PHIL 310 - Seminar in Analytic Philosophy

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

Topic for 2026/27b: Minds, Rules, and Mischief. Our minds are very good at following, finding, and inventing rules and even, on occasion, breaking them. These capacities are crucial for scientific reasoning, artistic work, and social cognition. But what do they require, and how might they have come about? Associative, intuitive processing is often contrasted with rule-based thought. Are these forms of cognition really as different as they’ve been made out to be? This course investigates these capacities across our minds and others, both animal and artificial. We begin by asking how humans use emotion and empathy to interpret and coordinate with one another. Then, we study how social categories arise and shape behavior, drawing on game-theoretic models and philosophical work on gossip and identity-based epistemology. Next, we turn to work that suggests a wealth of normative behavior in other animals. Finally, we ask what we can learn from chain-of-thought reasoning in AIs, what affective AI could be, and whether AIs can develop normative behavior spontaneously. Kate Pendoley.

Prerequisite(s): One prior course in Philosophy at the 200 level, or permission of the instructor.

One 3-hour period.

Course Format: CLS