Summary: The mysterious relationship between the mind and the body is avidly being researched by today's cognitive scientists. This program seeks to understand the mind/matter dichotomy through the eyes of some of history's keenest philosophers, including Descartes, Wittgenstein, Leibniz, Mill, Gilbert Ryle, Willard Van Orman Quine, Thomas Nagel, and John Searle. Three of today's leading lights in this...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Does science explain the world, or does it simply describe it? Can science ever be truly objective? What is the boundary between science and non-science? Does nature have laws? This program seeks to answer questions such as these through the insights of Princeton University's Daniel Garber; Hilary Putnam, of Harvard University; and Barry Loewer, of Rutgers University. Ranging from the Physics...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: What do modern art, a symphony, and a documentary film have in common? They all require aesthetic considerations. This program presents the ideas of key figures in the shaping and understanding of aesthetics-from Plato, Francis Hutcheson, and Kant to Leon Battista Alberti, Stendhal, and Tolstoy-and addresses pivotal writings, including Aristotle's Poetics and Morris Weitz's "The Role of Theory...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Part 5 continues to explore the meaning of the scientific revolution and to examine the many problems that it raises. It is in this period that the West becomes keenly aware of the social and psychological origins and purposes of its activities. This is a period of spiritual turmoil as well as of material advance.
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: Teaching Co. 2000
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 109 GRESummary: This program explores three major areas of philosophical inquiry into religion: religious epistemology, or the exploration of the rational grounds for religious beliefs and, in particular, the existence of God; the metaphysics of religion, which inquires into the nature of God; and theodicy, which examines the philosophical implications of the presence of evil in the world. Commentary by Alvin...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: The lectures in Part 6 bring the progress of philosophy into the present day, beginning with the work of Nietzsche and the American pragmatists William James and John Dewey. This section explains the work and consequence of modern linguistic and logical analysis in lectures on Ayer and Wittgenstein. Also discussed is the structuralism of Claude Levi-Strauss and the attempts to develop rational...
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: Teaching Co. 2000
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 109 GRESummary: Part 2 examines the biblical answers to the fundamental human questions and then traces their influence on the Western mind. This second section witnesses the transformation of philosophy from a monothetic search for explanations to a spiritual quest for meaning and understanding informed by a profound fideism.
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: Teaching Co. 2000
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 109 GRESummary: Part 4 covers the period during the 17th and 18th centuries that saw widespread questioning of religious and other traditional authorities, growing faith in science, and early responses to the budding industrial revolution. This period marks the intellectual flowering that led to the American Revolution.
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: Teaching Co. 2000
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 109 GRESummary: As a tool for characterizing rational thought, logic cuts across many philosophical disciplines and lies at the core of mathematics and computer science. Drawing on Aristotle's Organon, Russell's Principia Mathematica, and other central works, this program tracks the evolution of logic, beginning with the basic syllogism. A sampling of subsequent topics includes propositional and predicate...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: The final section in the series, Part 7 details the skeptical and critical answers reached in the second half of the twentieth century to the questions posed in the previous fifty years. This section covers the work of late twentieth-century philosophers and theorists who focused on two critical features of modernity. One issue focused on modern political theory and practice. The other focused...
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: Teaching Co. 2000
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 109 GRESummary: Part 3 explores the period from the Renaissance to the onset of the Enlightenment in the middle to late seventeenth century. This section marks the critical schism that developed between the claims of faith and those of science.
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: Teaching Co. 2000
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 109 GREHardy, Grant
Summary: "[This series] is an epic, comprehensive survey of the East's most influential philosphers and thinkers. In 36 lectures, [the student will be introduced to] the men and women responsible for molding Asian philosophy and for giving birth to a wide variety of spiritual and ideological systems, including Hinduism, Daoism, Confucianism, Sufism, and Buddhism."--Www.thegreatcourses.com.
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: Teaching Co. 2011
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 109 GRESummary: The impact of continental philosophy has been tremendous, infusing the humanities with a strange brew made up of energy and insight combined with absurdity and meaninglessness. This program delves deeply into concepts and thought processes that fueled the inquiries of the era's major exponents: Hegel's dialectic, Marx's dialectical materialism, Kierkegaard's lone individual standing before God,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Moral philosophy lies at the heart of today's most heated issues-abortion, human cloning, assisted suicide, financial conflicts of interest, and environmental stewardship. In this program, Harvard University's Frances Kamm; Rutgers University's Larry Temkin; and Richard Sorabji, honorary fellow at Wolfson College, the University of Oxford, describe the three major categories of ethics:...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Part 1 includes an introduction to the entire series and to the enduring problems of philosophy. The critical tensions in Western thought are identified and the context is set for the great conversation that follows. This first part of the series is foundational, designed to teach basic facts about the philosophers and traditions covered. Classical Origins examines the origins of philosophy in...
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: Teaching Co. 2000
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 109 GRESummary: What is "the good," and why is it that one can never step into the same river twice? This program featuring Princeton University's Alexander Nehamas and Richard Sorabji, honorary fellow at Wolfson College, the University of Oxford, addresses core topics in ancient philosophy such as freedom and fate, permanence and change, happiness, the nature of the cosmos, and the immortality of the soul....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Systematic thought about the true nature of things is the very foundation of philosophical reasoning: idealism and materialism.realism, nominalism, and conceptualism.the noumenal and the phenomenal.logical positivism, emergentism, and modal realism. In this program, Rutgers philosophers Brian McLaughlin, Barry Loewer, John Hawthorne, Ted Sider, and Dean Zimmerman discuss the nature of this most...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: A century after its inception, analytic philosophy continues to clarify issues through argumentation, analysis, and logical rigor-and to parse out the phenomenon of language. This program scrutinizes the founding of analytic philosophy, the rise of logical positivism, the rejection of metaphysics, and the advent of linguistic philosophy through Russell's Principia Mathematica, Wittgenstein's...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Who should lead the world's only superpower? When is it acceptable to topple another country's leader? Are personal freedom and national security mutually incompatible? The answers to urgent political questions such as these are informed by 23 centuries of discourse that started with The Republic. This program focuses successively on the pivotal ideas of Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Rousseau,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Grim, Patrick.
Summary: Philosophical examination of the wide range of decisions all of us encounter in pursuing our lives. Professor Grim places the accent on individual choice covering questions about evolution and ethics, about whether punishment is justified by retribution or by deterrence and about the differing lessons drawn from life's worst horrors by both religious and anti-religious traditions.
Format: sound recording-nonmusical
Publisher / Publication Date: Teaching Co. 2005
Copies Available at Woodmere
2 available in Compact Disc Audio Book, Call number: CD 170 GRI Part 1 of 2Call number: CD 170 GRI Part 2 of 2
Nichols, Shaun
Summary: By explaining the fundamental approaches to this familiar debate, Professor Nichols thoroughly prepares you for an in-depth study of the complexities of free will and determinism. You discover what great thinkers through the ages believe about the choices we make and understand how we might deal with their implications.
Format: sound recording-nonmusical
Publisher / Publication Date: Teaching Co. 2008
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Compact Disc Audio Book, Call number: CD 190 NICSummary: Alongside the glittery promise of nanotechnology sits a Pandora’s box of potential concerns that range from worrisome applications like nano-enhanced surveillance devices and weapon systems to unintended consequences such as nanopollution and nanotoxicity. This program takes a balanced look at the debate over potential nanotech risks as it presents viewers with the informed opinions of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: This program travels from Plato's cave to Gettier's papier-mache barns while addressing, along the way, questions such as: What does it mean to really know something? How can one know that one knows it? And is seeing the same thing as believing? Deconstructing the principles of epistemology are Rutgers University's Alvin Goldman and Peter Klein and Princeton University's Alexander Nehamas and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: During the 16th century, a new breed of thinker arose, equal parts philosopher and scientist, that threw off the received wisdom of the past and started afresh. In this program, Paul Guyer, of the University of Pennsylvania; Rutgers University's Colin McGinn; and Princeton University's Kwame Anthony Appiah and Daniel Garber address the major philosophical currents of that era-and the explosive...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005