Current course offerings

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Course description

What is it to be a thinking and speaking being? Could one think without the capacity for language, or vice versa? Thinking and speaking a language are often heralded as definitively human characteristics. But what are these characteristics and how do they relate to one another? Are thought and talk capacities that could be automated? What, if anything, does the fact that we are moral beings have to do with our capacity for thought and talk? This course looks at these questions from a philosophical perspective, by looking at arguments about what kind of criteria we can use to ascertain whether something is thinking and how linguistic evidence fits into our picture of mind, as well as how language connects us to and shapes our actions and interactions with others within the world around us.

Archived offerings