Instructor: Gillian Russell
Email: grussell@wustl.edu
Office Hours: Thursdays 3-4pm
Office: Wilson 209
Class Times: Tuesdays and Thursdays 11.30am-1pm
Class Location: Room 251 in the Psychology Building
Course Website: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~grussell/PHI307-F06.html (The most up to date version of this syllabus will always be available here.)
E-reserves website for this course: http://eres.wustl.edu/eres/coursepage.aspx?cid=1933&page=docs
Prerequisites: A course in logic will be helpful but is not required. You must be prepared to engage with some difficult contemporary material.
This is an upper-level undergraduate course in contemporary metaphysics and epistemology. Metaphysics is sometimes described as the study of what there is,
but this does little to distinguish it from just about every other discipline and, in practice, metaphysics - like philosophy - is more easily explained
through examples of the kinds of problems with which it engages. Our focus will be on the topics of existence, possibility, time and free will. The questions we will be studying include:
What is it to
say that something exists? Is there anything which does not exist?
Do possibilities exist? What features of the world make it false that I might have proved Fermat's Last Theorem, but true that I might have passed algebra?
Is time real? Does the future exist?
Is time travel possible? What is required for survival over time? (e.g. what makes you the same person as the person who first enrolled in this class under your name?)
What is it to act freely? Does anyone ever act freely?
Epistemology is the study of knowledge and reasonable belief, and we will concentrate on the literature on radical skepticism, the definition of knowledge and
the justification of induction. Our questions include:
Can I know that I am not dreaming? Am I justified in my beliefs about the external world, e.g. in my belief that I have toes?
What is knowledge?
How can I justify my beliefs about the future, e.g. do I know that the sun will come up tomorrow?
Our readings will for the most part be contemporary articles, and so the recommended texts are two collections:
Metaphysics: Contemporary Readings (ed.) Michael Loux (Routledge) and Epistemology - An Anthology - Ernest Sosa and Jaegwon Kim (eds.) Many of these articles are difficult (they were for the most part written as research articles for working philosophers) and you will certainly need to read them more than once, and take notes as you read. For a good guide to reading philosophy papers, you might like to
look at Jim Pryor's paper "How to Read a Philosophy Paper," which is available online
at http://www.princeton.edu/~jimpryor/general/reading.html
Readings marked (M) or (E) can be found in the Metaphysics and Epistemology readers respectively. If any of the hyperlinks to articles below are broken please let me know by email.
1st day - no assigned reading (but for more on one of the issues I'll be raising in class you could take a look at "The World of Universals" by B. Russell (M))
"On Denoting", B. Russell, available online at http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Russell/denoting
"On What There Is", W.V.O. Quine (M)
''Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology", R. Carnap, available online at http://www.ditext.com/carnap/carnap.html
"Possible Worlds" - D. Lewis (M)
"Counterparts or Double Lives?" - D. Lewis (M)
"Two Dogmas of Empiricism" - W.V.O. Quine, available online at http://www.ditext.com/quine/quine.html
"Identity and Necessity" - S. Kripke (M)
If you're interested in ways to resist modal realism, you might also like to read Stalnaker's "Possible Worlds", which is available online at http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0029-4624%28197603%2910%3A1%3C65%3APW%3E2.0.CO%3B2-8
"Time" - J.M.E. McTaggart (M), also available online at http://www.ditext.com/mctaggart/time.html
"Temporal Parts of Four Dimensional Objects" - M. Heller (M)
"Personal Identity'' - D. Parfit (M)
"Survival and Identity'' - D. Lewis (M)
"The Problem of the External World" - B. Stroud (E)
"Proof of an external world'' - G. E. Moore (E)
Optional extra reading: Chapter 2 of The Dawn of Analysis: Philosophical Analysis in the 20th Century, S. Soames, "Moore on Skepticism, Perception and Knowledge''
"Descartes' Evil Genius'' - O.K. Bouwsma, The Philosophical Review, Vol. 58, No. 2 (Mar., 1949), pp. 141-151 (available through Jstor.)
''Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?" - Edmund Gettier (E), also available online at http://www.ditext.com/gettier/gettier.html
"Brains in a Vat" - H. Putnam (on e-reserve)
"An Argument for Skepticism" - P. Unger (E)
"Elusive Knowledge" - D. Lewis (E)
"What is Justified Belief? " - A. Goldman (E)
Read one of the following two texts: "On Induction" from The Problems of Philosophy by B. Russell, available online at http://www.ditext.com/russell/rus6.html,
or An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding II, IV-VII, by D. Hume, in Feinberg (ed.) Reason and Responsibility (on e-reserve)
(The former is significantly easier and makes a good introduction, the latter is more difficult and the classic statement of this problem. If you are writing on this topic you should read both, and if you have time to read the piece by Wes Salmon it makes the reading from Hume much more tractable.)
Recommended extra reading for anyone who would like to write on this topic: ''An Encounter with David Hume'' - W. Salmon, in Feinberg (ed.) "Reason and Responsibility" (on e-reserve)
"The 'Justification' of Induction" - P. F. Strawson, in Foster. M and Martin. M,. ed., Probability, Confirmation, and Simplicity (on e-reserve), also in Strawson's Introduction to Logical Theory
"Conjectural Knowledge: My Solution to the Problem of Induction" - K. Popper, chapter 1 of "Objective Knowledge" (on e-reserve)
"The New Riddle of Induction" - N.Goodman (on e-reserve)
"The Inference to the Best Explanation" - G. Harman, in Philosophical Review 74 (1965), available through J-Stor here.
"The Illusion of Free Will" - Holbach, in Feinberg (ed.) Reason and Responsibility (on e-reserve)
"Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility" - H. Frankfurt in Feinberg (ed.) Reason and Responsibility (on e-reserve) and also available online here.
"Freedom and Resentment" - P.F. Strawson, available online here.
Assessment will be by way of 3 very short papers (1 page long max) (30%), 1 medium length paper (5 pages long max) (25%) and one longer paper (12-15 pages) (45%). Papers are due by 4.30pm on the due date. They should be placed in the appropriate folder in the "turn in" filing cabinet in the philosophy department office. There are no final or midterm examinations for this course. Paper topics
Paper 1 is due Friday 8th September (1 page)
Paper 2 is due Friday 22nd September (1 page)
Paper 3 is due Friday 13th October (1 page)
Paper 4 is due Friday 3rd November (5 pages). Paper topics for paper 4.
Paper 5 is due Friday 8th December (12-15 pages)
There should be no significant overlap between your paper topics. If in doubt, check with me before you start writing.
The topic of your first three papers is up to you. Feel free to run it by me first if you want to check whether it's a good topic for a short paper. Topics for the medium length and longer papers will be given out at least two weeks before they are due.
I will accept drafts of any of the 5 papers up to 1 week before the due date of the paper, but no later. This to ensure that I get a chance to think about any draft you give me, and come up with reasonable comments for you, and to ensure that you then have the time to take those comments into account in your final version of the paper.
I strongly recommend reading Jim Pryor's Guidelines on Writing a Philosophy Paper.
Plagiarism is a serious academic offence and any suspected cases will be reported to the Dean.
For those students who wish to take the class pass/fail, final grades for the course of C- or above will constitute a pass.