This is very much not what I (or I think anyone) would expect to be in a course with the very general-sounding title “Philosophy and the challenge of the future”. Is it the case that anyone choosing whether to study this will first look at the syllabus (or maybe some other document that gives a shorter summary of what’s going to be in the course) and therefore not be at risk of being misled? If not, you might consider a more informative title, or maybe a subtitle. “Philosophy and the challenge of artificial intelligence”. “Philosophy and the challenge of the future: hard thinking about AI”. “Opportunities and threats of artificial intelligence: a philosophical perspective”. Or something.
Course titles are fixed so I didn’t choose that, but because it’s a non-intro course it’s up to the instructor to decide the course’s focus. And yes, the students had seen the description before selecting it.
Huh. So is there a course every year titled “Philosophy and the challenge of the future”, with radically different content each time depending on the particular interests of whoever’s lecturing that year?
This doesn’t appear to be too unusual, almost every department I’ve been in has such “topics” courses in certain areas. One point is that the lecturer can present their specific knowledge or current developments.
Yep, I think my university called these “special topics” or “selected topics” papers sometimes. As in, a paper called “Special Topics In X” would just be “we got three really good researchers who happen to study different areas of X, we asked them each to spend one-third of the year teaching you about their favourite research, and then we test you on those three areas at the end of the year”. Downside is that you don’t necessarily get the optimal three topics that you wanted to learn about, upside is you get to learn from great researchers.
This is very much not what I (or I think anyone) would expect to be in a course with the very general-sounding title “Philosophy and the challenge of the future”. Is it the case that anyone choosing whether to study this will first look at the syllabus (or maybe some other document that gives a shorter summary of what’s going to be in the course) and therefore not be at risk of being misled? If not, you might consider a more informative title, or maybe a subtitle. “Philosophy and the challenge of artificial intelligence”. “Philosophy and the challenge of the future: hard thinking about AI”. “Opportunities and threats of artificial intelligence: a philosophical perspective”. Or something.
Course titles are fixed so I didn’t choose that, but because it’s a non-intro course it’s up to the instructor to decide the course’s focus. And yes, the students had seen the description before selecting it.
Huh. So is there a course every year titled “Philosophy and the challenge of the future”, with radically different content each time depending on the particular interests of whoever’s lecturing that year?
This doesn’t appear to be too unusual, almost every department I’ve been in has such “topics” courses in certain areas. One point is that the lecturer can present their specific knowledge or current developments.
Yep, I think my university called these “special topics” or “selected topics” papers sometimes. As in, a paper called “Special Topics In X” would just be “we got three really good researchers who happen to study different areas of X, we asked them each to spend one-third of the year teaching you about their favourite research, and then we test you on those three areas at the end of the year”. Downside is that you don’t necessarily get the optimal three topics that you wanted to learn about, upside is you get to learn from great researchers.
Yep that’s how it was in my program at UNC