Philosophy | Humanities & Social Sciences

Philosophy

The core philosophy faculty of the HSS department are Sanil V., Bijoy Boruah, C A Tomy, Bharati Puri, Divya Dwivedi, and Arudra Burra; many other HSS faculty members also share philosophical interests, particularly in the areas of literature and linguistics. The unit encompasses a range of research interests, including philosophical aesthetics and the philosophy of literature, the philosophy of mind, consciousness, and cognition, the philosophy of psychoanalysis, moral and political philosophy, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, classical and contemporary Indian thought, peace studies, and studies of culture, religion, and politics.

Philosophy Faculty

Assistant Professor
Associate Professor
Associate Professor
Assistant Professor
Associate Professor
Associate Professor
Professor
Assistant Professor

Philosophy Courses

Course Number: HSL860 | Credits:
Course Objective:

This course will introduce students to advanced topics in Philosophy as decided by the instructor.

Course Number: HSL853 | Credits:
Course Objective:

The central objective of this course is to make the student aware of the philosophical implications of the aesthetic attitude and the practice of art in the human world. A philosophical understanding of the place of the aesthetic in our worldview is expected to enhance our self-understanding through an appreciation of our cultural humanity.

Course Number: HUL 354 | Credits: 3
Course Objective:

The course begins by registering the increased presence of technology in contemporary art. We shall keep the experiences of both classical Greece and Classical India alive where art and technology were not clearly separated in the manner familiar to us. By positioning us between these two experiences - classical and contemporary we shall critically examine the complex relationship between art, science and technology which characterizes modernity. The course uses both materials from philosophical aesthetics, philosophy of science and technology. It also discusses the philosophical writings on specific areas like architecture, photography, cinema and digital art.

Course Number: HUL 356 | Credits: 3
Course Objective:

This course offers a critical introduction to the essential thought, values and practices in/of Buddhist traditions across time and place. Literature on Buddhism and Buddhist literature brings out the historical, philosophical and political synthesis of Buddhism in ever new cultural contexts. Interrogating and contextualizing engagements of Buddhism‘s classical roots in modernity will be a key concerns in this course.

Course Number: HSL751 | Credits:
Course Objective:

1) To learn to interpret a philosophical text by placing it in its relevant contexts- intellectual, socio-historical. 2) To reconstruct and critically examine the claims made by the text. 3) To relate the text to contemporary issues and texts in Philosophy.

Course Number: HUL 256 | Credits: 4
Course Objective:

What makes philosophical thinking radically critical? Investigation of the nature of knowledge about the world and justification of knowledge claims. Metaphysical understanding of the Absolute and Mind-Body relation. The nature of ethical and aesthetic beliefs and attitudes as part of understanding the nature of values. The discussion of the above issues will be influenced by three philosophical orientational perspectives: Anglo-American Analytic, Continental Phenomenological and Classical Indian.

Course Number: HSL857 | Credits:
Course Objective:

An understanding of the philosophical question of Knowledge and Rational Belief by taking into consideration the possibility of Scepticism, and then attempting a critical comprehension of the Character of Epistemology by bringing into discussion contemporary developments such as Social Epistemology, Virtue Epistemology and Feminist Epistemology.

Course Number: HSL755 | Credits:
Course Objective:

To provide the student with knowledge about the classical and contemporary philosophers who have directly or indirectly contributed towards constructing the intellectual edifice of fascism. This course will provide the student with the philosophical tools to critically engage with the structures of domination and emerging forms of resistance.

Course Number: HUL 251 | Credits: 4
Course Objective:

In this course, students are introduced to fundamentals of informal logic and verbal analysis, material and formal fallacies of reasoning often found ordinary discourse, deductive and Inductive reasoning, validity and soundness, formal rules and principles of the deductive system of Aristotelian logic, traditional square of opposition; propositional calculus; first order predicate calculus; the modern square of opposition and the problem of existential import; identity and definite descriptions; methods for formulating natural language arguments in symbolic forms and techniques for checking their validity; various meta-logical theorems and their proofs.

Course Number: HSL657 | Credits:
Course Objective:

· Identify the philosophical grounds of concepts and approaches in the study of cognition and intelligent behavior.
· Demonstrate epistemological challenges involved in evaluating whether machines can have thought and other mental phenomena.
· Discuss notions related to computation, representation and meaning to bring out nuances in philosophical arguments about the nature and scope of artificial intelligence.
· Explain issues related to the moral status of AI and designing learning machines with ethical sensitivity.
· Write analytical essays that flesh out philosophical ideas underlying current debates in AI

Course Number: HUL 359 | Credits: 3
Course Objective:

The course is a critical study of the problem of the self taken to be a substance by some and denied to have any substantial reality by others. Focus will be given on examining the worldview from which stems the idea of a continuing self, as a subject of consciousness and agent of action. Questions about whether it is material or immaterial, real or nominal object will centre the ontological investigation into the nature of the self. Special consideration will be given to the issue of self-awareness and self-reference, and its relation to the linguistic phenomenon of the first-person pronoun 'I'.

Course Number: HUL 253 | Credits: 4
Course Objective:

This is primarily a course in applied ethics. It will focus primarily on questions like: What is the meaning of right action? Can ethical assertions be true or false? Is morality relative to society? Or can we say that acts have universal moral content? The course discussions will help to demonstrate that morality is not always self-evident and that rational morality must come in place of taboo based moralities.

Course Number: HUL 353 | Credits: 3
Course Objective:

This course addresses various philosophical questions that arise from the recent developments in evolutionary biology, genetics, immunology, sociobiology, molecular biology and synthetic biology. How do these developments affect our ideas about life, evolution and the place of man in relation to other living beings. What is the nature of explanation in biological sciences? Does the idea of immunity demand rethinking on the nature of our embodied self? What can biological sciences tell us about healing, pain and death?

Course Number: HSL551 | Credits:
Course Objective:

To introduce students to key concepts on which definitions of philosophy are constructed, such as “concept”, “idea”, “opinion”, “argument”, representation”, “reason”, “knowledge”, “judgement”, “critique”; to discuss different traditions and critiques of philosophical thinking;

Course Number: HSL756 | Credits:
Course Objective:

The objective of the course to respond to the cinematic image with the conceptual resources of philosophy. This is not a course in film appreciation. We shall learn to speak and write about what we see. We shall discuss some of the seminal philosophical works on Cinema.

Course Number: HUL 355 | Credits: 3
Course Objective:

What defines the Indian tradition? Is there a singular Indian tradition or is there a plurality of Indian traditions in the public sphere today? How do these find representation in the modern and textual frameworks? Is modernity antithetical to tradition? The aim of this course is to take up these varied questions along with their nuances to understand and re-negotiate Indian intellectual traditions. In this course, the examination of sources, structure, texts and exemplars from Indian intellectual tradition provide a theoretical framework for the discussion of contemporary political and social issues. Economic development, social justice, religion and the nation, communalism and secularism, caste, class and gender equality are themes to be addressed. The political misuse of tradition in programs of reform and revival both in the past and in modern times will be highlighted to underline the need for rethinking Indian Philosophy and intellectual tradition in an academically rigorous manner. This course will also take into cognisance the intellectual history of the ancient past as it comes through the Vedic thought and its contestations.

Course Number: HUL 351 | Credits: 3
Course Objective:

What kind of understanding of the past does history provide? Is it speculative or analytical? What constitutes historical evidence and how does it confine historical understanding? Questions of objectivity are the central focus of this course: that of historians themselves— constructionist and objectivist— as they debate methodological issues and disagreements about the aim of their discipline, and that of philosophers whose interest in history springs from their attention on history‘s objectivist ideals and "the objectivity crisis" in history providing a philosophical rationale for reframing the two oppositions that dominate debates about the status of historical knowledge.

Course Number: HSL856 | Credits:
Course Objective:

This course concentrates on philosophical attempts to understand the concepts of reference, meaning, truth, the nature and presuppositions of communicative exchange. These are intensely debated topics in contemporary philosophy of language and the course aims a critical study of some of the classical papers around the above topics in the field that would enable the student to understand the nuances of the debates and engage with them .

Course Number: HSL851 | Credits:
Course Objective:

To familiarize students with the precise problems posed by Literature to philosophy, and vice-versa. To study the philosophical nature of the grounding concepts of literature—such as textuality, narrativity, fictionality, and intransitivity. To grasp the singular demand placed by these concepts and problems, and by literary discourse in general, on philosophical conceptualization of being, truth, knowledge, value, creation, temporality, space, language and the human condition. To examine the relation of literary discourse to that of politics, morality, myth, history, and science.

Course Number: HUL 358 | Credits: 3
Course Objective:

An appreciation of how the fundamental mental concepts are essentially amenable to philosophical sense over and above their usual psychological understanding and analysis. To explain why our mental conceptual scheme does not easily admit of their reduction to physical conceptual scheme. To reflect on whether mentally endowed human person differ, ontologically, from the rest of nature.

Course Number: HUL 357 | Credits: 3
Course Objective:

Science is regarded as the most significant cogntive enterprise of the modern society. In view of this, the course addresses the question what sets science apart from other epistemic activities. Further It concentrates on debates on the nature of scientific methods, logical reconstruction of scientific explanation, the relation between theories and laws on the one hand, and empirical evidence on the other, the nature of the justification and the notion of truth involved in scientific knowledge, and the societal influence on scientific practice.

Course Number: HSL753 | Credits:
Course Objective:

Students who complete this course will learn to engage with philosophical questions concerning the foundations of science, as well as the nature of scientific practice.

Course Number: HSL752 | Credits:
Course Objective:

To explore the relationship between Philosophy and Social Sciences 2) To understand the significance of Social Sciences for the social existence of man 3) To take a critical standpoint on the logic of Social Sciences. 4) To explore the link between the Natural and Social Sciences.

Course Number: HSL852 | Credits:
Course Objective:

Students taking this course will critically engage with key texts in political philosophy from a variety of philosophical traditions. The aim will be to engage with these texts as part of a living tradition of thinking about politics, and to mine them for insights about the contemporary world. Specific topics and texts may vary from semester to semester.

Course Number: HSL584 | Credits:
Course Objective:

· To introduce students to politics from the combined perspectives of political philosophy, political theory, and the history of ideas.
· To familiarize students with different conceptions of politics through an understanding of the contexts in which they emerged.
· To encourage an understanding of the role of political thought, concepts, and critiques in the practice of politics

Course Number: HUL 352 | Credits: 3
Course Objective:

The course will begin by exploring the worldview implicit in the Vedas, the Upanisads, and the orthodox systems and then move on to the rejection of this entire sytem in Buddhism and Materialism. Emphasis will be led on the diversity of systems and healthy dialogue between antagonistic schools of thought. Discussions will focus on the nature of consciousness in relation to cognition of reality, theories of reality in terms of realism and anti-realism; the nature of self and no-self theory, theories of perceptual knowledge, theories of error; theories of causation and other relations, and key concepts of moral and aesthetic thought. Wherever appropriate, problems will be discussed in comparison with parallel discussions in western philosophy

Course Number: HSL854 | Credits:
Course Objective:

To engage the student with some of the central issues of metaphysics discussed both in classical and contemporary philosophy in both Anglo-American, Continental and Indian traditions. To make the student proficient in dealing with metaphysical questions and make them realize the centrality of metaphysics in philosophy.

Course Number: HUL 360 | Credits: 3
Course Objective:

The course will introduce students to selected topics in Philosophy as decided by the instructor.

Course Number: HUL 252 | Credits: 4
Course Objective:

As closely aligned areas in philosophy– social philosophy with the role of individual in society and political philosophy with the role of government- this course bridges divides between social theory, political philosophy, and the history of social and political thought as also between empirical and normative analysis through perspectives from metaphysics, epistemology and axiology. A range of socio-political thinkers, theories and concepts will be taught. It will provide a broad survey of fundamental social and political questions in current contexts discussing philosophical issues central to political thought and radical critiques of current political theories.

Course Number: HSL631 | Credits:
Course Objective:

To introduce students to some of the major works of a single author and to discussions elicited by these works. The course will train students to gain a thorough understanding of the trajectory of the given author, the intellectual context of their writing, and to be conversant with debates and questions surrounding their work. The author could be a novelist, poet, philosopher, or literary theorist.

Course Number: HSL655 | Credits:
Course Objective:

· Familiarize students with the histories of thinking and defining ‘democracy’ and its contrasts with different as well as related political forms (tyranny, monarchy, anarchy)
· Understand the related concepts and categories through which democracy is thought such as power, politics, freedom, equality, “people”, the individual, society, community, nation, state, representation, deliberation.
· Understand the ideas of democracy with historical examples of democratic formations such as parliamentary democracy, and of the forms and techniques of deliberation, collective decision-making, participation, and representation.
· Critically engage with definitions and critiques of democracy.

Course Number: HSL754 | Credits:
Course Objective:

The aim of this course is to understand Plato's writings on a variety of topics, and see the connection between these writings and more contemporary philosophical discussions.