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Why Study Philosophy
People average about three careers in their lifetimes. Study philosophy and be prepared for all of them.
Watch Dr. Michael Hymers's interview about studying Philosophy at Dalhousie
Weekly Colloquium
This Week's Colloquium
The colloquium will be held from 3:00-5:00 pm (Atlantic time) on Friday, July 5 both in person, in 1130 Marion McCain, and online via zoom (details below).
Speaker: Cameron Yetman (University of Toronto)
Title: Representation in large language models
Abstract: This paper assesses the practical and theoretical viability of representation-based strategies for explaining the behavior of large language models and other deep learning-based AI systems. Representation-talk constitutes the dominant explanatory paradigm in philosophy of mind and cognitive science, yet its appropriateness in the AI context has recently been challenged from a number of avenues. I examine some of these challenges, propose a new one, and show how the representational approach can overcome them.
Dal Philosophy is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: Colloquium
Time: Jul 5, 2024 03:00 PM Atlantic Time (Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85777422084?pwd=qOyWaG68JJO2xUwXyOaWdrRpoTka1B.1
Meeting ID: 857 7742 2084
Passcode: 451744
Our Department
The Dalhousie University Department of Philosophy is one of the most active and supportive philosophy departments in Canada. Our program will prepare you for any career because philosophy is the ultimate transferable skill.
ACADEMIC INTEGRITY
All Philosophy courses at Dalhousie emphasize the importance of academic integrity. Students are responsible for ensuring that all work they submit is their own, and, unless otherwise explicitly indicated by the instructor, AI-driven tools and generative AI models (including language models like the GPT suite, translation models like Google Translate or DeepL, editing tools like QuillBot, GrammaryGo, etc.) should not be used to generate ideas or written materials for any class offered by the Philosophy department.
AFFILIATED GROUPS
- Atlantic Canada Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy
- Minorities and Philosophy
- Dalhousie Women Around Philosophy
- Evolutionary Studies Group
- Animal Studies Group
- The Canadian Philosophical Association - see the CPA's Good Equity Practices
- The Dalhousie Philosophy Equity Committee
Where do I begin?
The basic skills practiced in philosophy are the very skills demanded and rewarded in the most lucrative, influential professions. Start your journey by registering for a first-year course or pick a second-year course in an area of interest to you.
DEPARTMENT KUDOS
- Congratulations to Erik Nelson who defended his PhD dissertation, The Nonlinguistic Mind: Nonlinguistic Concepts, Normativity and Animal Cognition, this June.
- Congratulations to our PhD student, Clarisse Paron, for being awarded the Hadden Prize by the Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Science for presenting on of the best two student papers at the Annual Meeting, June 2024. The title of her paper is “Are the New American Pediatric Obesity Guidelines Eugenic? Eugenic Logics and the Medicalization and Pathologization of Children’s Bodies.”
- Congratulations to our PhD students, Lara Millman and Clarisse Paron, for being awarded Dalhousie’s President’s Graduate/Undergraduate Student Teaching Award (2 of 3 available university-wide awards!)
- Congratulations to Dr. Travis LaCroix, who has accepted a position as Assistant Professor at the Department of Philosophy, Durham University, starting in the fall of 2024.
- Congratulations to Dr. Travis LaCroix, who has been award an Insight Development Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council! Travis’s research project is entitled “Philosophy on the Spectrum: The Philosophy of Autism and Autistic Philosophy.”
- Tyler Hildebrand’s paper “Inductive Reasoning Involving Social Kinds” (with Barrett Emerick) has been published in the Journal of the American Philosophical Association. https://philpapers.org/rec/EMEIRI
- Congratulations to Kayla Beals, who is the 2024 recipient of the F. Hilton Page Memorial Prize, awarded to a graduating student whose thesis is judged to be outstanding.
- Congratulations to George Arnott, who is the 2024 recipient of the Roland Puccetti Memorial Award for the best essay submitted by a student in a 3000- or 4000-level class. George’s essay is entitled "The Virtuous Cohort" Habituation and Character-Friendship as Rational Motivators for Aristotelian Courage.