PHIL

An introduction to philosophical thought about the nature of language. The questions we will address include: What is meaning? What is truth? How does language relate to thought? How do languages relate to each other? What is metaphor? What is fiction? The focus will be on classic work in the analytic tradition (Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Tarski, Quine, Austin, Grice, Davidson, Donnellan, Putnam, Searle, Kaplan, Kripke) but we will also read, and relate to this modern work, some current work in the philosophical literature and some seminal discussions of language in the writings of Plato and Aristotle. (II)

This course has two aims. First and primarily, it will introduce students to one of the most important texts (if not simply the most) in the history of philosophy, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. The Critique is, of course, monumental in scope, and one cannot expect to cover it adequately in one ten-week quarter. A principled selection of passages must be made. So second, the course will focus on Kant’s method for overcoming metaphysics in the Critique. More specifically, we will think about Kant’s doctrine that the metaphysical claims and concepts prevalent at his time lack ‘meaning’ or ‘significance’. Per Kant, metaphysics as conceived by his predecessors distinctively made claims or employed concepts that referred to items that are not objects of possible experience. Part of Kant’s strategy for overcoming metaphysics thus construed seems to be to declare such reference impossible, and the claims or concepts that make it, meaningless. Thus questions lurking in the background will include: -What does Kant mean by ‘meaning’ and ‘reference’?, -Can one think a thought that is ‘meaningless’ by Kant’s lights, and what does that amount to?, -Are his strategy and method, thus described, compatible with his deployment of regulative ideas in his theoretical philosophy?, -Are they compatible with the (practical) knowledge of or belief in God, freedom, and the immortal soul Kant affirms in the first Critique and elsewhere?, -Do they leave room for the concepts and claims that make up the apparatus of Kant’s ‘transcendental argument(s)’ to count as ‘meaningful’?, -If the answer to any of the last three questions is ‘no’, how might we need to modify our understanding of Kant’s strategy and method? Or is the Critique simply inconsistent (or, at least, incomplete)? Pursuant to those aims, we shall spend more time with those parts of the text where Kant is characterizing his philosophical project (Aesthetic, Deduction, Phenomena and Noumena, Appendix to the Dialectic, Doctrine of Method) and less time on his particular arguments for and against specific metaphysical claims (the Analogies and the Paralogisms, Antinomies, and Ideal).

This course has two aims. First and primarily, it will introduce students to one of the most important texts (if not simply the most) in the history of philosophy, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. The Critique is, of course, monumental in scope, and one cannot expect to cover it adequately in one ten-week quarter. A principled selection of passages must be made. So second, the course will focus on Kant’s method for overcoming metaphysics in the Critique. More specifically, we will think about Kant’s doctrine that the metaphysical claims and concepts prevalent at his time lack ‘meaning’ or ‘significance’. Per Kant, metaphysics as conceived by his predecessors distinctively made claims or employed concepts that referred to items that are not objects of possible experience. Part of Kant’s strategy for overcoming metaphysics thus construed seems to be to declare such reference impossible, and the claims or concepts that make it, meaningless. Thus questions lurking in the background will include: -What does Kant mean by ‘meaning’ and ‘reference’?, -Can one think a thought that is ‘meaningless’ by Kant’s lights, and what does that amount to?, -Are his strategy and method, thus described, compatible with his deployment of regulative ideas in his theoretical philosophy?, -Are they compatible with the (practical) knowledge of or belief in God, freedom, and the immortal soul Kant affirms in the first Critique and elsewhere?, -Do they leave room for the concepts and claims that make up the apparatus of Kant’s ‘transcendental argument(s)’ to count as ‘meaningful’?, -If the answer to any of the last three questions is ‘no’, how might we need to modify our understanding of Kant’s strategy and method? Or is the Critique simply inconsistent (or, at least, incomplete)? Pursuant to those aims, we shall spend more time with those parts of the text where Kant is characterizing his philosophical project (Aesthetic, Deduction, Phenomena and Noumena, Appendix to the Dialectic, Doctrine of Method) and less time on his particular arguments for and against specific metaphysical claims (the Analogies and the Paralogisms, Antinomies, and Ideal).

In this course we will examine attempts to solve the problem of philosophical skepticism through reflection on the nature of linguistic meaning. We will focus on three such attempts: early 20th century logical empiricism, mid-20th century ordinary language philosophy, and the contemporary movement of epistemological contextualism. In each case, we will ask whether the claims advanced about the nature of language can be sustained, and whether they really do have the power to defeat the skeptical challenge.

Students are required to submit the college reading & research course form.

Students writing senior essays register once for PHIL 29901, in either the Autumn or Winter Quarter, and once for PHIL 29902, in either the Winter or Spring Quarter. (Students may not register for both PHIL 29901 and 29902 in the same quarter.) The senior seminar meets all three quarters, and students writing essays are required to attend throughout.

Course not for field credit. An introduction to the techniques of modern logic. These include the representation of arguments in symbolic notation, and the systematic manipulation of these representations in order to show the validity of arguments. Regular homework assignments, in class test, and final examination.

We are going to read closely and discuss selected sections from Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, with an eye towards understanding the conception of philosophy whose practice Wittgenstein seeks to exemplify in the work. Some prior philosophical education is required: this should not be one’s first class in philosophy. (III)

The question how thought and speech refers, and in particular what role descriptions play in a comprehensive philosophical analysis of referring expressions, has played an outstanding role in 20th century philosophy and remains influential until today. In this class we will trace the discussion about the relation between reference and description from Fregean beginnings to the most recent two-dimensionalist attempts to overcome Kripke’s seminal arguments against descriptive analyses of referring expressions. Throughout, we will try to reach a better understanding of why questions about reference and description are of foundational importance for a range of topics that are central to philosophical theorizing, including the analysis of propositional attitudes such as belief and knowledge, the nature of possibility and necessity, the question of whether there is a level of mental experience that is epistemically transparent, the relation between thought and language, the role of the principle of compositionality in semantics, and the intersection between semantics and pragmatics. (B)

A survey of some of the central concerns in various areas of philosophy, pursued from the perspective of the analytic tradition. In epistemology, our topics will include the definition of knowledge, the challenge of skepticism, and the nature of justification. In the philosophy of mind, we will explore the mind-body problem and the nature and structure of intentional states. In the philosophy of language, we will address theories of truth and of speech acts, the sense/reference distinction, and the semantics of names and descriptions. In ethics, we will focus on the debate between utilitarians and Kantians.