Phil628
PHIL 628 Special Issues in Ontology II
Spring 2007-2008
In this course we will focus on the problem of personal identity in analytic metaphysics. Our discussion and readings will be in the style of Analytic Philosophy.
OFFICE MATTERS:
Office : Room B139 in the Social Sciences Building.
Office hours : Tue 15:40-17:30; Thu 15:40-16:30. 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 my questions on the reading assignment during class. A brief quiz will be given every week consisting of a couple of questions on the reading assignment for that week. There will be no class presentations by students. Students who are late for class or who leave the class early for other than medical reasons will lose points on the attendance and participation portion of the grade.
There will be an exam, which will be composed, for the most part, of questions requiring short answers, such as fill-in-the blank and multiple-choice questions. There may be, however, a couple of “classical-style” questions on the exam, each requiring at most a two-thirds-of-a-page long answer. The exam will be given towards the end of the semester. The exact day and hour of it will be decided by the vote of the students in due time.
You will also be required to write a term paper. The length of the paper should not be less than 8 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 due date for the papers is the end of the second week of the finals, i.e. Friday, June 13th. The topic of your paper must, of course, be related to the course material. You are advised to consult with me and get my approval about the topic you want to choose for your paper. 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 in the library for you to look at. (You need to go to the photocopy room on the second floor of the library and ask for help. Give my name, not the course code. The sample student papers can be viewed on the computer screen or, if you wish, photocopied by the personnel there. It would probably suffice for you to just view them.)
The weight of the paper will be 40%, and that of the exam will be 30%. The total weight of the attendance to classes, contribution to class discussion, and the quizzes will be 30%.
For an encyclopedia of philosophy on the Web see, “Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy” at:
http://plato.stanford.edu
TEXTS :
Book :
Brian Garrett, Personal Identity and Self-Consciousness (London and New York: Routledge, 1998).
Articles :
David Cockburn, “Counterfactuals and the Self,” Philosophical Investigations 17(1994), pp.380-387.
Don Locke, “Who am I?” The Philosophical Quarterly 29(1979), pp.302-318.