Philosophy 100 - Introduction To Philosophy
Fall
2017
05
4.00
John Robison
TU TH 11:30AM 12:45PM
UMass Amherst
33359
Content varies somewhat depending on instructor; students are encouraged to read the detailed descriptions published each semester on the Department's website. The following are typical. (1) Introduction to philosophical thinking, stressing the formulation and evaluation of logical arguments, with readings from Plato and Descartes, and recent works on good and evil, immortality, and personal identity. (2) Introduction to argument analysis and the interpretation of philosophical texts, with skepticism the central theme; topics include the structure of skeptical arguments, skeptical worries about sense perception and the intellect, and the problem of induction. (3) Introduction to some basic problems of philosophy, including knowledge and scepticism, personal identity, causation, and universals. Readings from Plato, Descartes, Berkeley, Hume, and Russell. (4) Discussion of historically important philosophical issues that continue to be important in contemporary thought, including human knowledge, God and religious belief, mind and body, and human freedom. (Gen.Ed. AL)
Open to Scientific Thinking RAP students in James Hall. PHIL 100-05
See http://www.umass.edu/rap/scientific-thinking-rap.
The first semester of your college career is an ideal time to take a philosophy course. One arrives with a picture of the world - packed with views about what counts as successful and responsible inquiry, about when we're on the hook for our actions, about what morality requires - which can appear utterly commonsensical. Yet, one quickly finds that students with backgrounds different from one's own will often have competing (apparently?) commonsensical pictures! Philosophy invites us to reevaluate these pictures through careful argumentation and engagement with empirical literature.
This course focuses on some philosophical questions pertaining to the phenomenon of implicit bias. Without knowing it (and, often, while very sincerely denying it), employers make hiring decisions which are largely affected by whether the name at the top of a resume is taken to be a woman's name or a man's name. In many of these cases, the employers explicitly and sincerely believe that they are selecting a candidate based purely on their qualifications and that a person's gender has no bearing on whether s/he is qualified for the job.
What is alarming is that these implicit biases operate subconsciously, and even someone who spends lots of time sincerely advocating for gender equality may unknowingly have her behaviors and judgments affected by these implicit biases.
The gravity of this reality demands that we think critically about how to understand and respond to the phenomenon (which may be more widespread than we once thought!). Thinking about implicit bias for even a moment will immediately give rise to a number of philosophical questions about responsibility, knowledge, self-knowledge, morality, and free will.
This course aims to introduce some of these questions and to equip students with the resources to articulate, develop, defend, and evaluate some of the plausible answers.
See http://www.umass.edu/rap/scientific-thinking-rap.
The first semester of your college career is an ideal time to take a philosophy course. One arrives with a picture of the world - packed with views about what counts as successful and responsible inquiry, about when we're on the hook for our actions, about what morality requires - which can appear utterly commonsensical. Yet, one quickly finds that students with backgrounds different from one's own will often have competing (apparently?) commonsensical pictures! Philosophy invites us to reevaluate these pictures through careful argumentation and engagement with empirical literature.
This course focuses on some philosophical questions pertaining to the phenomenon of implicit bias. Without knowing it (and, often, while very sincerely denying it), employers make hiring decisions which are largely affected by whether the name at the top of a resume is taken to be a woman's name or a man's name. In many of these cases, the employers explicitly and sincerely believe that they are selecting a candidate based purely on their qualifications and that a person's gender has no bearing on whether s/he is qualified for the job.
What is alarming is that these implicit biases operate subconsciously, and even someone who spends lots of time sincerely advocating for gender equality may unknowingly have her behaviors and judgments affected by these implicit biases.
The gravity of this reality demands that we think critically about how to understand and respond to the phenomenon (which may be more widespread than we once thought!). Thinking about implicit bias for even a moment will immediately give rise to a number of philosophical questions about responsibility, knowledge, self-knowledge, morality, and free will.
This course aims to introduce some of these questions and to equip students with the resources to articulate, develop, defend, and evaluate some of the plausible answers.