- Docente: Sebastiano Moruzzi
- Credits: 6
- Language: Italian
- Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures
- Campus: Bologna
- Corso: First cycle degree programme (L) in Philosophy (cod. 0957)
Learning outcomes
The Philosophy Laboratory is focused on building the fundamental skills needed in the philosophical work: critical thinking, careful reading, and essay writing. We will use a masterpiece of the philosophical tradition for training the students in exercising and developing these skills.
Course contents
ONLINE ENROLLMENT TO THE PHILOSOPHY LABORATORY
In order to enrol to the Laboratorio di Filosofia G.D
(dott. Moruzzi) please follow these steps:
- go to https://elearning-cds.unibo.it/course/view.php?id=2547
- log in using your university account (YOUR-USERNAME@studio.unibo.it and your password);
- when the elearning system will ask you a password to enroll to the phil lab, please type: labfil2014moruzzi
- once the enrollment is completed you will receive a confirmation by email;
- if you are not allowed to enroll to this lab, it means that the lab has already reached the maximum number of enrolled students (30), please choose another phil lab.
Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations
Philosophy is with central questions on the nature of reality, on our knowledge if it, on our nature as persons and the meaning of life. A classical mode of asking such questions is to ask what is something and how this something is possible. What am I? What kind of entity am I? What kind of being am I? What does "I" refer to? What constitutes a person? Why is there something rather than nothing? How can we be free in our actions if these actions are causally determined by physical processes? And how can we be held responsible of these actions if we are not free?
In this seminar will deal with a selection of these questions (the nature of a person and of reality, the problem of free will) by a critical reading of Philosophical Explanations (1981) by the American philosopher Robert Nozick.
Del libro dice il filosofo MacIntyre:
"An important book...[Nozick is] a philosopher who is answering the questions posed by such philosophers as Kierkegaard, Sartre, Marcel and Buber with the aid of tools produced by such very different philosophers as W. V. Quine, Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam...[He displays a] striking and imaginative originality. For he does nothing less than propose a new way of doing philosophy...Perhaps one good way for the serious general reader to attack this often difficult but always rewarding book would be to begin at the end. First read the fine last chapter on 'Philosophy and the Meaning of Life'...It should then be very clear why it is important for you, whoever you are, to go back and read the rest of this book." (Alasdair MacIntyre New York Times Book Review)
Start date: Friday March 6th 2015 11am, aula 7 (via Zamboni 38, Bologna).
Class hours: Fridays 11am-1pm, aula 7 (via Zamboni 38, Bologna).
Readings/Bibliography
Robert Nozick, Philosophical explanations, Cambridge, Mass :
Harvard University Press, 1981. Selections from Metaphysics and
Value.
Teaching methods
The Philosophy Laboratory is articulated into three phases:
Phase 1: Philosophical Explanations will be presented
with its main thesis and arguments and will be explained in
relation to the philosophical context in which Nozick worked.
Phase 2: the book will be divided into parts that will be
the object, together with some critical literature, of
presentations of the students; the teacher will supervise the
students in preparing the presentations. Discussion leaders are
required to prepare an handout, while every other students
attending the sessions is required to read the assigned reading
before the session (a online test will check whether the
reading has been done, failure of the test is equivalent to an
unexcused absence).
Phase 3: each student will have to write a short essay, the
essay will consist in a critical discussion of some the topics of
the Philosophical Explanations.
Assessment methods
The assessment will be 50% based on the presentation and 50% based
on the essay writing. It is required substantial understanding of
the themes of Naming and necessity together with the
capacity of critical discussion of these themes. The assessment
will be especially sensitive to the clarity of the presentation and
of the essay and to the ability to extract argumentative structure
of the text.
Attendance is mandatory.
Teaching tools
- Handouts
- online webplatform
- Online materials with AMS Campus
Office hours
See the website of Sebastiano Moruzzi