Schedule

Fall 2008 and Spring 2009: No classes this year. I'm writing a book on causation.

Fall 2009: Science, Perception, and Reality; Graduate Course on Metaphysics (Reduction, Physicalism, Supervenience, Metaphysical Modality)

Spring 2010: Metaphysics; Time

Fall 2010: Science, Perception, and Reality; Graduate Pro-seminar

Spring 2011: Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics; Another course to be determined

Fall 2011: Science, Perception, and Reality; Graduate Course on Causation

Spring 2012: Philosophy of Science; Philosophy of Relativity

PHIL0210 Science, Perception, and Reality

This lower level course is essentially an introduction to philosophy concentrating on philosophy of mind, perception, philosophy of science, and metaphysics. It is good for any student who wants exposure to philosophy with a bent away from ethics and the history of philosophy and more towards problem-solving: long-standing puzzles about personal identity, free will, artificial intelligence, consciousness. It is offered once every year.

This course is now a CAP course, meaning that some students will also have me for an advisor. Hah!

Approximate Class Size: 30

Related Courses: Psychology 0270 Perception The experimental and theoretical literature dealing with all aspects of the perceptual process. Specific topics include the perception of color, form, motion, and depth. Demonstrations are used to illustrate phenomena. Psychology 0440 Perception and the Mind How do the mind and brain take physical energy such as light or sound and convert it into our perception of the world? This course examines the behavioral and biological bases of human and animal perceptual systems, including vision, audition, smell, taste, and touch. Particular emphasis is placed on high-level perception and how it related to other cognitive systems.

PHIL1590 Philosophy of Science

This is a relatively easy upper lever course. You can get by without previous exposure to philosophy, but the material is challenging enough to be a solid survey course for philosophy concentrators. We discuss the classics in philosophy of science, especially induction and explanation, and metaphysical issues raised by science (the status of laws, reductionism). About a quarter of the class is essentially philosophy of biology because it's interesting, not overly technical, and because Brown doesn't currently offer a stand-alone philosophy of biology course.

Approximate Class Size: 20

PHIL1670 Time

This is a relatively easy upper lever course. The first half of the course has little technical content, while the second half involves a moderate amount: a bit of special relativity and some statistical mechanics. We discuss various approaches to the passage of time. This course is a good one for you if you have wondered about time travel paradoxes, whether you can change the past, why your consciousness can't hop back to when you were young, and whether the flow of time is just an illusion due to entropy increasing.

Approximate Class Size: 20

PHIL1610 Philosophy of Relativity Physics

This is a relatively hard upper lever course because of the technical content. No formal prerequisites exist, but to understand relativity properly you will need to learn the basics of differential geometry. This material is taught in the course, but you will need to know your calculus and not be afraid of derivatives, curls, and vector spaces. It benefits you to have some mathematical skill or previous exposure.

It is a great course for students of physics and related fields because we focus on the core conceptual issues without getting bogged down in solving physics problems. If you have been frustrated because you get confused about general covariance, the principle of relativity, and the equivalence principle, this is a good course for you. If you think that the special principle of relativity says that the laws of nature are the same in any inertial reference frame, this is a good course for you. If you have ever wondered (as Einstein did) whether space is an objective thing out there in the world or is instead merely a convenient fiction for understanding the motion of matter, this is a good course for you.

It is also a good course for students who find the essential ideas of relativity interesting but do not need training in the practicalities of how to solve quantitative physics problems.

Approximate Class Size: 20

Related Courses: Physics 0080 Introduction to Relativity and Quantum Physics A mathematically rigorous introduction to special relativity and quantum mechanics. The second course in the three-semester sequence (PHYS 0470 being the third) for those seeking the strongest foundation in physics.

PHIL1620 Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics

This is a relatively hard upper lever course because of the technical content. No prerequisites are assumed, but the content involves readings that have standard formulations of quantum physics, which is usually confusing and often unnecesarily complicated. I try to minimize the mathematics, but some is necessary to understand what is going on, so the mathematically challenged will have trouble.

Like the philosophy of relativity course, it is excellent for students of physics and related fields because we focus on the core conceptual issues without getting bogged down in solving physics problems. Quantum mechanics is hard enough to understand without having to do lots of complicated integrals. Examples of the issues: What does the theory actually say about reality? What classical aspects of our understanding of reality are challenged? How reasonable are the various ways to undersand quantum reality---many worlds, spontaneous collapse, hidden variables, etc.?

It is also a good course for students who find the essential ideas of quantum mechanics interesting but do not need training in the practicalities of how to solve quantitative physics problems.

Approximate Class Size: 20