schopenhauer, nietzsche, marx
Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Marx
Compare Will, power, types of men, pessimism, dialectical materialism, and polylogism.
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comte, bentham, mill, spencer
Comte, Bentham, Mill, Spencer
Explain Positivist science without causality, social religion, hedonic calculus, evolution, and concessions to collectivism.
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- How did Comte’s extension of Hume lead to a rejection of self?
- In the absence of causality, how does Comte defend science?
- Explain Comte’s resolution of science and religion in his theory of society.
- Why did Bentham and Mill reject final answers in logic?
- What did the utilitarians use as an objective basis for their ethics?
- What are some of the flaws with the hedonic calculus?
- How did Spencer mistake the implications of evolution for human society?
- Explain how Spencer’s ethics led to his concession to collectivism in politics.
pragmatism I
Pragmatism I
Trace the course lineage from Descartes, Hegel, and Kant; explain doubt, dis-ease, truth-as-works, and meaning.
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- Explain how pragmatism developed from implications of each of Descartes, Hegel, and Kant.
- Why is dis-ease considered to be the origin of thinking?
- How do pragmatists differentiate between something that is doubtful and something that is dubitable?
- Why is the pragmatist mantra “the true is what works” a reversal of the correct view?
- Explain the pragmatist theory of meaning. Why is this contentless?
- What is the difference between how the two sub-schools of pragmatism define “desirable consequences”?
pragmatism II & logical positivism
Pragmatism II and Logical Positivism
Analyze logic, ethics, politics, false alternatives, analytic-synthetic dichotomy, verification, and rejection of metaphysics.
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- Describe the pragmatist view of logic.
- Why is Dewey sometimes mistaken for a proponent of scientific ethics?
- How does the pragmatist ethics collapse when one searches for a standard of value?
- Why is the pragmatist ethics ultimately parasitical?
- What implications does pragmatism have for political life?
- Explain one of the false alternatives within the pragmatist approach.
- How does the analytic-synthetic dichotomy lead to conventionalism?
- What is the Logical Positivist’s theory of meaning?
- Why were Logical Positivists unable to agree about a principle of verifiability?
- How does metaphysics become meaningless according to Positivism?
analytic philosophy
Analytic philosophy
Explain Moore, definite descriptions, material implication, logical atomism, language games, and the proposed function of philosophy.
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phase problem
Choose one post-Kantian school and show which earlier premises it retains, which it rejects, and why its ethical or political conclusions follow in the course interpretation.
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