Course Materials

Reasons and Reasoning (winter 2006)

Syllabus (or as pdf)

Philosophy of Action (fall 2003)

Syllabus (or as pdf)

Lecture notes

1. Introduction
2. The ontology of actions I
3. The ontology of actions II
4. Reasons and causes I: rational explanation
5. Reasons and causes II: causalism about rational explanation
6. Reasons and causes III: anomalous monism
7. Agent and event I
8. Agent and event II
9. The Humean story I: Hume
10. The Humean story II: belief-desire psychology
11. The Humean story III: intentions
12. The Humean story IV: recovering the agent
13. Doing what one sees one must
14. The non-Humean story I: reasons and rationality
15. The non-Humean story II: desires and reasons
16. The non-Humean story III: the modesty of rational explanation
17. Extreme anti-psychologism

Theory of Meaning (winter 2002)

Syllabus (or as pdf)

Handouts

1. Davidson on theories of meaning (or as pdf)
2. The compositionality constraint and Convention T (or as pdf)
3. Language E3*
4. Kripke's modal argument against the description theory of names (or as pdf)

Lecture notes

1. Overview
2. Communication-intention theories of speaker meaning
3. Truth-conditional theories of meaning I
4. Truth-conditional theories of meaning II
5. Truth-conditional theories of meaning III
6. The two kinds of theory contrasted
7. Davidson on interpretation I
8. Davidson on interpretation II [html] [word]
9. Kripke on descriptivism I
10. Kripke on descriptivism II
11. Semantic externalism
12. Natural languages as systems of conventions
13. Natural languages as theoretically superfluous
14. Natural languages as autonomous social objects
15. The indeterminacy of reference I
16. The indeterminacy of reference II
17. Meaning and rule-following

Philosophical Perspectives on the Humanities (fall 2004)

Syllabus (or as pdf)

Lecture notes

1. Course overview
2. The subversion of moral responsibility
3. Homer's Iliad: background and context
4. Did Homer's Greeks lack the very idea of agency?
5. Did Homer's Greeks ignore intention?
6. Greek tragedy and Oedipus Tyrannus
7. Responsibility in the absence of fault
8. Responsibility in hindsight: Oedipus at Colonus
9. Assigning responsibility: the Tetralogies of Antiphon [html] [word]
10. Is responsibility a factual matter at all?
11. Socrates and Euthyphro on piety
12. Socrates accused
13. Virtue as knowledge
14. Weakness of the will in the Protagoras
15. Humean moral psychology
16. Aristotle on virtue
17. Aristotle on weakness of the will

Philosophy of Mind: Thought, Community Environment (fall 2002)

Syllabus (or as pdf)

Lecture notes

1. Overview
2. Meaning and content
3. Putnam, "Is Semantics Possible"?
4. Putnam, "The Meaning of 'Meaning'"
5. Burge, "Individualism and the Mental"
6. Further questions about Putnam and Burge
7. Externalism and psychological explanation
8. Narrow content
9. Unitary content
10. The representational theory of the mind
11. Externalism and introspection
12. Empty thoughts I
13. Empty thoughts II
14. Introspection as the grasping of inner objects
15. Transcendental externalism I
16. Transcendental externalism II
17. The 'private-language argument'

Philosophy of Mind: The Mind-Body Problem (fall 2001)

Syllabus (or as pdf)

Lecture notes

1. Overview
2. Elements of mentality
3. 'The mind-body problem'
4. Cartesian dualism
5. Strawson on 'the Cartesian Illusion'
6. Evans on introspection
7. Naturalism about the mind
8. Behaviorism
9. The identity theory
10. Machine functionalism
11. Ramsey-style functionalism
12. Functionalism and normativity
13. Teleofunctionalism and normativity
14. The irreducibility of the mental
15. Mental causation
16. Externalism
17. The mind as an organ

Elementary Logic (fall 2006)

Syllabus (or as pdf)

Lecture notes

12. Polyadic predicate logic: paraphrase (pdf)
13. Polyadic predicate logic: semantics (pdf)
14. Polyadic predicate logic: implication (pdf)
15. Natural deduction: its point and structure
16. Natural deduction: rules
17. Natural deduction: techniques and strategies
18. Natural deduction: more techniques and strategies

Problem sets

1. Problem set 1 (pdf)
2. Practice problem answers 1 (pdf)
3. Problem set 2 (pdf)
4. Practice problem answers 2 (pdf)
5. Problem set 3 (pdf)
6. Practice problem answers 3 (pdf)
7. Problem set 4 (pdf)
8. Practice problem answers 4 (pdf)
9. Problem set 5 (pdf)
10. Practice problem answers 5 (pdf)

Free Will (fall 2004)

Syllabus (or as pdf)

Lectures notes

1. Introduction
2. Incompatibilism
3. Compatibilism: intricacies of modality I
4. Compatibilism: intricacies of modality II
5. Compatibilism: the appeal to the practical I
6. Compatibilism: the appeal to the practical II
7. Compatibilism: the appeal to the practical III
8. The challenge of mechanistic psychology