Ethics and Political Philosophy Seminar
Code: 100289 ECTS Credits: 6| Degree | Type | Year | Semester |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2500246 Philosophy | OT | 3 | 0 |
| 2500246 Philosophy | OT | 4 | 0 |
Contact
- Name:
- Jesús Hernández Reynes
- Email:
- Jesus.Hernandez@uab.cat
Use of Languages
- Principal working language:
- catalan (cat)
- Some groups entirely in English:
- No
- Some groups entirely in Catalan:
- Yes
- Some groups entirely in Spanish:
- No
Teachers
- Jesús Hernández Reynes
Prerequisites
There are no prerequisites for this course
Objectives and Contextualisation
In this academic year 2020-2021, the objective of this Seminar on Ethics and Political Philosophy is to study the philosophical concepts included in Markus Gabriel's 2018 book The Meaning of Thought (Der Sinn des Denkens).
Competences
- Philosophy
- Analysing and summarising the main arguments of fundamental texts of philosophy in its various disciplines.
- Recognising and interpreting topics and problems of philosophy in its various disciplines.
- Students must be capable of applying their knowledge to their work or vocation in a professional way and they should have building arguments and problem resolution skills within their area of study.
- Students must be capable of collecting and interpreting relevant data (usually within their area of study) in order to make statements that reflect social, scientific or ethical relevant issues.
- Students must develop the necessary learning skills to undertake further training with a high degree of autonomy.
Learning Outcomes
- Accurately drawing up normative texts.
- Carrying out a planning for the development of a subject-related work.
- Correctly, accurately and clearly communicating the acquired philosophical knowledge in oral and written form.
- Developing self-learning strategies.
- Discriminating the features that define the writer's place in the context of a problem and reorganising them in a consistent diagram.
- Distinguishing and outlining the fundamental content of a philosophical text.
- Recognising, with a critical eye, philosophical referents of the past and present and assessing its importance.
Content
The Meaning of Thought according to Markus Gabriel
Markus Gabriel (b. 1980) holds the chair of Epistemology, Modern and Contemporary Philosophy at the University of Bonn and is also the Director of the International Center for Philosophy in Bonn.
In his previous work, Gabriel exposes and consolidates a realistic thesis in ontology. He advocates a radical form of ontological pluralism (fields of the senses). He denies that there is a reality that embraces everything (there is no image of the world). In epistemology, he states that thoughts belong to reality and, as long as they are true, they are not linguistically codified.
The recent book: The Sense of Thought (Gabriel 2018c), on which this Seminar will focus, is the third in a trilogy that begins with Why the World Does Not Exist (Gabriel 2013) and continues with I Am Not My Brain Gabriel 2015). In the first book, Gabriel explains realistic ontological pluralism. In the second, Gabriel defends intellectual freedom. In the latter, we find exposed the thesis that thought is a sensory organ that allows to connect different realities with each other. Philosophical thinking is a creative process that seeks these connections. Through it, humans can better understand the reality that is unknown to us. According to Gabriel, naturalism is a mistake. Progress does not come from a combination of science and technology. Ethical reflection is needed. Gabriel is in favor of a "contemporary and enlightened" humanism against transhumanist theses.
Themes:
Block 1:
1. To think is to travel to infinity.
2. Thinking is not unique to humans (it makes sense).
3. Not all objects are things (thinking is not an emotion).
4. Sense and information.
5. Against functionalism.
Block 2:
6. The idea of technique.
7. Computer error.
8. Full availability.
9. Sense that glimpses infinity and represents it mathematically.
Block 3:
10. Against the subject / object dichotomy.
11. Reality and simulation.
12. Matter and ignorance.
13. What is reality.
14. Beyond the limits of our knowledge.
15. Human beings are artificial intelligence.
Methodology
Classes consist of reading and discussing Markus Gabriel’s texts. Interventions by the teacher and the participating students are planned.
Class dynamics make it necessary to read the texts that will be treated later outside the classroom.
Activities
| Title | Hours | ECTS | Learning Outcomes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Type: Directed | |||
| Lectures | 15 | 0.6 | 4, 5, 6, 2, 7 |
| classes | 30 | 1.2 | 5, 7 |
| Type: Supervised | |||
| tutorship | 15 | 0.6 | 3, 1, 4 |
| Type: Autonomous | |||
| Readings and studies | 75 | 3 | 3, 1, 2 |
Assessment
The evaluation will be done on four activities: three partial exams distributed throughout the course, at the end of each corresponding block of the syllabus. The weighted value of each of them is 30%. The fourth activity is participatory. The interventions of each student will be qualified together. Its weighted value is 10%.
The evaluation of all the activities will be reviewed individually in the teacher’s office, on the date that will be announced in due course through the Virtual Campus.
On the date established by the Dean's Office, the exams will be retrieved through a final exam, with a weighted value of up to 90%, correlative to the value of the tests that must be retrieved (ie there will be a recovery for each of the midterm exams and all three, two or only one can be retaken). The participatory part cannot be recovered. To take the retake, you must have taken at least two midterm exams. The final grade is the weighted average of all the activities evaluated.
A student who does not take a minimum of assessment activities representing 2/3 of the relative weight is considered non-assessable.
In the event of a student committing any irregularity that may lead to a significant variation in the grade awarded to an assessment activity, the student will be given a zero for this activity regardless of any disciplinary process that may take place. In the event of several irregularities in assessment activities of the same subject, the student will be given a zero as the final grade for this subject.
In the event that tests or exams cannot be taken onsite, they will be adapted to an online format made available through the UAB’s virtual tools (original weighting will be maintained). Homework, activities and class participation will be carried out through forums, wikis and/or discussion on Teams, etc. Lecturers will ensure that students are able to access these virtual tools, or will offer them feasible alternatives.
Assessment Activities
| Title | Weighting | Hours | ECTS | Learning Outcomes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st test | 30% | 1.5 | 0.06 | 3, 1, 4, 5, 7 |
| 2nd test | 30% | 1.5 | 0.06 | 3, 1, 4, 5, 6, 7 |
| 3rd test | 30% | 1.5 | 0.06 | 3, 1, 4, 5, 7 |
| Class participation | 10% | 10.5 | 0.42 | 4, 6, 2 |
Bibliography
A. Main works of Markus Gabriel
Gabriel, Markus. 2013. Warum es die Welt nicht gibt. Berlí: Ullstein. [8. Auflage 2013; Taschenbuch 2015]. Traducció de Juanmari Madariaga: Por qué el mundo no existe. Barcelona: Pasado y presente, 2015.
Gabriel, Markus. 2015. Ich ist nicht Gehirn. Philosophie des Geistes für das 21. Jahrhundert. Berlí: Ullstein 2015 [2. Auflage 2016]. Traducció de Juanmari Madariaga: Yo no soy mi cerebro. Filosofía de la mente para el siglo XXI. Barcelona: Pasado y presente, 2016.
Gabriel, Markus. 2016a. Sinn und Existenz. Eine realistische Ontologie. Berlí: Suhrkamp. La primera edició d’aquest llibre va ser en anglès: Fields of Sense. A New Realist Ontology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015. Traducció de Raúl Gabás de l’edició alemanya: Sentido y existencia. Una ontología realista. Barcelona: Herder, 2017.
Gabriel, Markus. 2016b. “La ontología trascendental en contexto”. A: Mario Teodoro Ramírez, (coord.): El Nuevo Realismo. La Filosofía del Siglo XXI. Mèxic/Buenos Aires/Barcelona: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 2016, 112-150.
Gabriel, Markus. 2016c. “Por qué el mundo no existe”. A: Mario Teodoro Ramírez (coord.): El Nuevo Realismo. La Filosofía del Siglo XXI. Mèxic/Buenos Aires/Barcelona: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 2016, 151-169.
Gabriel, Markus. 2018a. Le pouvoir de l’art. Préface de Bernard Géniès. París: Saint-Simon. Traducció i pròleg de Jean-Paul Grasset: El poder del arte. Santiago de Xile: Roneo, 2019.
Gabriel, Markus. 2018b. Neo-Existentialism. How to Conceive of the Human Mind after Naturalism`s Failure. With Contributions by Jocelyn Maclure, Jocelyn Benoist, Andrea Kern, and Charles Taylor. Cambridge: Polity Press. Traducció de Marc Figueras: Neoexistencialismo. Concebir la mente humana tras el fracaso del naturalismo. Barcelona: Pasado y presente, 2019.
Gabriel, Markus. 2018c. Der Sinn des Denkens. Berlí: Ullstein [2. Auflage 2019]. Traducció de Nuria Fominaya Meyer: El sentido del pensamiento. Barcelona: Pasado y presente, 2019.
Gabriel, Markus. 2019. “Realismo neutral”. Estudios Filosóficos. Vol. 68 Issue 199, 435-457
B. Studies on Markus Gabriel.
Castro Córdoba, Ernesto. 2019. “La ontología y epistemología de Markus Gabriel”. Revista Stultifera, 1(2), 15-59. doi: https://10.4206/rev.stultifera.2018.v1n2-02
Galán Vélez, Francisco Vicente. 2016. “El nuevo realismo de Maurizio Ferraris y Markus Gabriel: un análisis crítico”. Horizontes filosóficos: Revista de Filosofía, Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales, 6, 137-150. http://revele.uncoma.edu.ar/htdoc/revele/index.php/horizontes/article/view/1549
García, Marcela. 2016. “El realismo neutral como pluralismo ontológico”. A: Mario Teodoro Ramírez (coord.): El Nuevo Realismo. La Filosofía del Siglo XXI. Mèxic/Buenos Aires/Barcelona: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 2016, 237-249.
Hill, James. 2017. “Markus Gabriel Against the World”. Sophia 56, 471–481. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-015-0499-4
Kleinherenbrink, Arjen. 2018. "Fields of Sense and Formal Things: The Ontologies of Tristan Garcia and Markus Gabriel", Open Philosophy 1, 1, 129-142, doi: https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2018-0010
Negrete Alcudia, Juan Antonio. 2016. “En defensa del mundo. Notas críticas a la ontología hiperpluralista de Markus Gabriel”. Análisis. Revista de investigación Fiosófica, vol. 3, n.º 1, 137-147.
Ramírez, Mario-Teodoro. 2016. “Cambio de paradigma en filosofía. La revolución del nuevo realismo”. Diánoia, vol. LXI, n.º 77, 131-151.
C. Main works of the “new realism”.
Boghossian, Paul. 2006. Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism, Oxford/Nova York: Oxford University Press. Traducció de Fabio Morales: El miedo al conocimiento. Contra el relativismo y el constructivismo. Madrid: Alianza, 2009.
Brassier, Ray. 2007. Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction. Londres: Palgrave Macmillan. Traducció de : Nihil desencadenado. Ilustración y extinción. Segovia: Materia oscura, 2017.
Ferraris, Maurizio. 2012. Manifesto del nuovo realismo. Bari: Laterza. Traducció de José Blanco Jiménez: Manifiesto del nuevo realismo. Santiago de Xile: Ariadna, 2012.
Garcia, Tristan. 2011. Forme et objet. Un traité des choses. París: Presses universitaires de France.
Harman, Graham. 2011. The Quadruple Object. Winchester, UK: Zero Books. Traducció de Laureano Ralón: El objeto cuádruple. Una metafísica de las cosas después de Heidegger. Barcelona: Anthropos, 2016.
Meillassoux, Quentin. 2006. Après la finitude. Essai sur la nécessité de la contingence. Prefaci d’Alain Badiou. París: Seuil. Traducció de Margarita Martínez: Después de la finitud. Ensayo sobre la necesidad de la contingencia. Buenos Aires: Caja Negra, 2015.