Jason Bridges

Philosophy Department

University of Chicago

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Course Materials
No longer updated. See here for more recent syllabi.

Philosophy of Action

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

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

Philosophy of Mind: Thought, Community Environment

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

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