragments of memories; and artistic utterance as cultural oracle in the immortalizing prose-poem sculptures of Jenny Holzer. The basic question that the seminar addresses is: How does one go about curating an exhibition that displays the art and architecture of memory and its place in the human imagination?