Litteraturkurser på avancerad nivå

Varje termin ger institutionen ett antal litteraturkurser för studenter på avancerad nivå. Utbudet av sådana kurser varierar över terminerna.

Under hösten 2013 ges följande kurser:

Scheman

Kommer senare

Fri vilja och moraliskt ansvar 7,5hp

Kursen ges på halvfart under onsdagar kl 13-15 under perioden 4/9–23|10. Kursen har formen av ett seminarium och varje student förväntas delta aktivt i diskussioner och presentationer av texter. Ingen förhandsanmälan.

Lärare: Sofia Jeppsson

Kurslitteratur: Kane, R (ed.): The Oxford Handbook of Free Will, 2nd ed. (obs: andra upplagan) samt artiklar i urval av läraren.

Future generations 7,5hp

This course covers questions and problems concerning our moral duties to future generations. For the last decades there has been a search underway for a theory that can accommodate our intuitions in regard to moral duties to future generations. The object of this search has proved surprisingly elusive. The classical moral theories in the literature all have perplexing implications in this area. Classical Utilitarianism, for instance, implies that it could be better to expand a population even if everyone in the resulting population would be much worse off than in the original.

The main problem has been to find an adequate population theory, that is, a theory about the moral value of states of affairs where the number of people, the quality of their lives, and their identities may vary. Since, arguably, any reasonable moral theory has to take these aspects of possible states of affairs into account when determining the normative status of actions, the study of population ethics is of general import for moral theory.

A number of population theories have been proposed in the literature that purport to avoid counterintuitive implications such as the one mentioned above. The suggestions are diverse: introducing novel ways of aggregating welfare into a measure of value, revising the notion of a life worth living, questioning the way we can compare and measure welfare, counting people’s welfare differently depending on the temporal location or the modal features of their lives, and challenging the logic of axiological and normative concepts. We shall investigate the concepts and assumptions involved in these theories as well as their implications for population ethics. We shall discuss a number of intuitively appealing adequacy conditions for an acceptable population theory. Finally, we consider whether it is possible to find a theory that satisfies a number of such conditions by considering a number of so-called impossibility theorems.

The course has the form of a series of seminars and each student is expected to actively participate in discussions and presentation of texts. The course will be given in English.

Course dates: Nov 18-22

Seminar leaders: Krister Bykvist, Gustaf Arrhenius