Problems of Philosophy

The course has two goals. First, to give you a sense of what philosophers think about and why. Here we look at several persistent philosophical problems, including: the existence of God, skeptical challenges to our knowledge of the external world, the nature and possibility of free will, and how a person remains the same over time as their bodily and psychological traits change. The second goal is to get you thinking philosophically yourself. This will help you develop your critical and argumentative skills more generally. Readings will be from late, great classical authors and influential contemporary figures.

Over the course of Discover we will cover 4 main themes:

1. Existence of God
a. We will examine the arguments from design and philosophical problems with the credibility of testimony of miracles
2. Knowledge and Reality
a. Can we really know that we are not just a brain in a vat in an environment controlled by an evil scientist? Is it really more likely that we live in a computer simulation than a base physical universe?
3. Personal Identity
a. Will we be the same person when we are 60 as we are today? Why? Should we be willing to step into a teleportation machine that recreates a person that is physically identical to us on and has our complete set of memories?
4. Free will
a. If as physicists tell us, everything that happens is determined by the movement of the very small particles we are made of, can there really be such a thing as free will?

By the end of the course you will be able to examine philosophical arguments, identify them as valid and or sound, and critically examine some of the most fascinating questions of our existence.

Mojmir Stehlik

Mojmir studied political science and economics at Yale College. Since graduating he has done everything from evaluating the effectiveness of Slovak police through helping grow the high school debate programs around Europe to researching the implications of political polarization of the development of advanced artificial intelligence. He is currently working at the UK AI Safety Institute on testing frontier AI models (think GPT-4) for dangerous cyber capabilities. In his free time, he enjoys reading every book that David Foster Wallace ever wrote, cycling near Thames and achieving samatha through meditation.

Session D

A glimpse into the music industry

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AI for Fundamental Research

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Biological Psychiatry

Aleksa Petković

Computational Neuroscience

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Discovering medical science

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Energy and society

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From Thoreau to Tinyhouse

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History from Liberty to Liberation

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Political Economics

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Problems of Philosophy

Mojmir Stehlik

Quantum Computing

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Society in Stories

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Systems thinking

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The Arab Middle East

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The Economics of Human Behavior

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The Politics of Gender: Narratives and Resistance

Ecem Nazlı Üçok