Inconvenient Truths:
A Realistic Look at Human Nature and the Human Condition

Shimon Edelman

Fall and Spring
Four credits per semester

This advanced seminar takes a level look at what it means to be
human. Our discussions will focus on a series of frank, and therefore
far from rosy, assessments of human nature and the human condition,
taking up select topics that range from beauty, children,
consciousness, death, happiness, and love to memory, old age,
parenthood, politics, power, religion, suffering, truth, and war. (The
specific topics for each semester will be announced a few weeks before
classes begin.) One of the possible outcomes of our deliberations will
be the emergence of a counterbalance for, and perhaps an antidote to,
the popular "positive psychology" literature. The discussion materials
and the readings for each topic will be based in part on a
distillation of views gleaned from literature, philosophy, and the
arts and in part on a synthesis of dozens of academic papers and books
in psychology, neuroscience, and computational cognitive science,
including some by the instructor.