PHIL 521

Spring 2025 All Classes

All Classes

Seminar Contemporary Problems

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Credit: 2 OR 4 hours.

Intensive study of selected problems or topics in contemporary philosophy.

Approved for letter and S/U grading. May be repeated. Letter grading applies when offered for 4 hours of credit. For Stage 3 Philosophy PhD students this course is approved for S/U grading when offered for 2 hours of credit. Prerequisite: Consent of instructor for non-philosophy graduate students.

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PHIL 521 class schedule data for spring 2025
	CRN	Type	Section	Time	Day	Location	Instructor	Section Details
	51971	Lecture-Discussion	G2	3:00PM -5:20PM	M	402 Gregory Hall	Scharp, K	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 01/21/25-05/07/25 Credit: 2 hours Section Info: This section is for Stage III Philosophy PhD Students Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a wide-ranging area of inquiry that examines philosophical issues associated with the development of AI systems, which have exploded in power and reach in our societies recently. This seminar focuses on the extent to which AI systems exhibit capacities traditionally associated with human minds—such as consciousness, understanding, and reasoning—and what that means for our broader conceptual framework. In this graduate seminar, we will revisit classical problems in philosophy of mind (like the mind–body problem) and explore how modern AI architectures (supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement learning, as well as transformers and embeddings) push us to question long-standing assumptions about minds and rational capacities. Along the way, we will consider whether our concepts of mind, intelligence, understanding, and reasoning need to be reshaped, replaced, or abandoned altogether in light of these technological breakthroughs. Reflections on “thinking machines” go back centuries, but we will focus on the recent surge of philosophical and scientific literature on mental and rational properties of AI. We will compare computational and connectionist views of cognition, examine Bayesian theories of mind, and look at high-profile thought experiments—such as Wittgenstein’s private language argument, Searle’s Chinese Room, and the Symbol Grounding Problem—to see whether they illuminate or distort our understanding of advanced AI systems. We will also tackle contemporary controversies over Bender and Koller’s “statistical octopus” thought experiment. Our discussions will engage questions like: Can large language models really “reason,” or do they just simulate it? How might AI research inform (or be informed by) ongoing debates about consciousness, subjectivity, and the possibility of genuine machine thought? Throughout the seminar, we will consider whether philosophy itself changes in response to technological innovations. Restriction(s): Restricted to Graduate - Urbana-Champaign.
	51548	Lecture-Discussion	G4	3:00PM -5:20PM	M	402 Gregory Hall	Scharp, K	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 01/21/25-05/07/25 Credit: 4 hours Section Info: Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a wide-ranging area of inquiry that examines philosophical issues associated with the development of AI systems, which have exploded in power and reach in our societies recently. This seminar focuses on the extent to which AI systems exhibit capacities traditionally associated with human minds—such as consciousness, understanding, and reasoning—and what that means for our broader conceptual framework. In this graduate seminar, we will revisit classical problems in philosophy of mind (like the mind–body problem) and explore how modern AI architectures (supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement learning, as well as transformers and embeddings) push us to question long-standing assumptions about minds and rational capacities. Along the way, we will consider whether our concepts of mind, intelligence, understanding, and reasoning need to be reshaped, replaced, or abandoned altogether in light of these technological breakthroughs. Reflections on “thinking machines” go back centuries, but we will focus on the recent surge of philosophical and scientific literature on mental and rational properties of AI. We will compare computational and connectionist views of cognition, examine Bayesian theories of mind, and look at high-profile thought experiments—such as Wittgenstein’s private language argument, Searle’s Chinese Room, and the Symbol Grounding Problem—to see whether they illuminate or distort our understanding of advanced AI systems. We will also tackle contemporary controversies over Bender and Koller’s “statistical octopus” thought experiment. Our discussions will engage questions like: Can large language models really “reason,” or do they just simulate it? How might AI research inform (or be informed by) ongoing debates about consciousness, subjectivity, and the possibility of genuine machine thought? Throughout the seminar, we will consider whether philosophy itself changes in response to technological innovations. Restriction(s): Restricted to Graduate - Urbana-Champaign.