Issues in Metaphysics
Prerequisite: Students must have taken at least two philosophy courses.
This course studies various philosophical issues regarding the nature of all reality, including existence, causality, relations, abstract entities, purpose, the possibility of knowledge of reality.
Outcomes: Students will be able to understand and articulate a deeper awareness of philosophical problems and answers regarding key metaphysical issues.
Philosophy of AI & Computation
Prerequisite: Students must have taken at least two philosophy courses.
This course studies various philosophical issues regarding the nature of all reality, including existence, causality, relations, abstract entities, purpose, the possibility of knowledge of reality.
Outcomes: Students will be able to understand and articulate a deeper awareness of philosophical problems and answers regarding key metaphysical issues.
Prerequisite: Students must have taken at least two philosophy courses.
This course tries to answer the question: What is computation? In so doing, the course also tries to answer two related questions: Is computation the same as intelligence? If so, how does artificial, or computational, intelligence relate to human intelligence? The course is divided into two parts. The first part surveys philosophical approaches to computation beginning with Aristotle and tracing threads of logic and mechanization through Blaise Pascal, Gottfried Leibniz, Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing, Kurt Gödel, Ludwig Wittgenstein, John von Neumann, Norbert Wiener, and Marvin Minsky. The second part explores recent philosophical responses to artificial intelligence including Nick Bostrom, Raymond Kurtzweil, Shannon Vallor, and Jaron Lanier.
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