24.00x Introduction to Philosophy: God, Knowledge, and Consciousness

• Professor: Caspar Hare (Philosophy)
• Email: 24.00xTA@gmail.com
• Lectures: Video Lectures will be made available each week.

 

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course has two goals.

The first is to introduce you to the things that philosophers think about. We will look at some perennial philosophical problems: Is there a God? What is knowledge, and how do we get it? What is the place of our consciousness in the physical world? Do we have free will? How do we persist over time, as our bodily and psychological traits change?

The second goal is to get you thinking philosophically yourself. This will help you develop your critical and argumentative skills more generally. Readings will be from late, great classical authors and influential contemporary figures.

To help enhance your learning experience, this course offers instructor grading. If you choose to pursue a verified certificate, a professional philosopher will carefully read, grade and comment upon your written work. Though all residential philosophy courses at MIT, and other major universities, offer instructor grading, this is an innovation in the world of MOOCs. Students will test their ideas against, and receive individual advice from, professional philosophers. We believe that this is the best way to learn philosophy.

Enrollees who submit outstanding written work will receive The MITx Philosophy Award. We expect there to be multiple recipients. There will also be an award for High School students. High School students who submit outstanding written work will receive The MITx High School Philosophy Award. We expect there to be multiple recipients. All recipients will be profiled on the MIT Philosophy website.

To pursue a verified certificate, click here.

 

REQUIREMENTS

• Readings

  We encourage you to read the assigned texts in advance of each class. Some of the texts are dense and difficult. You may need to work to understand them. The assigned readings, organized by lecture, can be found here on the Background Reading page (located on the toolbar).

• Video Lectures

  Each lecture consists of several short videos. You must watch all the videos. Most video lectures will be accompanied by some brief questions to help us assess whether you are absorbing essential material.

• Problems (and Survey Questions)

  Each lecture contains several brief (usually, multiple choice) problems to help us assess whether you are absorbing essential material. These problems will also aid in your understanding of the material covered in the lectures. You are required to answer every problem. Most of the problems are worth points. Some, however, are Survey Questions -- they don't have right or wrong answers. The problems have no due dates. You are free to answer them at your own pace. That being said, all the problems must be completed by the end of the course in order to count towards your final grade. All of the Written Assessment Questions (see below) must be completed by their due date in order to count towards your final grade. 

• Discussion Questions

  In addition to the Problems and Survey Questions, the lectures contain (sometimes several) Discussion Questions which are to be answered using the discussion forum. We encourage you to discuss your answers to these questions with your peers on the forum. The best -- and perhaps only -- way to learn philosophy is to do it. That is exactly what these discussion questions are invitations for you to do. You will also have much more fun this way.

• Written Assessment Questions

  There will be three Written Assessment Questions, spaced through the course. These questions will ask you to write a brief essay response to a prompt. You will receive guidance on how to write your essays. If you are taking the course as a 'Verified Student' for a certificate, you will then receive comments and feedback on your writing from a philosophy instructor. If you are an 'Auditor Student', then you will be asked to do a self-assessment of your paper. These Written Assessment Questions will be worth, in total, 60% of your overall grade. Each one must be completed by its due date.

• Plagiarism

  All your writing in Written Assessment Questions and on the discussion forums must be your own. This means that anything quoted verbatim must appear within quotation marks and be accompanied by an attribution of its source (author, publication, date, page/chapter number). And it means that you may not paraphrase a person's writing without making it explicit that you are doing so --- changing the words does not make it your writing. And it means that whenever the insights or ideas of another person (including friends of yours, including anonymous authors of material on the internet) appear in your writing, you must credit that person.

 

GRADING

You earn points by correctly completing the problems which accompany the video lectures (together worth 40% of your overall grade) and completing the three essays (together worth 60% of your overall grade). In order to reach the level of proficiency necessary to be eligible for a Certificate you must do the following two things: (1) you must attempt every Problem, answer every Survey Question, answer the Written Assessment Questions, and actively participate on the Discussion Forums; and (2) you must earn at least 66% of the possible points.

 

TEXTS

The majority of background readings are available under the Background Readings tab on the edX toolbar. The readings that we are unable to link to directly can be found, usually for free, by googling.

 

AN OVERVIEW OF THE COURSE SCHEDULE

1. Part 1: God

• Lecture 1 --- Introduction (For God: The Ontological Argument)

  released on June 20

• Lecture 2 --- Assessing Arguments

  released on June 20

• Lecture 3 --- For God: We See Design

  released on June 26

• Lecture 4 --- Against God: The Problem of Evil

  released on June 26

• Lecture 5 --- For God: Pascal's Wager

  released on July 3

2. Part 2: Knowledge and Justified Belief

• Lecture 6 --- What is Knowledge?

  released on July 10

• Lecture 7 --- Skepticism About Knowledge

  released on July 10

• Lecture 8 --- Skepticism About Justified Belief, Part 1: The Old Problem of Induction

  released on July 17

• Lecture 9 --- Skepticism About Justified Belief, Part 2: The New Problem of Induction

  released on July 17

3. Part 3: Mind and Consciousness

• Lecture 10 --- How Things Feel

  released on July 24

• Lecture 11 --- Science Strikes Back

  released on July 24

• Lecture 12 --- Thinking Machines

  released on July 31

4. Part 4: Free Will

• Lecture 13 --- Free Will and Determinism

  released on August 7

• Lecture 14 --- Freedom Without Alternatives

  released on August 7

• Lecture 15 --- A Compatibalist Theory of Free Will

  released on August 7

5. Part 5: Personal Identity

• Lecture 16 --- The Psychological Criterion of Personal Identity Over Time I

  released on August 14

• Lecture 17 --- The Psychological Criterion of Personal Identity Over Time II

  released on August 14

• Lecture 18 --- Animalism / Wrapping Up the Course

  released on August 21