Matters of Fact, Matters of Fiction
The courses in this learning community will explore perspectives in the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities, asking how representations of our world can be both matters of fact and matters of fiction.
Matters of Fact, Matters of Fiction
Offered fall 2017
Open to first-year students
What do debates about free will, the waggle-dance of honey bees, and a poem by Sylvia Plath have in common? They each invite questions about how we represent the world around us and within our minds. The courses in this learning community will treat some of these questions from perspectives in the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities, asking how representations of our world can be both matters of fact and matters of fiction.
• The Science of Thinking about Thinking will explore how the disciplines of anthropology, computer science, neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy can work together to understand consciousness, free will, and creativity.
• Representation and Reality will investigate the ways in which human and non-human animals make and exchange representations about inner and outer states of affairs.
• Objects and Apparitions will ask how lyric poems can seem at once fictional and factual, objective and subjective.
Each course will seek to build the skills and expertise appropriate to its own methods, but will assume that no full account of our central questions can be made without understanding how other disciplines approach these problems.
PHIL 209 and either FYSP 044 or FYSP 084 are required for enrollment in the learning community.
Instructors
Course instructors for this learning community are Professor of Psychology Patty DeWinstanley, Associate Professor of English DeSales Harrison, and Professor of Philosophy Todd Ganson.
Matters of Fact, Matters of Fiction will help students use their skills and subject knowledge to understand how other disciplines approach these problems.