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Plato and Descartes (PH145-15)
What would you do if you had a magic ring that made you invisible, and which guaranteed that, whatever you did, you’d go unnoticed? Perhaps you’d spend your time like an invisible superhero, striking from nowhere to trip up bag-snatchers, using your power to expose criminal conspiracies by companies to use child slaves to make their products, or to dump toxic waste in rivers? If you did do things like this, would it bother you that no one ever gave you even the tiniest bit of credit, or even acknowledged that it was you that had done all of that? On the other hand, with the power of invisibility and a guarantee that you would never get caught, you could take what you wanted from anyone, at any time, anywhere. And you wouldn’t have to fear punishment, or shame, or retribution. What would you do?
In the Republic, Plato uses this question, and others like it, to help us think about what justice amounts to, and why we should be just. His profound answers to these questions, as well as his further claims about how to organize society in a way that promotes justice, are at the foundation of the discipline of philosophy. We will think and argue with Plato on the way to considering our own answers to these questions.
What do you now know most certainly of all? Perhaps you take yourself to know that there is a computer screen in front of you because you can see one? Or, perhaps you can take yourself to know that a car alarm is going off outside because you can hear one? Most of the things we know with certainty appear to come to us through the senses; through sight, smell and touch. But does all of our knowledge about the world come to us through the senses? Suppose that there was a powerful evil demon who has brought it about that the experiences that you are having now are all radically misleading about the real world. There is no computer, no cup of coffee on the desk, and no walls that surround you, even though it appears that there are. If all of the evidence of the senses cannot be trusted, is there anything at all that you are able to know in these circumstances? If so, how?
In the Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes uses an exercise of this kind to argue that it is possible to arrive at truths about the world independent of the use of the senses, simply through reasoning and reflection. This is an idea that places Descartes squarely in the Platonic tradition. But Descartes also combines his Platonism with the worldview of the new physics. What reason reveals—according to Descartes—is that the world is very different from the way it appears, lacking colour, taste, smell and sound, and composed only of extended stuff. Is he right?
The first 5-6 weeks of this module introduce students to Kant’s Critique of Judgement, the foundational text of modern aesthetics for both the analytic and the continental traditions. It aims to give students a good overview of this difficult text, and to help them engage critically with both key ideas in the text, and some of the debates in recent scholarship and aesthetic theory to which it has given rise. It will cover aspects of the Introduction, particularly the idea of reflective judgement, the Analytic of the Beautiful, the Deduction of Aesthetic Judgements, the Analytic of the Sublime, as well as Kant’s generally overlooked remarks on fine art and genius. Key questions to be considered include: are judgements of taste subjective or objective, and in what sense?; what is the relation between the sublime and morality for Kant; how are work of art possible? We will also consider the extent to which Kant’s analysis of aesthetic judgement can be applied to works of art, and ways in which this might be problematic. The remaining 3-4 weeks of the course focus on Martin Heidegger’s antipathy to aesthetics as a philosophical understanding of art. Our focus will be the ‘Origin of the Work of Art’ informed by Heidegger’s critique of modern subjectivism in ‘The Age of the World Picture’ and contrast between art and technology as ‘modes of disclosure’ in ‘The Question Concerning Technology.’ Questions to be considered include: why is Heidegger hostile to the very idea of aesthetics as a philosophical understanding of art? What is the ontological function of works of art according to Heidegger, and is this credible? What is the relation of art to truth on the one hand and technology on the other?
This course is a first introduction to philosophy of mathematics, via one of our most fascinating and perplexing concepts: the infinite. We encounter the concept of infinity in myriad ways. In Zeno’s paradoxes of time, space, and motion, the idea of infinite division is used to argue in favour of a radical monism. The ancient atomists Leucippus and Democritus claimed that the universe consisted of an infinity of atoms moving in an infinite void, and contemporary cosmology still considers the issue of whether the universe is infinite to be an open question.
But what does it mean for something to be infinite? It is mathematics that offers us the precise definitions that let us begin to answer this question, and thus in mathematics that many of the most important questions concerning the infinite arise. Do the infinite structures that we talk about in mathematics really exist? If so, how can we have knowledge of them? Is it even coherent to talk about the truly infinite, or does it fall victim to paradox? This course will investigate these and other questions by engaging with the ideas of philosophers and mathematicians from across history, with a focus on the reception of Georg Cantor’s theory of sets, and the crisis in the foundations of mathematics that it precipitated.
Photography is ubiquitous. Advertising, the internet and social media depend upon it. With this come worries about image-manipulation and so-called “fake news.” Prior to the worries provoked by digital imaging, photography was generally taken to be a reliable source of knowledge about the world: assuming that images have not been digitally manipulated or misleadingly staged, we have reason to believe what we see in forensic, scientific and medical photographs, if not advertising or propaganda—certainly by comparison to what we see in hand-made images. We rely on crime scene photographs for a reason. Call this photography’s (relative) “epistemic advantage:” It depends on the intuition that machine-generated images are free from certain kinds of unreliability (selective attention, false beliefs, etc) that human beings suffer from.
But photography is also taken to be aesthetically rewarding: it is widely collected and exhibited in museums, and we appreciate different photographer’s styles or oeuvres for different reasons—not least because different photographers and different schools of photography depict the world in very different ways, focusing on different subject matters, and stressing some features of the scene while suppressing others. We appreciate art in general for these kinds of reasons, and photography is no different in this regard. Call this photography’s “aesthetic capacity.” But note that such capacities are precisely what photography’s “epistemic advantage” depends on bypassing—by providing an ostensibly objective, or “belief-independent” recording of the world.
So it looks as if the reasoning, and underlying intuitions, behind attributing epistemic and aesthetic capacities to photography conflict. If so, both cannot be true and one will need to be surrendered. This has generated debate between “orthodox” and “new theorists” of photography over the past decade. Orthodox theorists foreground photography’s epistemic capacities; new theorists stress its aesthetic capacities. Spoiler: I’m a new theorist, of sorts. One reason for being a new theorist is that it enables us to take the intentions, beliefs and other mental states of photographers seriously, and this opens up the possibility of using photography for various artistic, ethical and political purposes—in addition to its well documented scientific, medical and forensic uses—some of which we will look at on this course. The challenge for new theorists will be how to account in turn for photography’s epistemic capacities in manner consistent their claims for its aesthetic capacities.
*This module website are currently being updated for the 20/21 academic year*
Welcome to the Public Policy for 21st Century Challenges course for the academic year 2020/2021!
Lectures begin in week 1 of the autumn term and finish in week 20, which is the last week of the spring term in the following year. The exceptions are weeks 6 and 16, which are PAIS Reading Weeks. Please note that there are no seminars in week 1.
Please note that the seminars begin in week 2 of the autumn term and finish in week 20, which is the last week of the spring term in the following year. The exceptions are weeks 6 and 16, which are PAIS Reading Weeks.
Welcome to the Gender and Development Moodle page!
The module is taught through one lecture and one seminar each week. The lectures provide an introduction and overview of the topic under discussion and the seminars explore the main issues in more detail.
Please be aware that there is NO seminars in both week 1 and week 2, but you will need to complete a group exercise before week 3 (detailed instructions regarding the exercise, please see announcement).
**Seminar classes begin in Week 3** of the autumn term and finish in Week 20, which is the last week of the spring term in the following year. The exceptions are Weeks 6 and 16, which are PAIS Reading Weeks.
The main teaching part of the course is scheduled to finish in Week 20 to allow you to complete essays over the Easter break. When we reconvene in the summer term, we will be holding revision classes.
in office room E1.15
Introduction
Welcome to the website for PO380: 'Britain and the War on Terror'.
The module director is Dr Sam Cooke
Email: s.cooke.2@warwick.ac.uk
Should you have any questions or problems, please do not hesitate to come and see me during my advice and feedback hours.
Lectures begin in week 1 of the autumn term (and seminars in week 2) and the course finishes in week 20 (i.e. the last week of the spring term in the following year). The exceptions are weeks 6 and 16, which are PAIS Reading Weeks.
Welcome to Fundamentals in Quantitative Research Methods. All essential information about this module is in the Syllabus below. In the sections below you will find more precise information and documents 5 or 6 days ahead of each class.
Do not forget to refer to general information about your course provided by your respective department. In PAIS for example, this is the MA Handbook, which provides precise guidance on essay writing, and many other useful topics.
For personal issues whose solution is neither on Moodle or in your MA Handbook, please come and meet the lecturer (Philippe Blanchard) or your seminar tutor (P.B. or Alvaro Cabrejas Egea) during their weekly advice and feedback hours (to be indicated here soon). We are pleased to help as much as we can. If you cannot come during the A&F hours, just make an appointment for another time over email.
This is a short (approx. 20 minute) course which covers the basics of research ethics at the University of Warwick, including why research ethics is important, what needs ethical review at Warwick and what makes a good ethics application. The course is suitable for staff and students.
Please find us here Course: Researcher Development Online (RDO) | Moodle@Warwick
This SLS/WMS Waste Management and Safety at Gibbet Hill/ Innovation Campus, Stratford-upon-Avon (Wellesbourne) course covers the processes, procedures and decision-making in purchasing and using materials for the laboratory.
The course covers good decision choices that will manage, reduce waste and increase the safety of users.