Medical Ethics
Luke Fildes, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
This course is an introduction to biomedical ethics, the study of ethical problems in clinical medicine and biomedical research. Medical practitioners and biomedical researchers often face thorny ethical problems and have to make difficult decisions. In this course, we will learn and discuss various issues of biomedical ethics both through abstract philosophical discussions and through analyses of concrete examples and case studies. The topics covered include autonomy, confidentiality, informed consent, human research, abortion, reproductive technology, genetic choices, euthanasia, and resource distribution.
Syllabus available upon request.
Philosophy of Science
This course is an introduction to philosophy of science, the study of conceptual, methodological, epistemological, and metaphysical problems in the sciences. We will learn and discuss various philosophical issues that arise from investigation of historical and contemporary cases. The questions that we address include the following: Is there such a thing as the scientific method? How does a scientific field progress and develop? Can science reveal objective truth? How do and should social values influence scientific investigations?
Syllabus available upon request.
Andreas Cellarius, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Philosophy of Biology
This course is an introduction to philosophy of biology. In this course, we will learn and discuss various philosophical issues in the biological sciences by combining ideas and approaches from general philosophy of science and knowledge and perspectives of concrete examples from different fields of biology. The questions addressed include: What is the nature of biological explanation, and how does it vary across different fields of biology? What kinds of models are used in biology, and how do they function? What is a gene, and what roles does the gene concept play? Is historical research less reliable than experimental research? Is biology “value-free,” and should it be? And many more.
Syllabus available upon request.
Edmund Beecher Wilson, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Scientific Reasoning
George P. Lewis, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Our everyday life is surrounded by technologies, claims, and ideas based on science. But what is science? What makes certain claims “scientific” and other claims “unscientific”? What features of science make it possible to produce reliable knowledge? How can we evaluate scientific claims to participate in our society’s political process and to make the best choices in our everyday life? We will explore these questions. The topics covered include the nature of science, how experimentation works, different kinds of scientific inferences, and the roles of probability and statistics, just naming a few. This course will provide basic “recipes” for science to prepare you for more advanced, field-specific education and to help those of you who are not science majors become more sophisticated consumers of scientific information.
Syllabus available upon request.