• course objectives
• arrangements for the course
• what you should do
• registration
• course outline

The main objective of this course is

Topics covered in the first part of the course will be "Thought experiments", "The use of evidence", "Chance", "Creationism versus Evolutionary Theory", "Time Travel". See the course outline for more details.

The second objective is therefore

The third objective is therefore

to encourage you to read actively. The texts we recommend, including our own handouts, are not there to be learnt, but to be used and questioned.

• lectures

 
There will be twenty 50 minute lectures.
 
• tutorials

 
For each student there will be five 50 minute tutorials in small groups in which you will make presentations (which should be available in written or electronic form), and reply to presentations (the replies should be available in note form). The tutorials are a very important part of your work.
 
• exercises

 
Various exercises may be set from time to time.
 
• assessment

There will be a two-hour examination paper. 50% of the final mark will be based on your coursework.

• lectures

In lectures, it is much more important to try to follow and understand and participate than to take notes. You are encouraged to interrupt and ask questions. No question is a silly question. If you want to ask it, you should. Asking it may help others as well as yourself.
 

• tutorials

Click here for a department guide on writing essays. See also the advice of Dr Lau and of Professor Goldstein.
 

• discussion

Even more important is the opportunity for discussion. So the written work needs to be the basis of a presentation. Discussion is a crucial part of philosophy. You must sign up for a tutorial group on the notice-board in the Department by 24 September. Each group (normally of four) will meet five times. The first four meetings will have two presentations and two responses on assigned topics, each followed by discussion. So, in these meetings, each student will make two ten-minute presentations, and each student will reply to or comment on two such presentations. In the last meeting, each student will make a ten-minute presentation on a previously approved topic of their choice. The topics in the last meeting need not be ones explicitly included in the curriculum. You will propose them, we shall decide whether they are suitable.
 

• the Web

You are encouraged to use the Web. We have set up a bulletin board on which you can ask questions or make points, and some of our course materials will be provided through the Web. You can get access to the bulletin board and to some of the course handouts (in what will sometimes be a fuller form than the paper handouts) through our department's home page (URL: http://www.hku.hk/philodep). To go directly to the bulletin board service, just click here.
 

• assessment

Be willing to take risks in your essays/presentations. You are much more likely to get a good mark by trying to explore and develop your own ideas than by giving an account of someone else's (including ours). We don't want to hear our own ideas repeated back to us.

If you have not yet registered in the department, please come to room MB 312 to do so as soon as possible. Mrs Lau is handling this, and she is on leave until 6 October.

• meeting 1: Introduction
Science and its relation to philosophy
Objectives of the course and arrangements
two problems
 
• meetings 2 & 3: Thought experiments
Can we find things out about the world just by thinking?
 
• meetings 4 & 5: The use of evidence: induction
What is the relation between our claims to knowledge of the world and the evidence we can give to support them ?
 
• meetings 6 & 7: Chance
Does everything happen as the result of the operation of the "laws of nature" or do some things happen by chance ?  What is the importance of this question for our understanding of the world ?  (Click for suggested tutorial topics.)
 
• meetings 8 & 9: Evolutionary Theory and Creationism
A theory enables us to explain phenomena. Evolutionary Theory is normally regarded one of the most important explanatory instruments in the life sciences in our day (even though there are interesting disagreements about various aspects of it). Some people think that the theory conflicts with religious systems in which life is believed to have been created by a divine being. They then either deny the existence of God, or deny the truth of evolutionary theory. How should we view this disagreement ?
 
• meeting 10: Review
Some key terms and concepts
(Click here for suggested tutorial topics, and here for a list of the subjects you asked to be treated in the last part of the course.)
 
• meetings 11 & 12: Time Travel
Is it possible ?  If not, why not ?  If so, what would be the implications of it occurring ?

• meetings 13 & 14: Issues in Quantum Mechanics

(Professor Goldstein)
Click for reading list and suggested essay topics.

• meetings 15, 16 & 17: Biology, psychology and social science

Click for suggested essay topics
(Professor Moore)

• meetings 18 & 19: Do laws of nature really exist ?

(Dr Lau)

• meeting 20: Ethical issues in science

(Professor Goldstein and Dr Lau)
Brief notes from Dr. Lau

This page has been consulted   times since 20 September 1997