Phil622

PHIL 622 Ontology and Philosophy of Mind II
Spring 2002-2003

The purpose of this course is to acquaint the students with some of the major issues in contemporary philosophy of mind done in the analytic style.

OFFICE MATTERS :

Office : Room B139 in the Social Sciences Building.
Office hours : Tue 15:40-17:30, Fri 14:40-15:30. Other meeting times with the instructor are also possible by prior appointment.
Office phone : On campus: 5339; off campus: 210-5339. You can leave a message on the answering machine.
E-mail : esayan@metu.edu.tr

COURSE REQUIREMENTS :

Attendance and active class participation are required. You must come to class having done the assigned reading, and must be prepared to orally answer the instructor’s questions on the reading assignment during class. There will be no class presentations by students.

You will also be required to write two papers. The length of the papers should not be less than 7 and more than 10 pages (not including the “References” section). The pages must be double-spaced (i.e. about 24-25 lines per page) and written in Times New Roman with 12 pts font or its equivalent. Papers outside these length limitations will lose points for being too short or too long. The first paper is due in the middle of the semester, and the second the end. The vague words ‘middle’ and ‘end’ here will be made precise later. Your papers must be on different topics, as opposed to the second paper being a mere follow-up of the first one. The topics must, of course, be related to the course material. You are advised to consult with me and get my approval about the topics you want to choose for your papers. Needless to say, the papers must comply with the academic norms of format and style. Put more bluntly, noncompliance will lose you points. A number of sample graduate-student papers written in the past will be made available for you to look at.

The first paper will carry a weight of 35% and the second 40%, and the weight of the class participation/contribution will be 25%.

For a useful extensive bibliography of philosophy of mind see, David Chalmers’ bibliography at:

http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/biblio.html

For an encyclopedia of philosophy on the Web see, “Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy” at:

http://plato.stanford.edu/

THE SEQUENCE OF READINGS FOR PHIL 621 AND PHIL 622 :

1. WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY?
a. Hospers, pp.4-5
b. Rosenberg, pp.3-4
c. Grayling, pp.1-2, 5-6
d. Moody, pp.1-5 [total: 8]
2. INTRODUCTION TO THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM
a. Moody, pp.19-23 [4]
b. Churchland, pp.xi-6 [6]
3. DUALISM
a. Moody, pp.24-31 [7]
b. Churchland, pp.7-22 [15]
c. “Dualism” in Companion to Phil Mind [4]
d. “Panpsychism” in Routledge [3]
4. BEHAVIORISM
a. Moody, pp.31-32, 37-42 [6]
b. Churchland, pp.23-25 [2]
c. Phillips, pp.61-65 [5]
5. THE IDENTITY THEORY
a. Moody, pp.32-37 [5]
b. Churchland, pp.26-35 [9]
6. FUNCTIONALISM
a. Moody, pp.42-46 [4]
b. Churchland, pp.36-42 [6]
c. “Functionalism (2)” in Companion to Phil Mind [9]
7. MORE ON THE IDENTITY THEORY
a. “Mind, identity theory of” in Routledge [5]
8. ELIMINATIVE MATERIALISM
a. Palmer, pp.159-161 [2]
b. Churchland, pp.43-49 [6]
9. MORE ON QUALIA
a. “Qualia” in Routledge [4]
b. “Qualia” in Stanford [11.5]
c. “Color and qualia” in Routledge [9]
10. MORE ON REDUCTIONISM
a. “Reductionism in the philosophy of mind” in Routledge [4]
11. THE ADVERBIAL THEORY OF THE MENTAL
a. “Mental states, adverbial theory of” in Routledge [4]
12. ANOMALOUS MONISM
a. Goldstein, pp.176-181 [5]
13. SUPERVENIENCE THEORIES OF THE MENTAL
a. “Supervenience” in Routledge [3]
b. “Supervenience of the mental” in Routledge [1.5]
14. MORE ON MENTAL CAUSATION
a. “Mental causation” in Routledge [4]
15. THE TURING TEST AND THE CHINESE ROOM ARGUMENT
a. Moody, pp.75-100 [25]
b. Goldstein, pp.30-40 [10]
c. “Chinese room argument” in Routledge [1.5]
d. “Searle, John R.” in Companion to Phil Mind [6.5]
16. MORE ON MATERIALISM
a. “Materialism in the philosophy of mind” in Routledge [4.5]
17. HOW MENTAL TERMS ACQUIRE MEANING
a. Churchland, pp.51-66 [15]
b. “Private Language Argument” in various dictionaries [2]
c. “Wittgenstein, Ludwig” in Companion to Phil Mind [5]
18. MORE ON INTENTIONALITY
a. “Intentionality” in Routledge [5]
19. THE PROBLEM OF OTHER MINDS
a. Churchland, pp.67-72 [5]
b. “Other minds” in Routledge [3.5]
c. “Mind, child’s theory of” in Routledge [4]
d. “Animal language and thought” in Routledge [4.5]
20. CONSCIOUSNESS
a. Nagel, pp.165-180 [15]
b. Moody, pp.120-128 [8]
c. Churchland, pp.73-81 [8]
d. “Consciousness” in Routledge [15]
e. “Unconscious mental states” in Routledge [4.5]
f. “Introspection, epistemology of” in Routledge [5]
g. “Dennett, Daniel Clement” in Routledge [2.5]
21. MODULARITY OF MIND
a. “Modularity of mind” in Routledge [2]
b. Goldstein, pp.182-189 [7]
22. MISCELLANEOUS APPROACHES TO UNDERSTANDING THE NATURE OF MIND
a. “Neutral monism” in Routledge [1]
b. “Phenomenalism” in Companion to Metaphysics [4]
c. Churchland, pp.83-87 [4]
d. Bell, pp.589-598 [9]
e. “Phenomenology, epistemic issues in” in Routledge [5]
f . “Hegel” in Dictionary of Phil [4]
g. “Absolute, the” in Routledge [1.5]
h. “Subject, postmodern critique of” in Routledge [4.5]
i. Churchland, pp.88-98 [10]
23. CONNECTIONISM AND THE COMPUTATIONAL THEORY OF MIND
a. Moody, pp.129-150 [21]
b. Churchland, pp.156-165 [9]
c. “Mind, computational theories of” in Routledge [5.5]
d. “Connectionism” in Routledge [8]
e. “Mind, philosophy of” in Routledge [4.5]
24.
a. Churchland, pp.167-180 [13]
25. PERSONS AND PERSONAL IDENTITY
a. Moody, pp.151-162 [11]
b. “Mind, bundle theory of” in Routledge [2.5]
c. “Persons” in Routledge [3]
d. “Personal identity” in Routledge [10]
e. “Split brains” in Routledge [2.5]
27. FREE WILL
a. “Free Will” in Routledge [10]

The above readings are from the following texts:

David Bell, “Kant” in Nicholas Bunnin and E.P. Tsui-James (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy (Oxford and Malden: Blackwell Publishers, 1998).

Paul M. Churchland, Matter and Consciousness, revised ed. (Cambridge and London: The MIT Press, 1988).

Jaegwon Kim and Ernest Sosa (eds.), A Companion to Metaphysics (Oxford and Malden: Blackwell, 1995).

Samuel Guttenplan (ed.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind (Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell, 1995).

Antony Flew (ed.), A Dictionary of Philosophy (London: Pan Books, 1979).

Laurence Goldstein, The Philosopher’s Habitat (London and New York: Routledge, 1990).

A. C. Grayling (ed.), Philosophy: A Guide through the Subject (New York: Oxford U. P., 1995).

John Hospers, An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis, 4th ed. (London: Routledge, 1997).

Todd C. Moody, Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1993).

Thomas Nagel, “What is It Like to be a Bat?” Philosophical Review, 83(1974), 435-450.

Donald Palmer, Does the Center Hold? (Mountain View, London, and Toronto: Mayfield, 1991).

Hollibert E. Phillips, Vicissitudes of the I (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1995).

Jay F. Rosenberg, The Practice of Philosophy, 3rd ed. (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 1996).

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Version 1.0 (London and New York: Routledge, 1998).

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on the Web (http://plato.stanford.edu/)