Curriculum
Rationality and Normativity: Science Politics, Religion
Prof. Menachem Fish
The ability to act for a reason and to deliberate the propriety and impropriety of a move are exclusively human capacities, by means of which human societies establish their world pictures, their social and political outlooks, and their religious cultures. However, the ability to act rationally turns out to be surprisingly and vexingly constrained by normative commitment. In the first part of the course, the problem will be explored against contemporary philosophical accounts of rationality, normativity, mind and self, and a general solution will be proposed. In the second part, the problem and proposed solution will be examined against the strained context of Kuhn’s account of scientific framework transitions and its aftermath. In the third part of the course the rabbinic literature of late antiquity, exegetical and halakhic will be discussed as intriguingly aware of both the problem of rationality’s normative constraints and its solution.
From Homo Sapiens to Smart Robot: The Digital Revolution as a Culture Revolution
Dr. Noa Gedi
This course explores the meaning of the digital turn and its wide cultural implications. We begin with a conceptual mapping of the phenomenon of human culture and an anthropological survey of its origins: When does it first emerge in the world of nature? What are its identifying components? Is human culture unique or singular? What is the difference between biological and cultural evolution? We will then attempt to understand the circumstances in which culture revolutions take place; specifically, the dramatic change which ensued from the invention of digital technology which is a veritable overall cultural revolution. To fully appreciate and evaluate the meaning of the digital turn we will delve into some fundamental philosophical questions like the mind-body problem, the nature of consciousness, the relation between thought and language and between morality and society. These controversial questions which have always been relevant to human existence in every culture and at every stage of cultural development become all the more acute in the cybernetic era of VR and AI, in a world populated with a new artificial and mega smart species. Might the next phase of our cultural evolution imply a departure from humanistic ethnocentrism? Who or what might take the place of the human subject as the grand creator of culture?
Contemporary Issues in Digital Culture
Dr. Carmel Vaisman
Can we understand digital artifacts and contemporary phenomena with the available social and critical theory, or do we need new concepts and frameworks? In this course we engage with a variety of digital objects, genres, and phenomena through key approaches in digital cultural research in pursuit of the "new" in new media; identifying the issues in which past theories are more relevant than ever, alongside emergent issues which the tools to grasp them are a work in-progress.
