Metaphysics and Epistemology

This course explores important questions in metaphysics and the theory of knowledge. Metaphysics examines questions about the ultimate constitution, structure, and reason (if any) for the universe and all that it contains. Theory of knowledge (also called epistemology) examines the nature of knowledge and other desirable ways of believing and finding truth about ourselves and the world. In this course, we’ll look at prominent viewpoints in metaphysics and epistemology, as well as their relation to important contemporary questions in scientific cosmology and the rapidly advancing field of artificial intelligence. Topics will include: the universe as a computer simulation, mind-body dualism, consciousness and the universe, the value of truth, ideal ways of effectively seeking truth, the nature of knowledge, and skepticism.

Can one replace a belief-based epistemology with some other basic mental capacity or state? What options are available for the theorist of knowledge? In this course we explore the possibility of building a theory of knowledge on the basis of attention skills. Various advantages of this approach will be discussed, including issues concerning encroachment, linguistic communication, and epistemic normativity.

Scientific claims might be objective in several ways; in particular, as being the result of a systematic and intersubjective procedure and as being supported by empirical data.

But science is not value-free. Lots of value judgments are involved in the production of scientific claims, and have to be. In this course, we will clarify what it means that science is not value-free and discuss examples that illustrate this claim.

We will distinguish between different kinds of values that are involved in science and reflect on why some value judgments are necessary to science. Lots of effort have been spent, in philosophy of science, in trying to rescue the value-free ideal of science. The goal of this course is to think about what a value-full ideal of science could be: what are the best ways in which values can be involved in science, what are the best effects that values can have on scientific development?

Course Attributes:

• UD-B: Physical Life Science

This course will allow the student to skillfully evaluate and assess central issues in philosophy of mind. The main topics reviewed in this course are: foundational issues in philosophy of mind; consciousness and its relation to cognition in general; the nature of intentionality; and the debate on internalism and externalism about mental content. The student will be able to interpret arguments about these topics, understand the main arguments in favor of philosophical views about the mind, develop their own assessment of these views, and engage in criticism.

Contemporary theories of the mind as a brain process and as a computational process. Foundations and approaches in the cognitive neurosciences.

Course Attributes:

UD-B: Physical Life Science

Our understanding of the development of 20th century philosophy of science is more nuanced today than it was only a few years ago. However, more work needs to be done to arrive at an adequate picture of how philosophical reflection on the sciences evolved during the last century. The aim of this course is to address one of the remaining blind spots, namely the role of phenomenology in 20th century philosophy of science. Phenomenologists are not usually listed among the canonical authors of philosophy of science. Given the fact that analyses of the formal, physical, and human sciences are ubiquitous in the phenomenological literature, this neglect may seem unjustified. Edmund Husserl is a particularly telling example in this respect: Not only that Husserl addressed many of the core issues in philosophy of science. He also made several original contributions, some of which were well ahead of their time: Husserl's discussion of the relations between lifeworld and scientific world was a model for Wilfrid Sellars' well-known distinction between manifest and scientific image. Husserl's understanding of scientific theories can be seen as a forerunner of the semantic view, as it was later articulated by Patrick Suppes, Frederick Suppe, Bas van Fraassen and others. Husserl offers one of the first systematic treatments of the role of idealizations in physics, an issue taken up in the 1980s by Ernan McMullin. Husserl's notions of "archaeology" and "sedimentation" as well as his emphasis on the historical and social embeddedness of science foreshadowed the "post-positivist" turn, usually associated with philosophers such as Thomas Kuhn, Ian Hacking or Peter Galison. The aim of this course is to give an overview of phenomenological philosophy with special emphasis on its relevance for the interpretation of the natural sciences. We will also shed light on one particular instance of the unfortunate alienation between Central-European and Anglo-American traditions in 20th and 21st century philosophy.