Philosophy of Psychology
|MA
|Part Time, Full Time
| Admissions status: Open- Dissertation (on a topic in the philosophy of psychology).
Students are expected to take the following compulsory modules (all 20 credits):
First semester:
- Philosophy of Mind I
- Philosophy of Psychology I
Second semester:
- Philosophy of Mind II: Special Topics
- Philosophy of Psychology II
For their remaining credits, candidates may choose from the following.
NB The following modules are likely to be offered in 2013-14, although this is not set in stone. Occasionally, we might need to drop a module, for instance if there is insufficient demand for it from students; but, equally, there is a chance that a few other modules not listed here might end up getting added to the list. The timings, i.e. whether a module is taught in the first or the second semester, are also subject to possible revision: but the final provision should end up looking pretty close to this. Each of these modules is worth 20 credits, except where specified.
- General Philosophy (40 credits)
First semester:
- Aesthetics
- Early Modern Philosophy
- Epistemology
- Ethics
- Greek Philosophical Texts I: Plato (note: presupposes some competence in the ancient Greek language)
- Greek Philosophy I: Plato
- Indian Philosophy I: The Orthodox Schools
- Metaphysics
- Nineteenth-Century Continental Philosophy
- Philosophy of Medicine
- Philosophy of Religion
- Philosophy of Science
- Political Philosophy
- Set Theory (note: presupposes some competence in basic symbolic logic)
- Theory of Grammar
Second semester:
- Ethics of Science & Technology
- Foundations of Analytic Philosophy
- Greek Philosophical Texts II: Aristotle (note: presupposes some competence in the ancient Greek language)
- Greek Philosophy II: Aristotle
- Greek Philosophy III: Special Topics
- Indian Philosophy II: The Heterodox Schools
- Kant I: Critique of Pure Reason
- Kant II: Moral Philosophy
- Modal Logic (note: presupposes some competence in basic symbolic logic)
- Medieval Philosophy
- Perspectives on Death & Killing
- Philosophy of Language
- Philosophy of Physics
- Theories of Meaning
NB it cannot be guaranteed that all modules are offered in any particular academic year.
Module code: 7AAN2062
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20
Semester: Semester 2 (spring)
Teaching pattern: one weekly one-hour lecture and one weekly one-hour seminar
Assessment: coursework
Formative assessment: 1 x 2,000–3,000-word essay; Summative assessment: 1 x 4,000-word essay.
This module will be specifically concerned with topics in the Philosophy of Action. Possible topics may include the nature of actions and omissions in general, and more specifically of intentional actions and omissions; reasons for action, intentions, and the explanation of action; the mind-body problem or more generally the relationship between the physical and the mental; the nature of consciousness; the relevance of empirical results for the Philosophy of Mind
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/philosophy/modules/level7/7aan2062.aspx
Module code: 7AAN2066
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20
Semester: Semester 1 (autumn)
Teaching pattern: one weekly one-hour lecture and one weekly one-hour seminar
Assessment: coursework
Formative assessment: 1 x 2,000–3,000-word essay; Summative assessment: 1 x 4,000-word essay.
Philosophical issues about the nature of representational content have become pressing in recent years with the rise of cognitive neuroscience, which appears to go further and locates representations in concrete processes in the brain. This course will explain the foundational principles underlying these psychological sciences and examine the central philosophical questions they raise about what representations are and how information-processing explanations work.
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/philosophy/modules/level7/7aan2066.aspx
Module code: 7AAN2067
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20
Semester: Semester 2 (spring)
Teaching pattern: one weekly one-hour lecture and one weekly one-hour seminar
Assessment: coursework
Formative assessment: 1 x 2,000–3,000-word essay; Summative assessment: 1 x 4,000-word essay.
This year’s course will focus on some of the questions listed below:What is the nature of subjectivity and of the freedom that characterizes it? How does one “constitute oneself as an ethical subject”? Is the self a “center of narrative gravity”? In what sense, if any, does the self have a narrative structure? How are self-conceptions, conceptions of the self and conceptions of types of people related to behaviours, experiences and relationships? How are they affected by cognitive and emotional constraints, by discursive practices, by institutions and cultural processes? What are, in this context, the possibilities for change and for action? What is the “specter of creeping exculpation” and how can we avoid it? What are the implications for psychology and for the human sciences in general?
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/philosophy/modules/level7/7aan2067.aspx
Module code: 7AAN2061
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20
Semester: Semester 1 (autumn)
Teaching pattern: one weekly one-hour lecture and one weekly one-hour seminar
Assessment: coursework
Formative assessment: Two x 1,500-2,000-word essays, due by end of semester or as otherwise instructed
Summative assessment: One x two-hour end of year examination
The primary focus of this module will be issues in the metaphysics of mind: what is the relation between the bearers of mental and physical properties; what is the relation between mental and physical properties themselves; are various mental properties categorical or dispositional; do they supervene upon what is ‘internal’ to the subject? There will also be discussion of the nature and explanation of consciousness, the normativity of the mental, and the rational explanation of behaviour.
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/philosophy/modules/level7/7aan2061.aspx
