The goal of the course is presenting a survey of the philosophical movement, loosely called “structuralism” and/or “poststructuralism”, as it developed in France roughly in the decade 1960-70. The course will try to reconstruct this movement as related to an effort to consider (and if necessary, reconstruct) the social and human sciences as sciences in their own right, along the lines of Saussure’s linguistics. Along the way, we also discuss the more directly philosophical aspects of this movement, as related more specifically to the question of the “subject” and that of the “text”.
The evaluation of the students will take place by a take-home examination, the questions of which will be given in the last session of the course. The students will have ten days to respond. Alternatively, they may choose to write a paper of 5000 words on a subject they will have to discuss with the instructors.
In this seminar, we will study the psychology of decision-making by presenting relevant theories and scientific tools from the cognitive and behavioral sciences, economics, biology, philosophy, and game theory. This interdisciplinary approach will help us understand how we make choices under uncertainty, based on our preferences, available information, financial circumstances, and social and institutional context. We will examine the qualities of rationality and the ways in which we systematically deviate from rational choices by falling into cognitive biases and errors in judgment. We will also explore the role emotions play in decision-making and how choices are shaped by beliefs and interactions with others. Finally, we will explore the broader implications of individual and group decision-making on institutional functioning and policy formation.
The course focuses on the study of the philosophical movements that were directly associated with the natural sciences and Mathematics from the beginning of the 20th century up to the present. The 20th century is marked by radical changes in Physics (Relativity Theory, Quantum Mechanics), as following radical changes in Mathematics mostly during the 19th century. Such transformations in the natural sciences and in Mathematics obliged philosophy to respond by transforming itself. The outcome has been the establishment of the analytic philosophical tradition and that of philosophy of science in the strict sense as inaugurated by Logical Empiricism or Logical Positivism. The teaching goal is to familiarize students from all disciplines with the major events in the history of Mathematics and of Physics in relation with the birth of analytic philosophy as well as with the birth and the subsequent development of philosophy of science in the strict sense.
The course offers an introduction to the contemporary debate on the nature of propositions. The functions performed by propositions are the following: 1. [Primary] bearers of truth and falsity in relation to context 2. Contents of sentences 3. Objects of propositional attitudes/thoughts 4. References of that-clauses and other 5. Bearers of modal truth [necessarily true/potentially true] 6. Propositions are the relata of implication relations and/or logical relations.
However, as David Lewis David Lewis (1986:54) points out, Conditions 1-6 are a jumble of conflicting desiderata. The questions we will consider are: a. Are there things that play all these roles? b. What is their nature to be able to play these roles? In the first part of the course we examine classical approaches to propositions that include the following positions: A proposition is:
A sequence of things, properties, and relations and/or the ways of presenting them
A function of worlds to truth-values
A set of possible worlds
A structural tree
However, one can criticize the above approaches as they do not explain how 'such' propositions represent something, they are primary truth/false beacons etc. In the second part of the course, we examine contemporary approaches to the nature of propositions Specifically, we consider the following positions:
Propositions as acts
Propositions as products of acts
Propositions as facts
Propositions as properties of worlds
