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Course Criteria
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3.00 Credits
Distribution Course in Hist & Tradition. Class of 2009 & prior only. Kahn, S.Meyer. This course will involve an intensive reading of a number of Plato's dialogues. We will also pay attention to the background from which Plato's views emerged and ask what it is that makes Plato at least the first, if not also the greatest, philosopher of the western world. We will discuss the character of Socrates, through whom Plato usually expresses his own view, and examine the relations between Socrates and the Sophists with whom Plato constantly contrasts him. We will concentrate on Socrates' views on virtue and the good life, the possibility of teaching people to be good, Plato's theory of Forms asan answer to Socrates' questions and its relations to Parmenides and Plato's later modifications of that theory.
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3.00 Credits
Distribution Course in Hist & Tradition. Class of 2009 & prior only. Kahn, S.Meyer. Fulfills General Requirement II: History & Tradition. A systematic survey of Aristotle's principal works in different branches of philosophy and science, including logic, biology, theory of science, philosophy of nature, metaphysics and psychology, with particular attention to his work in political theory and moral philosophy.
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3.00 Credits
Society Sector. All classes. Meyer, S. Also fulfills General Requirement in History & Tradition for Class of 2009 and prior. A survey of the ethical theories debated by philosophers in Classical Greece and Rome. Plato, Aristotle, Stoics, Epicureans and Pyrrhonist Sceptics offer competing answers to the fundamental question raised by Socrates: How are we to live That is, what is the best life for a human being These philosophers generally agree that virtue is an important part of the best human life, but disagree about whether it is the greatest good (Epicurus, for example claims that pleasure is the highest good), or whether there are any other goods (for example, health, wealth, family). Much attention is paid in their theories to accounts of the virtues of character, and to the place of wisdom in the best sort of human life.
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3.00 Credits
Kahn. The origins of psychological theory and concepts of psyche in Greek literature and philosophy. Readings will include Homer and other poets, as well as Heraclitus, Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus.
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3.00 Credits
Domotor. This course provides a conceptual and calculational approach to scientific reasoning with special regards to hypothesis formation, design and analysis of experiments for students with little or no formal background in probability calculus or statistics. Experimental inquiry is viewed in terms of a series of models, each with different questions, stretching from low-level representations of data and experiment to higher level hypotheses and theories of interest.
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3.00 Credits
May be counted as a General Requirement Course in Science studies. Class of 2009 & prior only. Domotor, Akhundov. A discussion of some philosophical questions that naturally arise in scientific research. Issues to be covered include: The nature of scientific explanation, the relation of theories to evidence, and the development of science (e.g., does science progress Are earlier theories refuted or refined ).
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3.00 Credits
Natural Science & Mathematics Sector. Class of 2010 and beyond. Domotor, Weisberg. This course consists of a detailed examination of evolutionary theory and its philosophical foundations. The course begins with a consideration of Darwin's formulation of evolutionary theory and the main influences on Darwin. We will then consider two contemporary presentations of the theory Richard Dawkins' and Richard Lewontin's. The remainder of the course will deal with a number of foundational issues and may include discussions of adaptation, what constitutes a species, whether there is evolutionary progress, and the concept of fitness. We will also discuss the units of selection, the alleged reduction of classical genetics to molecular genetics, and the possibility of grounding ethics in evolutionary theory.
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3.00 Credits
Distribution Course in Society. Class of 2009 & prior only. Staff. Investigation of such topics as the unity of consciousness and personal identity. Some attention will be given to the relations between conceptions of the self and conceptions of morality.
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3.00 Credits
Weisberg. This course is about the foundations of contemporary social science. It focuses on the nature of social systems, the similarities and differences between social and natural sciences, the construction, analysis, and confirmation of social theories, and the nature of social explanations. Specific topis may include structuralism and functional explanation, methodological individualism, qualitative vs. quantitative social theorizing, positivist and radical critiques of the social sciences, rational choice, game theory, evolutionary modeling, and agent-based modeling. In addition, the course will examine questions about objectivity in the social sciences. As part of this course, students will be expected to construct and analyze simple computational models of social phenomena.
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3.00 Credits
Distribution Course in Hist & Tradition. Class of 2009 & prior only. Schneider. The Nature of Knowledge: The central project of this class is to inquire into the scope and limits of human knowledge. What can we know, if anything How should we define "knowledge" We will begin by thinking about philosophical skepticism and related attempts to define knowledge. Then, we shall turn to epistemological issues concerning perception. Following this, we will ask methodological questions about epistemology and analytic philosophy more generally, such as whether epistemology should become a branch of cognitive science, and whether attempts to define ordinary language concepts, like "knowledge", will ever succeed.
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