PHIL 688: Core Course, Philosophy of Mind

Fall Term 2002, Monday 4-6:30
Skinner 1112
Prof. Pietroski
 www.wam.umd.edu/~pietro
Course Description

 

 

The course will be organized around three big questions:
(1)  What are "mind-brain identity" theories, and how should we assess them?
(2)  What are the implications of Kripke's classic text Naming and Necessity for the study of thought?
(3)  What are "innateness" hypotheses, and why have philosophers of mind been so interested in them?

Unsurprisingly, there are connections among these questions. Equally unsurprisingly, issues about thought shade off into issues about language and reality. (The course will satisfy the department's "core" requirement in Mind-Language-Metaphysics.) With regard to (1), readings will include excerpts from Descartes and Ryle, some survey articles, and papers by: Smart, Armstrong, Lewis, Davidson, Fodor, Kim, Hornsby, Antony & Levine. With regard to (2), we'll read Naming and Necessity, emphasizing some portions more than others; then we'll look at some aspects of "the internalism/externalism debate", which is often thought to be (somehow) related to Kripke's work. Readings will include articles by: Putnam, Burge, Kaplan, and Fodor. We'll address (3) as time permits, perhaps exploring connections between "innate ideas" and internalist conceptions of thought and knowledge. My hope is that we'll have time to read a little Locke and Leibniz, and then think a bit about "poverty of stimulus" arguments associated with Chomsky. There will, obviously, be more to talk about than we will have time to talk about.

Course Requirements

       Topics for the short papers as we go along. But the requirements will be:
                one from the first section, due Oct. 14;
                one from the second section, due Nov. 25; and
                one from the third section, due Dec. 13

Readings

If you want to read some introductory texts as well, there are many. I found Schaffer's Philosophy of Mind, in the old Prentice Hall series, helpful; but different people, at different stages, have different reactions to different writing styles and presentation strategies. So in no particular order, here are some other texts that some have found helpful:
Colin McGinn, The Character of Mind; Paul Churchland, Matter and Consciousness; Tim Crane, The Mechanical Mind; our own Georges Rey, Contemporary Philosophy of Mind; George Graham, John Heil, and Jaegwon Kim have recent introductions that look good, though I haven't read through them with any care.
 
 
 
 
 

Tentative Schedule:

Sept 9:    Stage-setting: Decartes, Ryle, and Clever Clowns
Sept 16:   Australian Identities: Smart, Armstrong, Lewis
Sept 23:   Token Identities: Davidson, Fodor
Sept 30:   Disjunctive Reductionism and Discontents: Kim, Lewis; Fodor, Antony & Levine
Oct 7:   Personal, Subpersonal, and Leibniz Law Arguments: Dennett, Strawson, Hornsby
Oct 14:  Naming and Necessity: Lecture 1
Oct 21:  Naming and Necessity: Lecture 2
Oct 28:  Naming and Necessity: Lecture 3
Nov 4:  Twin Earth and Indexicality: Putnam, Kaplan, Fodor
Nov 11:    Individualism and the Meaningful: Burge, Evans
Nov 18:  What's a Propositional Attitude, and What are Propositions (for)? Fodor, Kaplan
Nov 25:  Innateness, exact readings TBA (and dependent on whether we're on schedule)
Dec 2:  But at least one session on: Innate Ideas
Dec 9:   And at least one session on: How to Construct/Rebut a Poverty of Stimulus Argument
             Take-home final handed out. (Due Dec. 20)
Dec 16:  Review Session for Final Exam (optional)
Dec. 20: Take-home exam due (not optional)