Anubav Vasudevan

Recent developments in artificial intelligence have brought about a radical reconceptualization of our idea of knowledge work. The model of the laboratory scientist, whose task is to conduct elaborate experiments that probe, in minute detail, the correctness of a theoretical hypothesis, is gradually giving way to that of the data scientist, whose concern is to wrangle massive datasets in an effort to extract from them reliable predictions with only a minimal theoretical guidance. In this course, we will explore some of the epistemological implications of this AI-driven shift in our conception of knowledge and the work that goes into acquiring it. Focusing on applications of artificial intelligence that utilize feed-forward deep neural networks for statistical inference, we will investigate what the shift to "big data" means for our philosophical theories of induction. Are the learning algorithms employed in the training of deep neural networks really "theory free"? If so, why should we trust that their predictions are reliable? How do neural networks purport to solve the curve-fitting problem and Goodman's new riddle of induction, without giving weight to theoretical virtues such as simplicity? Without a background of causal knowledge to structure their inferences, how do neural networks distinguish between causation and mere correlation, and if they cannot, why should we allow their predictions to serve as inputs to a theory of rational decision making? (B) (II)

In this seminar, we will examine the logical and metaphysical writings of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. We will begin by exploring the metaphysical underpinnings of Leibniz’s calculus of analytic containment, as developed in such essays as General Inquiries into the Analysis of Concepts and Truths (1686) and A Mathematics of Reason (1690). We then consider how Leibniz’s logic informs some of the metaphysical ideas developed in some of Leibniz’s less technical philosophical writings, including Discourse on Metaphysics (1686) and On the Ultimate Origination of Things (1697). These distinctive logico-metaphysical conceptions, which give a singular shape to Leibniz’s philosophy, reach their full maturity in his best known essay on metaphysics, the Monadology (1714), with which the seminar will conclude. (IV)

This course provides an introduction to logic for students of philosophy. It is aimed at students who possess more mathematical training than can be expected of typical philosophy majors, but who wish to study logic not just as a branch of mathematics but as a method for philosophical analysis. (B) (II)

Recent developments in artificial intelligence have brought about a radical reconceptualization of our idea of knowledge work. The model of the laboratory scientist, whose task is to conduct elaborate experiments that probe, in minute detail, the correctness of a theoretical hypothesis, is gradually giving way to that of the data scientist, whose concern is to wrangle massive datasets in an effort to extract from them reliable predictions with only a minimal theoretical guidance. In this course, we will explore some of the epistemological implications of this AI-driven shift in our conception of knowledge and the work that goes into acquiring it. Focusing on applications of artificial intelligence that utilize feed-forward deep neural networks for statistical inference, we will investigate what the shift to "big data" means for our philosophical theories of induction. Are the learning algorithms employed in the training of deep neural networks really "theory free"? If so, why should we trust that their predictions are reliable? How do neural networks purport to solve the curve-fitting problem and Goodman's new riddle of induction, without giving weight to theoretical virtues such as simplicity? Without a background of causal knowledge to structure their inferences, how do neural networks distinguish between causation and mere correlation, and if they cannot, why should we allow their predictions to serve as inputs to a theory of rational decision making? (B) (II)

This course meets in Autumn and Winter quarters.

This course provides an introduction to logic for students of philosophy. It is aimed at students who possess more mathematical training than can be expected of typical philosophy majors, but who wish to study logic not just as a branch of mathematics but as a method for philosophical analysis. (B) (II)

This course meets in Autumn and Winter quarters.

This course provides an introduction to logic for students of philosophy. It is aimed at students who possess more mathematical training than can be expected of typical philosophy majors, but who wish to study logic not just as a branch of mathematics but as a method for philosophical analysis. (II)

Preparing papers to submit to journals for review and revising papers in response to the feedback received from journal editors and referees is an essential part of professional academic life, and students applying for academic positions with no publications to their name are at a disadvantage in today’s highly competitive job market. The Department of Philosophy has therefore instituted the Paper Revision and Publication Workshop to provide our graduate students with support and assistance to prepare papers to submit for publication in academic philosophy journals. The workshop was designed with the following three aims in mind:

1. to provide students with a basic understanding of the various steps involved in publishing in academic journals and to create a forum in which students can solicit concrete advice from faculty members about the publishing process;

2. to direct and actively encourage students to submit at least one paper to a journal for review on a timeline that would allow accepted submissions to be listed as publications on a student’s CV by the time they go on the academic job market; and

3. to create and foster a departmental culture in which the continued revision of work with the ultimate aim of publication in academic journals is viewed as an essential aspect of the professional training of our graduate students and in which both faculty and students work together to establish more ambitious norms for publishing while in graduate school.

This is a workshop for 3rd year philosophy graduate students, in which students prepare and workshop materials for their Topical Exam.

This course provides a first introduction to formal logic. In this course, we will introduce proof systems for both propositional and first-order predicate logic and prove their soundness and completeness. (B) (II)

This course is designed to provide MAPH students – especially those interested in pursuing a Ph.D. in Philosophy – with an introduction to some recent debates between philosophers working in the analytic tradition. The course is, however, neither a history of analytic philosophy nor an overview of the discipline as it currently stands. The point of the course is primarily to introduce the distinctive style and method – or styles and methods – of philosophizing in the analytic tradition, through brief explorations of some currently hotly debated topics in the field.

This is a workshop for 3rd year philosophy graduate students, in which students prepare and workshop materials for their Topical Exam.

This is a workshop for 2nd year philosophy graduate students, in which students revise a piece of work to satisfy the PhD program requirements.

Before there was a “Chicago School” of neo-classical economics, the School of Chicago referred to a wide-ranging set of philosophical, psychological, and pedagogical doctrines produced, in collaboration, by such prominent members of the University’s faculty as the philosophers John Dewey and George Herbert Mead, and the psychologist and educator James Angell.  In a 1904 entry in the Psychological Bulletin, William James announced the entrance of the Chicago School onto the American intellectual scene, proclaiming: “Chicago has a School of Thought! a school of thought which, it is safe to predict, will figure in literature as the School of Chicago for years to come… Professor John Dewey, and at least ten of his disciples, have collectively put into the world a statement, homogeneous in spite of so many cooperating minds, of a view of the world, both theoretical and practical, which is so simple, massive, and positive that, in spite of the fact that many parts of it yet need to be worked out, it deserves the title of a new system of philosophy.”

At the core of this system was the simple idea that all thinking, in even its most theoretical guise, must ultimately be viewed a form of practical activity. The abstract theories that are the end products of such thought, are, accordingly, nothing more than cognitive tools deriving their significance entirely from the instrumental role that they play in addressing the concrete needs for which they were devised. Behind this simple conceit lay a more elaborate conception of functionalist psychology and the logic of inquiry, according to which theory and practice, thinking and doing, are not to be viewed as separate spheres of human life. Each is instead to be understood with reference to the service it renders the other so as to effect a “continuous, uninterrupted, free, and fluid passage from ordinary experience to abstract thinking… [One in which] observation passes into development of hypothesis; deductive methods pass to use in description of the particular; inference passes into action with no sense of difficulty save those found in the particular task in question.” Upon such psychological and philosophical foundations, the theorists of the Chicago School attempted to erect a far-reaching  campaign of educational reform, in which the purpose of a university education was not to be conceived as the transmission of knowledge to students, but rather as the sharing of communal social experiences through which young people could be successfully integrated into a deliberative democratic society. 

In this course, we will undertake a critical examination of the psychological, philosophical, and pedagogical writings comprising the work of the Chicago School. The central text for the course will be Studies in Logical Theory, originally published in 1903, which collects together a number essays written by the original members of the faculty of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. (B)

This is a workshop for 3rd year philosophy graduate students, in which students prepare and workshop materials for their Topical Exam.

This is a workshop for 3rd year philosophy graduate students, in which students prepare and workshop materials for their Topical Exam.

This course will undertake a critical review of the some of the seminal logical and metaphysical writings of the American pragmatist philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. Peirce made numerous original contributions to the field of mathematical logic, particularly to the fields of relational and quantificational logic, and, in the first part of the course, we will carefully examine some of Peirce's most important writings on the subject. In the second half of the course, we will examine some of Peirce's most characteristic metaphysical doctrines. These include: triadism - the view that all experience may be classified within a tripartite scheme consisting of the categories of "firstness," "secondness," and "thirdness;" tychism - the view that objective chance is an operative feature of the cosmos; haecceitism - the view that individual substances have an essence de re and not merely de dicta; and synechism - the view that the cosmos is fundamentally a continuum, no part of which is fully separate or determinate. (II)