Living in the Age of A.I. In this course we will explore the social, ethical, and philosophical impacts of artificial intelligence (AI). Recent technological advances have led to the widespread implementation of AI and it’s rapidly reshaping our relationship to ourselves, others, work, and education. Questions include: How is AI changing the nature of education and what does it mean to learn in the age of AI? Should AI tools be used in the pursuit of friends or romance? How can we minimize bias so that we can trust AI outputs? What impact will AI have on human creativity? How can we use AI ethically to avoid deskilling? It’s paramount that we think about the impacts of AI so that we can guide those changes rather than be guided by them.

Issues in Bioethics In this course, we will look at when medicine departs from its usual purpose of prolonging life and treating disease/injury, as well as how to distribute medical resources needed for that purpose. First, when should medicine be used not to avoid death, but to bring it about? We will discuss abortion and euthanasia. Second, when should medicine be used to change our physical condition, in non-disease/injury contexts? We will discuss the nature of disability and the permissibility of human enhancement. Finally, we will look at how we should distribute medical resources in a variety of contexts, including triage, vaccine distribution and the anti-vax movement, Third World clinical trials, and blood donations, as well as how structural inequalities hamper just resource distribution.

Introduction to Modern Logic Logic is concerned with good reasoning; as such, it stands at the core of the liberal arts. In this course we will develop our reasoning skills by identifying and analyzing arguments found in philosophical, legal, and other texts, and also by formulating our own arguments. We will use the formal techniques of modern propositional and predicate logic to codify and test various reasoning strategies and specific arguments. No prior knowledge of logic, formal mathematics, or computer science is presupposed in this course, which does not count towards the PHL distribution requirement but instead towards the deductive reasoning requirement.

Technical Artifacts: Normative and Metaphysical Perspectives In this seminar we will explore normative and metaphysical questions pertaining to technical artifacts, which are human-made technological products like cellphones, cars, drones, software, skyscrapers, and robots. Technical artifacts pervade our daily lives and structure our relations to each other, ourselves, and society, generally. We will engage in philosophical inquiry by asking questions such as what technical artifacts are and whether they have essences, what role maintenance and repair practices play in their persistence over time, what role collective intentions play in their creation, what their relation is to broader sociotechnical systems, how they structure power relations, whether they can embody values and how they contribute to value change, as well as questions regarding responsible design and responsibility for (mis)use. (Junior and senior majors or by waiver);

Ethics of AI and Algorithms In this course we will look at the ethical and social impacts of the development and application of AI and algorithms. While algorithmic decision-making is by now familiar, advances in generative AI has seen ubiquitous integration of these systems to domains as diverse as healthcare, education, social media, cybersecurity, warfare, politics, climate change, and entertainment. The rapid deployment of these technologies means their ethical and social implications have not been fully understood. We will use ethical frameworks to investigate how to develop and use these technologies equitably, while maximizing their benefits and minimizing potential harms. Because these technologies promise profound social change, critical rational reflection on their ethical and social impacts is crucial for responsibly guiding their integration into society.

Philosophy of Technology In this course we will explore a number of philosophically and ethically significant questions about the nature of technology and how it interacts with, improves, harms, and ultimately structures our individual lives and society, generally. The answers to the questions pursued in this course lie somewhere between two common attitudes towards technology: an unbridled optimism that technology will improve our lives and a romanticized Ludditism that desires a return to pre-technological human society. While there is much to appreciate and much to criticize about modern technology, both appreciation and criticism need to be tempered with critical and rational reflection. Specific topics include ethics of artificial intelligence, ethical design, genetic engineering and human nature, technologizing cognition, technology in politics, technology creep.

Knowledge and Reality This course will introduce students to central issues in epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge) and metaphysics (the philosophical study of reality). We will examine philosophical answers to some of the following questions: What is knowledge? How do we know what we know? How does knowledge differ from mere opinion? Does reality exist independently of our minds? When is it rational to believe something? What is the nature of time, causality, and possibility? Are our actions freely chosen or determined by natural forces? Do abstract entities-such as numbers and universals-exist?

Social Metaphysics Social metaphysics focuses on the nature of social kinds and phenomena, including race, gender, sexual orientation, groups, teams, organizations, institutions, virtual artifacts, games, social relationships, governments, nations, and cultures. In this seminar we will focus on the ways such kinds are constructed via social norms and conventions, whether social kinds have essential properties, and what mental states are needed to sustain them. We will also consider how social kinds structure relations of power as well as our lived experiences, and the relations of dependence between social kinds and material artifacts. Students will be introduced to different methodological approaches to these issues, including methodological individualism, holism, conceptual engineering, and descriptive meta-ontology.

Environmental Ethics In this course we will explore a variety of moral questions that arise in connection to the environment and our relationship to it. Questions may include: What are our moral obligations to the environment? What is the moral status of non-human animals, and how should we take their welfare into account? Do we have a duty to be vegetarian/vegan? What should we do about climate change? How should we respond to climate change deniers? What role should technology play in combating climate change? Is biodiversity intrinsically or only instrumentally valuable?; What duties do we have to future generations? The primary goal of this course is to engage in an overview of philosophically and ethically significant questions about the environment and our relation to it.

Tim Juvshik

Reviews and ratings for Tim Juvshik at Middlebury College.Tim Juvshik teaches Living in the Age of A.I., Issues in Bioethics, Introduction to Modern Logic and more.  Explore top rated instructors and find the best for you.Is Tim Juvshik good ? Find out on MiddCourses.

An excellent course if you enjoy logic/puzzles, particularly after the first couple weeks. It involved a fair amount of homework, but many of the problems were enjoyable to me. While not very fast paced, and it assumed no background knowledge, it can be challenging to catch up if you fall behind, as each new concept builds on previous ones.

This course provides a thorough but basic introduction to sentential and predicate logic. It can seem as if the class offers few concrete skills going forward, but the skills trained are similar to those that might be honed in a math class: applicable in few scenarios but critical for the development of methodical and structured problem solving.

This course surprised me. I was worried about taking it after reading reviews of it that described it as only for math people or too fast, but it was awesome. It teaches you a whole new language and allows you to grapple with tough material that really clicks once you get it.