Instructor: Gillian Russell
Office Hours: Monday 4pm-5pm
Class Times: MWF 9am
Class Location: Busch 211
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 personhood. The questions we will be interested in 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?)
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 - Fred Dretske (eds.) Many of these articles are difficult (they were for the most part written as research articles for working philosophers.) 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 (K) 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.
"The World of Universals", B. Russell (M)
"On Universals", F. P. Ramsey, available online at http:http://www.hist-analytic.org/Ramseyonuniversals.htm
"On Denoting", B. Russell, available online at http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Russell/denoting
"On What There Is", W.V.O. Quine (M)
''Ontology, Semantics and Empiricism'', 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
"The Notion of the Present" - A.N. Prior (M)
"Temporal Parts of Four Dimensional Objects" - M. Heller (M)
"Personal Identity'' - D. Parfit (M)
"Survival and Identity'' - D. Lewis (M)
Meditations I and II - R. Descartes
Selections from Problems of Philosophy - B. Russell, available online at http://www.ditext.com/russell/russell.html
"Proof of an external world'' - G. E. Moore
"Moore on Skepticism, Perception and Knowledge'' - S. Soames
"Descartes' Evil Demon'' - O.K. Bouwsma
"Brains in a Vat" - H. Putnam (K)
"A Defense of Skepticism" - P. Unger (K)
"Elusive Knowledege" - D. Lewis (K)
''Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?" - Edmund Gettier (K) Also available online at http://www.ditext.com/gettier/gettier.html
"A Causal Theory of Knowing" - A. Goldman (K)
"On Induction" - B. Russell (K), also available online at http://www.ditext.com/russell/rus6.html
An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding II, IV-VII, D. Hume, in Feinberg (ed.) Reason and Responsibility (on reserve)
''An Encounter with David Hume'' - W. Salmon, in Feinberg (ed.) "Reason and Responsibility" (on reserve)
"The Pragmatic Justification of Induction" - H. Reichenbach (K)
"The 'Justification' of Induction" - P. F. Strawson, in Foster. M and Martin. M,. ed., Probability, Confirmation, and Simplicity (on reserve), also in Strawson's Introduction to Logical Theory (also on reserve)
"Conjectural Knowledge: My Solution to the Problem of Induction" - K. Popper, chapter 1 of "Objective Knowledge" (on reserve)
"The New Riddle of Induction" - N.Goodman (K)
"The Inference to the Best Explanation" - G. Harman, in Philosophical Review 74 (1965), available through J-Stor here.
"Inference to the Best Explanation", Chapter 6 in Laws and Symmetry - B. van Fraassen (on reserve) and on the web at Oxford Scholarship Online.
"The Illusion of Free Will" - Holbach, in Feinberg (ed.) Reason and Responsibility (on reserve)
"Alternate Possiblities and Moral Responsibility" - H. Frankfurt in Feinberg (ed.) Reason and Responsibility (on reserve) and also available online here.
"Freedom and Resentment" - P.F. Strawson, available online here.
There is an extra copy of Reason and Responsibility stashed in my folder in the "returned papers" drawer in the philosophy department office. You're welcome to sign it out for an hour in order to make photocopies.
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%).
Paper 1 due Friday 10th September (1 page)
Paper 2 due Friday 24th September (1 page)
Paper 3 due Friday 8th October (1 page)
Paper 4 due Monday 8th November (5 papes)
Paper 5 due Friday 10th December (12-15 pages)
Essay questions for Paper 4.
Essay questions for Paper 5.
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.
Plagiarism is a serious academic offense 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.