MA in Philosophy and History of Science

The seminar identifies distinctive questions and methods of analytic philosophy.   The seminar will consider the argumentative and textual strategies of different historical and contemporary texts and offer practice in focusing and structuring written work.  Students will learn how to present their own research and in produce research papers. The seminar will give students advice on publishing and developing a career in philosophy. And it will also teach generic academic skills and transferable skills, e.g. bibliographic practices, presentation skills, and the use of appropriate ICT.

This unit examines core issues in the philosophy of science, with an emphasis on epistemology/methodology rather than metaphysics.  Topics to be discussed include scientific method and progress, theories of probability, Bayesianism, confirmation theory, scientific explanation, scientific change, and realism versus constructive empiricism.

This unit covers philosophical issues related to basic physical theories, discussing issues such as the causal structure of space-time, conceptual questions in the foundations of quantum mechanics, and the role of probability in physics.

This unit will enable you to gain a good understanding of concepts and theories in evolutionary biology, and by the end of the series of seminars, you should be in a position to apply this knowledge in assessing the implications of modern biotechnology. Issues to be discussed in the seminars will include: the logical structure of evolutionary theory; the notions of fitness and adaptation; alternative conceptions of 'gene'; debates about the units of selection; the nature and individuation of species; theories of classification.

This unit concentrates on two or three of the scientific revolutions. The case studies will be selected from among (1) the Copernican revolution, (2) Lavoisier and the discovery of oxygen, (3) the emergence of Darwinism, (4) electromagnetism and the aether, and Einstein's relativity, and (5) the birth of quantum mechanics.

This unit covers philosophical issues related to mathematics, discussing issues such as the nature of mathematical objects (numbers, sets, functions), the justification of mathematical claims ("2+2=4", the Continuum Hypothesis), and the meaning of mathematical expressions.  The unit will provide a thorough introduction to some of the main programmes in contemporary philosophy of mathematics, in particular fictionalism, logicism and structuralism.

This unit concerns some of the key elements of the philosophy of medicine in their historical context. It focuses particularly on the philosophy of medicine through the ages: Greek medical thinking, Galenic theories of the Renaissance, the upheavals of the 19th Century; and contemporary debate on holism and reductionism. Additionally it looks at the putative relationships of soul, mind, emotion, brain and illness. Given the scope of this field, teaching will largely be through specific case studies and topics, such as the Hippocratic Oath, the "Four Elements", the emergence of the medical profession in the 19th Century, medical logic, the limits of statistical inference and the insights of complexity theory. There will be a lecture and a seminar in each of the twelve weeks of the teaching block.

This unit focuses on philosophical issues raised in contemporary work in psychology.  Topics will include the following. Rationality (expected utility theory, experimental decision theory/heuristics and biases, ecological rationality, Machiavellian intelligence); Animal minds; Mindreading and social cognition (theory vs. simulation); Cognitive architecture (modularity, levels, isomorphism, classical/connectionist/dynamicist architectures); Mental causation (Davidson vs. Kim, supervenience/emergence, reduction, dualism); Evolutionary psychology, nativism, cultural evolution; Embodiement, embedding, varieties of externalism.