Mar 28, 2024  
Catalogue 2013-2014 
    
Catalogue 2013-2014 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

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PHIL 105 - Philosophical Questions


1 unit(s)


105-01a: The attitudes that we adopt towards other people, towards our surroundings, and towards ourselves reveal much about the sort of people we are and the sort of world we inhabit. This course explores the philosophical significance of some particularly important yet problematic attitudes: trust and suspicion, resentment and sympathy, anger and forgiveness, pride and guilt, anxiety and irritation, sentimentality and irony. When are each of these attitudes justified, and when not? Why are certain people (or certain parts of our lives) dominated by one attitude rather than another? Which attitudes are most important for knowledge, for morality, for politics, and for art?

105-02a: What is philosophy? This course will introduce you to philosophy as the assimilation of human experiences-perceptual, imaginative, moral, and emotional-with the power and limitations of human reason. We will look at how philosophers apply reason and argumentation to perceptual experiences in their search for knowledge and rationality. We will investigate the issues of personal identity, and the existence of unperceivable things, to see how philosophers use reason to make sense of our imaginative experiences. Finally, we will look at the application of reason to moral and emotional experiences in the search for the right account of moral good, freedom, and moral responsibility. The topics in this course will be quite abstract, and students will need to participate actively in class discussion to do well. Students will leave the course with an appreciation for the breadth and scope of philosophical thinking.

105b: An exploration of some central philosophical concerns, such as the role of feelings versus reason in determining values, the nature of knowledge and the limits of knowledge, the relation between mind and body, appropriate attitudes towards death and suffering, and the possibility of objectivity. 105-01a: Ms. Church. 105-02a: Mr. Lam. 105b: TBA.



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