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Study online with La Trobe University through Open Universities Australia. Explore all degrees, subjects and short courses now.

With our flexible Bachelor of Arts, you can choose from a wide range of majors and minors taught by La Trobe&#39;s passionate and committed staff. This flexible degree allows you to pursue your passion and your profession, while keeping your career options open.Shape your own future with this interdisciplinary course. You’ll specialise in at least one area by choosing a major from the School of Humanities and Social Sciences (HUSS), and then explore your interests or build an essential skill by choosing secondary majors, minors and electives from HUSS and select other areas of the University. You’ll graduate with your majors and minors listed on your academic transcript, so future employers can recognise your expertise.Create your own path. Want to major in Sociology, with a second major in Marketing, then take a Creative and Professional Writing subject as an elective? Go for it. Or perhaps you’d like to pair Politics and English? Or Crime, Justice and Legal Studies with Linguistics? Build your own future – we’re here to help you achieve your dream. No matter which path you choose, you’ll learn from world-class academics and leading researchers.In your first year, you’ll explore your interests and passions, trying out subjects from a range of different areas. In your second and third years, you’ll delve deeper while also choosing electives and minors that broaden your skills and knowledge. Studying online offers you the flexibility to complete the degree from wherever you’re based. Throughout your degree, you’ll be well supported by La Trobe’s passionate and committed academics, who are experts in their fields. Many of La Trobe’s online subjects in Humanities and Social Sciences also give you the opportunity to log in to live sessions and engage directly with academics and your fellow students in real time.Gain real-world experience and build valuable connections that will shape your career. Take on an industry placement at organisations like SBS Radio, the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre or the United Nations Association of Australia or travel overseas for an international sustainability experience.* Many of our exchange programs are financially supported.The world is waiting for you. Step into it. You’ll learn:<ul><li>Critical thinking</li></ul>Delve into complex problems. Experts say critical thinking will be a highly valued skill in the workforce of tomorrow.**<ul><li>Emotional intelligence</li></ul>Understand what drives our decisions. Learn how to connect to others with emotion and intelligence.<ul><li>Creativity</li></ul>Learn how to see new possibilities and turn them into reality.<ul><li>Communication</li></ul>﻿Learn how to connect, communicate and collaborate with your University peers and future colleagues.*Please note: overseas programs may be impacted by travel restrictions.**Forbes, 2019, The 10 Vital Skills You Will Need For The Future Of Work; PwC, 2020, 10 skills you need for future employment

A flexible arts degree offering a large selection of humanities and social sciences majors. Mix it up with minors and electives in business, health, and science. Develop critical thinking, emotional intelligence, creativity, and communication skills.

Bachelor of Arts

Politics, Philosophy and Economics

Minds, Brains, and Machines: Contemporary Philosophy of Mind

Introduction to Logic

Biosciences Technology and Society

Making of the Modern Western World View

Knowledge, Individuals and Society

Questions that Matter

Virtual Reality as Philosophy

Critical Thinking and Innovation

Ethics: Private and Public

Thinking and reasoning are essential components of human life. But much of our thinking and reasoning is biased, distorted, and uninformed. This subject trains you to reason well, to think clearly and independently, and also to engage fairly with others in discussions and debates. You will develop useful skills in presenting, analysing and evaluating different types of arguments. You will learn to apply these skills to real cases from popular culture, current affairs, and philosophy. You will also learn to use diagrams and symbols to assist higher and more abstract levels of logical reasoning and systematic thinking. Because the ability to think and to argue clearly and fairly is central not just to philosophy but to university studies in general, many students find the experience gained in this subject immensely valuable, both within the university and later in employment whatever their subsequent areas of specialization.

This subject discusses the philosophical significance of Virtual Reality (VR) and other related technologies (like Augmented Reality and Video Games). These developing technologies raise many interesting ethical, social, metaphysical, and existential questions. This subject will introduce you to these issues and give you the conceptual tools to evaluate and analyse them, not only now but into the future as these technologies continue to change and evolve. Some of the questions we may look at include: Is a virtual life always less valuable than a real life? Is VR an empathy machine that can help us to better understand the inner lives of other people? Are the objects and events in VR real or fictional? What ethical constraints are there on our actions in virtual environments? In this subject you will also be encouraged to explore some of the virtual worlds we will be discussing (a cheap pair of cardboard VR googles and a smartphone will suffice), and to let those experiences influence your thoughts and philosophical arguments.

This subject introduces you to the disciplines of politics, philosophy, and economics (PPE). Learn how influential theories and concepts from each discipline can illuminate different aspects of a particular problem. You will use PPE perspectives to analyse markets, inequality, environmental degradation, educational opportunity, and discrimination. This is a core subject for students in La Trobe&#39;s Bachelor of Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE), but it is also open and accessible to any student seeking an introduction to these three disciplines (politics, philosophy, and economics) and their intersecting application to real-world challenges. Students from all campuses can take this subject online, with the option of a face-to-face tutorial at the Bundoora campus. Students enrolled in the Bachelor of PPE or Law/PPE should choose the face-to-face tutorial.

What is the mind and what is it made of? Can we say that mind and brain are the same thing? Are mental states, like thoughts and feelings, nothing more than brain states? Can machines be conscious? Do they have a mind? Do they think? Is language necessary for thinking? These and other questions will be the focus of this subject, which introduces you to contemporary philosophy of mind and to the philosophical underpinnings of contemporary cognitive science, psychology and linguistics.

Logic aims to uncover the most general patterns of good reasoning, so as to improve the way we draw inferences and even allow us to automate parts of that process. It is fundamental to the study of philosophy, mathematics, and computer science, and it has strong connections with many disciplines including law, psychology, and linguistics. Reasoning also occurs everywhere, from the privacy of one&#39;s own mind to political and scientific debates in the public domain, and all good reasoning is implicitly governed by logical principles. Developing an explicit grasp of those principles then is an important transferrable skill, as that understanding can help one to spot when arguments have gone awry and how to get them back on track. This subject will provide a gentle introduction to some of the basic elements of deductive logic, including the formalisation of arguments, propositional and predicate logic, and an accessible method of proof known as &quot;semantic tableaux&quot;. It will also touch on a number of more discipline-specific topics.

This subject focuses on ethical and philosophical issues that arise in the biological sciences, including the medical and health sciences, and the technologies they employ. Scientific disciplines, the biosciences are committed to objectivity and neutrality, but also interact with categories that are socially coded such as race, gender, and disability. Concepts such as health and disease can be understood as natural, biomedical concepts, but also as evaluative concepts that play social roles; and biological conceptions of intelligence, mental illness or disability can be even more contentious. Further, technological advances give us new ways to change human beings, some of which are seen as improvements or enhancements. In examining a series of topics, including race science, eugenics, intelligence, disease, disability, and bioenhancement, you will learn how to critically examine the role of social processes and values in the biosciences, and of the biosciences in society.

Focusing on major themes in the intellectual development of the Western world, from Greek metaphysics and ethics, through Christian theology to Modern (17-19 century) scientific, political, ecological or aesthetic understandings of our place and responsibilities in the wider world, we will investigate ideas that continue to inform and guide much contemporary thinking on the social, economic, or environmental challenges of our times, such as, living well, happiness, justice, freedom, knowledge and the power to produce change in the world. We will consider differences in approach, including competing empiricist, rationalist or idealist assumptions that underpin our knowledge claims, as well as the choices that these differences enable and their consequent impact on the public good now and in the future. We will ask: how might an appreciation of the historical emergence of such ideas assist us in reflecting on our responsibilities in relation to the demands of our times?

Think of all the different beliefs you hold about various matters. How many of these, if any, constitute genuine knowledge rather than mere opinion? What does this distinction amount to and why is it important? To what extent do the standards for what counts as knowledge depend on context? Can you know something without knowing that you know it? What makes a belief justified or reasonable? Is it ever reasonable to hold a belief if you have no evidence to support it? What is the value of knowledge in our individual lives and in society? These are some of the central questions in epistemology-- the philosophical study of the nature, extent, and value, of knowledge and justified belief. In this course we will explore these and related questions using both historical and contemporary sources. Epistemological questions crop up absolutely everywhere--i n science, the humanities, politics, religion, and everyday life--and this course will give you the tools to tackle such questions wherever you find them.

This subject is concerned with moral problems that arise in private and public life. We will focus on a selection of controversial topics drawn from a number of areas. One of these may concern questions of life and death, including the sanctity of life, abortion, and euthanasia. Another may focus on ethical issues raised by new technologies, such as the use of drones in war, reproductive choice, genetic enhancement, and sex selection. In any one year we may also examine social issues, such as stereotyping, bullying or racism, and/or global issues, such as the international trade in organs and body parts, global poverty, and the ethics of climate change policy.

In this subject you will be introduced to topics in a range of the major philosophical areas, including epistemology (what can we know?), metaphysics (what is the nature of reality?), ethics, and political philosophy. We will examine some of the central questions that have captivated philosophers throughout millennia, as well as those that scientific advances and cultural changes have only recently brought to our attention. These might include: What is it to be a person, or a citizen? What makes your actions right or wrong? Could a machine think or be conscious? Is it morally acceptable to eat meat, or to design children genetically? Are we defined by our sexuality? What are the proper limits and functions of government or the state? Is there a rational basis for belief in the existence of God? Questions That Matter will focus on exploring the various answers to such questions, and the merits of arguments for views about them.

La Trobe University Philosophy Subjects | Open Universities Australia

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