MUS31330

In 2016 both the Brexit campaign in the UK and the US elections have brought the notion of a new age of “post-truth” into sharp focus. Alongside it “alternative facts”, “fake news”, "cancel culture" and similar terms have become more and more commonplace. This trend has since manifested itself in other countries, too. Expertise appears to be discredited, gut feeling at least as important as facts, and facts themselves no longer valid and reliable. How and why did we get to this point, are there ways out of it, and has it really become impossible to distinguish between facts and their different interpretations?
This module will track philosophical, sociological and political concepts that shaped today’s competing world views, beginning with the enlightenment. The module’s core hypothesis is that since the late nineteenth century the focus of academic attention shifted more and more from the observation of the world around us (“realism”) to the way in which our societal and individual predispositions, the unconscious part of our brain and our emotions influence how we perceive and interpret (or even "create" - social constructivism) that world. We will follow this trajectory starting with Nietzsche via Freud’s psychoanalysis and Popper and Kuhn’s theories of scientific progress up to poststructuralist and postmodern positions which appear to aid a complete relativism in which “anything goes”. After a look at the impact of ChatGPT and AI on these issues the module will conclude with recent pushbacks against these tendencies, including calls for a “new realism” and neuro-scientific findings regarding the interaction of perception and emotion. All of these concepts will be interrogated with an eye on how they relate to issues of morality and fairness – concepts that are conspicuously absent among post-truthers and bullshitters. Finally we will look at the significant impact of the internet on our behaviour and our ways to gain and assess information.
In the first class of each week we will discuss a philosophical or sociological concept while looking at how it is embodied by a piece of music – usually an opera – in the second hour (after all, I'm a music lecturer). Room will be given to questions raised by students with regard to issues they are particularly concerned about.
This module uses the yellow ("Check") mode of the College of Arts and Humanities "traffic light system" with regard to the use of AI (see https://www.ucd.ie/artshumanities/study/aifutures/trafficlightsystem/). Specifically, its use for correction, translation, citation, improvement, feedback, and brainstorming are permitted (see the webpage for details). However, each use must be documented in an appendix (indicating which AI app was used, the date of access, and citing the specific prompt(s)).
Finally, UCD's target to demonstrate its commitment to sustainability in all its varieties will also be contextualised.

Recording a class is not permitted without the lecturer’s approval.
Generative AI can be deployed to suggest literature on a topic, for translation purposes and to straighten out the wording if a student is dyslexic or has a similar registered disability. The general principle should be that the student undertakes the bulk of the conceptual planning and working-out of an assignment’s details with some supportive input from the AI, and never the other way round.
One always has to keep in mind two risks: Generative AI is not a database, it “generates” its results and can get things wrong or even make them up entirely (“hallucinations”). Secondly, one always has to check the results for relevant details that ought to be there yet have somehow been left out – which is only possible on the basis of separate, independent research.
At the end of each assignment there has to be an AI statement. If AI was consulted the student has to indicate in detail at the end which AI it was, when it was used and to what purpose. If AI was not used the student still has to add a statement to that effect, too (without it grades and feedback won’t be released).