asignatura master 2023

The aim of this course is to present a publicly relevant debate on a topic of interest for logicians, historians or philosophers of science. We want to introduce the student to the intellectual style of these three disciplines, in particular the ability to clearly articulate your arguments. We also want to show the social relevance of this approach

In addition, our university library will contribute a module on information management skills (in Spanish only). Last, but not least, since every student in the program has to take this course we want them to build a research community that will help them throughout their studies.

This course provides a general introduction that does not presuppose any particular background. If you want to follow this course in English, please do so only if you can read and write it correctly. Otherwise, we will transfer you to the Spanish-speaking section.

María Jiménez Buedo

Monday:  16.00-19.00

Tuesday: 11.00-14.00

Office: 2.27
Phone: 91 398 9653
E-mail: mjbuedo@fsof.uned.es

COMPETENCIAS GENERALES

CG3 - Dominar las bases metodológicas y los conocimientos que permitan la integración de los múltiples saberes filosóficos en un proyecto de trabajo personal.

COMPETENCIAS ESPECÍFICAS

CE2 - Poseer una familiaridad con la actividad investigadora en filosofía gracias al estudio detallado de obras de autores relevantes, a la interacción con profesores que están desarrollando tareas de investigación propias y con los otros alumnos del Máster en los foros de cada asignatura.

CE3 - Usar fuentes bibliográficas, primarias y secundarias, en el área del pensamiento filosófico; saber utilizar las bases de datos (en ambos casos tanto en papel como electrónicas) y aplicar estos conocimientos en la elaboración de trabajos académicos y de investigación filosófica.

The main three goals of this course are as follows:

• The analysis of a current philosophical topic or controversy, delineating the contours of a current debate and summarizing and evaluating the main positions in the debate.
• Acquiring the basic information management skills required for conducting research in philosophy
• Building a students’ community that will provide support to its members throughout the Master

As for the first half of the course, each student will answer three questionnaires on a selection of papers available in the course's platform. The answers cannot go beyond 1500 words for each assignment. Part of the answers should be posted and discussed in a message board in the platform.

The second half of the course will be tought and graded by the library staff and will deal with bibliographic and information techniques useful to researchers. This part of the course must be passed in order to obtain the credits for Topics in LHFC. 

If a student does not pass the library module in February, s/he pass it again in September. 

In the first part of this course, we will discuss the following texts following the two main thematic blocks of the course:

• Craver, Carl, and James Tabery. "Mechanisms in science." (2015).

• Illari, P. M., & Williamson, J. (2012). What is a mechanism? Thinking about mechanisms across the sciences. European Journal for Philosophy of Science, 2(1), 119-135.

• Ioannidis, S., & Psillos, S. (2017). In Defense of Methodological Mechanism: The Case of Apoptosis. Axiomathes, 27(6), 601-619.

• Kincaid, H. (2011). Causal Modeling, Mechanisms, and Probability in Epidemiology. Causality in the Sciences, 70-90.

• Russo, Federica, and Jon Williamson. "Interpreting causality in the health sciences." International studies in the philosophy of science 21.2 (2007): 157-170.

• Steel, D. (2004). Social mechanisms and causal inference. Philosophy of the social sciences, 34(1), 55-78.

• Wilde, Michael, and Veli-Pekka Parkkinen. "Extrapolation and the Russo–Williamson thesis." Synthese 196.8 (2019): 3251-3262.

Additional texts and references will be uploaded in the course platform. 

They will be provided on line. 

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is an excellent resource to consult for background on relevant topics.