Critical Paradigms Seminar
This seminar is free for those who attend in Prague just email us at contact@gcas.ie and let us know you’re attending (limited seating so first come first serve).
Prerequisites: Post-Graduate Enrolled Researcher, BA-MA Researcher or open enrollment from the public.
Format: This course will have 5 pre-recorded lectures, which each enrolled student must engage and show they comprehend the lecture before being admitted to the discussion section.
Days: Monday- Friday (June 19-23) in Prague and Online
Time: 1 PM New York time
Term: Spring 2023
Credits: 3
Instructor: Rocco Gangle, PhD
This short seminar lecture series is designed to be a general survey of 5 critical paradigms: Critical Theory, Semiology and Semiotics, Hermeneutics, Psychoanalysis and Deconstruction, and Automation, Artificial Intelligence and Algorithmic Design. For each paradigm we will examine the basic theoretical presuppositions at work and consider several prominent exemplars of the approach. The focus throughout is on how these various critical approaches are applied to textual, cultural and historical materials in contemporary scholarship and how they may be combined with one another in mutually illuminating ways.
Intended Learning Outcomes:
Enhanced Critical Reasoning
Enhanced Critical Communication Skills
Learn new paradigms in the history of philosophy and the history of intellectual ideas
The ability to understand and articulate detailed philosophical arguments from a cultural, historical, and textual perspective.
Required Texts (listed in order of course topics):
M. Horkheimer, “Traditional and Critical Theory”
C. J. Robinson, Black Marxism, Part 3
Recommended:
M. Horkheimer and T. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment
F. de Saussure, from Course in General Linguistics
C.S. Peirce, “On the Nature of Signs”
C.S. Peirce, “What Pragmatism is”
C. Geertz, “Religion as a Cultural System”
Recommended:
A. Freadman, The Machinery of Talk
H.-G. Gadamer, from Philosophical Hermeneutics
J.L. Borges, “Averroes’ Search”
J. Plaskow, from Standing Again at Sinai
Recommended:
R.E. Palmer, Hermeneutics
M. Heidegger, Being and Time
P. Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory
J. Kristeva, “Desire in Language”, “Tocatta and Fugue on the Foreigner”
Recommended:
J. Derrida, Writing and Difference
J. Lacan, “Seminar on ‘The Purloined Letter’”
A.M. Turing, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence”
F. Moretti, “Conjectures on World Literature”
T. Metzinger et. al., Open Mind project https://open-mind.net
T. Metzinger and J.M. Windt, “What Does it Mean to Have an Open Mind?”
C. Eliasmith, “On the Eve of Artificial Minds”
D. Hill, “Future Games”
Recommended:
N. Luhmann, An Introduction to Systems Theory
Assessments:
The student will be assessed in all aspects of this course through the following means:
Presentation [10% of total Grade]
Weekly Paper Submission of 400 words, but no more than 1,000 [20%]
Participation [In the live discussion sections, or in the forum if unable to attend the discussion live] [20%]
Research Paper Examination 3,000 word academic research paper [50%]
Accommodations:
Please complete this form if you wish to receive academic accommodation.