PL
376 Phone:
x4552
Fall
2006 Office:
Lovejoy 247
Instructor:
Cheshire Calhoun Email:
calhoun@colby.edu
What is the mind?
How central should consciousness be in our understanding of mental events? Could a being, for example, have a mind
but not consciously experience anything? What is the relationship between
mental events, brain states, and bodily behaviors? Is it possible to construct
a science
of the mind? How do we know our
own minds, and can we know the minds of others? What is an emotion? --a feeling, a disposition to act, a
belief about the world? How should
we understand what it means to be a self? And what is the basis for attributing
personal identity over time?
TEXTS:
Owen
Flanagan, The Science of the Mind
John
Heil, Philosophy of Mind: A Contemporary Introduction, 2nd
edition
Marya
Schechtman, The Constitution of Selves
PL
376 Coursepak (available at the bookstore)
OFFICE
HOURS:
For
quick, 5 minute visits, MTWR 12-1. For longer chats email or phone for a time
that fits your schedule. Assume that 7:30am-12:00 on TR are always available,
and other times are negotiable.
COURSE
REQUIREMENTS & GRADE PERCENTAGES:
Required
attendance at Philosophy Colloquium, September 28th, 4:00-5:30. Louise
Anthony, ÒReality and Reduction.Ó
28%
of your grade will be based on:
¥ being a critic: three
peer reviews of others' short essays, using the peer review form handed out in
class
and
¥ responding
to critics: three
revisions of your short essays. Here you will be graded on the extent to which
you have taken seriously both your peer reviewer's and my suggestions for
revisions and successfully incorporated them into the revised essay
54%
of your grade will be based on:
¥ 3 peer
reviewed short essays: first
draft, approximately 5 pages; topic must be related to readings. You MUST phrase your thesis as a
question and do so in the first paragraph. These essays will be turned in
twice. The first draft will receive a provisional grade so that you can gauge how
much revision you need to do. Both your peer reviewer and I will suggest ways
that you can improve your essay. Your essay grade will be based solely on the
revised draft.
18%
of your grade will be based on:
¥ 1
non-peer reviewed short essay: 5-6 pages; topic must be related to the last readings of the
course on personal identity. You may use outside sources for this one.
Grading Scale :
All your work will be graded on a
4-point scale: 4=A, 3.7=minimum for A-, 3.3=minimum for B+, 3=minimum for B,
2.7=minimum for B-, etc.
READING
& ATTENDANCE
Obviously,
you will need to complete careful reading of the texts prior to each class
session. In this course, more than three unexcused absences will result in a
half-letter reduction of the final grade. Five unexcused absences will result
in a failing course grade.
1. (9-6) introduction; clip from video #1700, vol. 2
2. (9-11) Cartesian Dualism (and a bit on identity theory and
supervenience)
read: Flanagan, Ch. 1 and
Heil, Ch 2. (pp. 15-26) and Ch. 6 (pp. 72-88)
1.
What
puzzles does dualism solve?—That is what features of mental experiences
and of having a mind is dualism especially good at capturing? What puzzles does
it create?—That is, why might one reject dualist accounts of the mind?
3. (9-13) Descartes's account of emotions
read: Coursepak, Descartes, excerpts from The
Passions of the Soul
1.
What
in DescartesÕ discussion of emotions sounds like the words of a dualist? Is there
anything in his discussion of emotions that, seems incompatible with dualism or
at least odd for a dualist to be emphasizing?
2.
What
is attractive about his theory of emotion? That is, what common sense beliefs
about the nature of emotions does DescartesÕ theory account for?
3.
What
is unsatisfying about his theory of emotion? That is, if you were
constructing a theory of emotion, what features of emotion or general topics
would you cover that Descartes omits?
Eliminating the Mind as Thing
4. (9-18) James on conscious mental life and his feeling theory of
emotion
read: Flanagan, Ch. 2 through p.
35
and Coursepak, James, ÒWhat is an
Emotion?Ó
1.
Given
James's descriptions of CML and of emotions, are emotions a good or bad example
of a component of CML?
2. What features of human (or animal) emotional
experience does James think are explained by his view of emotions as nothing
but the feel of reflex physiological reactions?
3. Does his thought experiment on
pp. 131-132 of imagining emotions without "feels" really show what he
thinks it does?
5. (9-20) epiphenomenalism,
parallelism and James's functionalism; clip from video
#4733
(Mind Over Matter: Advances in Brain Research)
read: Flanagan, Ch. 2, p. 38 to end; and Heil Ch. 3
1.
What
is most puzzling about Flanagan's description of naturalistic functionalism?
What puzzles would it appear to solve?
2. What would you say CML is for?
6. (9-25) a contemporary example: the case of blindsightedness; clip
from
video #673 vol. 1 (The Search for Mind)
read: Coursepak, Gulick, "Deficit
Studies and the Function of
Phenomenal Consciousness"
and Flanagan, pp. 35-38 ("What
is CML for?")
1. What is
functionalist about Gulick's approach?
2. Would it
be possible to construct a machine that lacks phenomenal consciousness but that
can do all
the things that Gulick claims phenomenal
consciousness enables us to do?
7. ESSAY #1 (9-27) Louise Anthony prep
day
read: ÒWhoÕs Afraid of Disjunctive
Properties?Ó (paper emailed to class) and HeilÕs
summary
of Òmultiple realizabilityÓ in sec. 13.6 (pp., 184-186) and 15.2 (pp. 216
-218)
Thursday
9-28, Louise
AnthonyÕs lecture, ÒReality and Reduction,Ó Lovejoy 215, 4:00-5:30pm
8. PEER REVIEW (10-2) Ryle's philosophical behaviorism
read: Heil, sec. 5.1-5.10 (pp. 51-64)
and Coursepak, Ryle, "Descartes'
Myth"
1. What puzzles does philosophical
behaviorism solve? What puzzles does it create?
9. (10-4)
Ryle's behaviorist account of emotions
read: Coursepak, Ryle, ÒEmotionÓ
1. What features of human emotional
experience is Ryle's dispositional account of emotions best equipped to
explain? What features does it not
explain?
10.
REVISION
(10-9) Skinner's psychological
behaviorism
read: Heil, sec. 5.11-5.12 (pp. 64-69)
and Flanagan, Ch. 4 through p. 104
1. What are
the arguments for adopting psychological behaviorism, and are they persuasive?
2. How do Skinner and Ryle disagree over
the referent of mental terms and the possibility of knowledge of other minds?
11.
(10-11) DennettÕs on the intentional stance
read: Coursepak, Dennett, ÒTrue BelieversÓ and Heil, 11.1-11.6 (pp.
155-162)
FALL
BREAK 10-16
Adding the Unconscious; Cognitive/Voluntarist Theories of
Emotion
12.
ESSAY #2 (10-18) Freud
read: Flanagan, Ch. 3
and
Coursepak, Freud, excerpts from ÒThe
UnconsciousÓ
1. Without
restricting yourself to Freudian observations, what is the range of evidence
that we process information, "perceive," and have emotions/desires
that are unconscious?
2. What seems most puzzling about the
suggestion that what we do, believe, feel, desire at the conscious level is
influenced by unconscious mental events?
3. Does the Autonomy Thesis (that absolves the materialist of
having to be a reductionist) really solve the basic problem with materialism?
4. Why might a Freudian think that there
are unconscious emotions? Why did Freud think there are not unconscious
emotions?
13.
PEER REVIEW
(10-23) Solomon's (Freudian inspired?) voluntarist theory of
emotion
read: Coursepak,
Solomon, ÒEmotions and ChoiceÓ
1. Why would Solomon find it necessary to describe emotions as
"hasty" or "urgent" judgments? Does his account work for
all emotional experience?
2. What are the various ways, on his view, of
"defusing" an emotion? What might make emotions harder to defuse than
he suggests?
14.
(10-25) Conscious Shy vs. the New Mysterians
read: Flanagan, Ch. 8, pp. 307-314 and Heil, Ch. 9, (pp. 123-129)
and Coursepak, Nagel "What Is It
Like to Be a Bat?"
1. What puzzle in philosophy of
mind does Nagel think is unsolvable? Why is it unsolvable?
15.
REVISION (10-30) Functionalism w/out consciousness, the
China Brain, and the Chinese Room
read:
Heil, Ch. 7
(pp. 89-105) and
Ch. 8 ( pp. 106-121)
1.
How
does SearleÕs Chinese Room example work as a critique of functionalism? How
might a functionalist go about arguing that the Chinese Room does not in fact
show that functionalism is a flawed theory of the mind?
2. Is consciousness (or what James calls
CML) essential for having a mind?
Is it essential for understanding a language?
16.
(11-1) Functionalism with
consciousness
read: Flanagan, Ch. 8, pp. 314-343 (w/special
attention to pp. 326-343)
1. What does Flanagan take to be the central problems about
consciousness that need to be explained, and are these really the only or main
problems? (E.g., Does Nagel think there is a different problem about
consciousness that needs to be explained?)
2.
How
persuasive is Flanagan's response to McGinn?
17. (11-6)
The self as a center of narrative gravity
video: Mind Talk #3557
read: Flanagan, Ch. 8, pp. 344-366
1.
Do
Flanagan's comments about the self as center of narrative gravity in fact
answer the question posed on p. 344: What function(s) does consciousness serve?
and What would you say is the
function of either consciousness
or the narrative self?
18. (11-8) Thought insertion and agency
read: Coursepak, Stephens and Graham, ÒThought InsertionÓ
1. open question (you may approach your
comments on this reading in whatever way you like).
19.
ESSAY #3
(11-13) Delusions and forms of irrationality
read: handout Gold & Hohwy, ÒRationality &
Schizophrenic DelusionÓ; clip on multiple personality from video #1298, vol. 8
(States of Mind)
1.
Could the authorsÕ account of what makes schizophrenic delusions irrational
also explain the irrationality of some everyday experiences?
2. To what extent does the account
given here of violations of egocentricity and failure of experiential
rationality also apply to persons with multiple personalities?
20. (11-15) The reidentification question
read: Schechtman, Ch. 1 and Ch.
2 through p. 31
1.
Why does being able to reidentify ourselves and others as the same person over
time matter?
2. Assume that the Star Trek
transporter works by recording your physical Òpattern,Ó disassembling your
body, reconstructing a new body out of new materials according to the record
pattern and thus (because we assume materialism is true) recreating your
mind. Now imagine you went through
the transporter. Did you survive?
21.
PEER REVIEW
(11-20) What if there appear to be
more than one of us?
read: Schechtman, Ch. 2, pp.
31-46
1. In cases where person A fissions
into persons B and C, do you think B and C should be held responsible
for A's earlier deeds or compensated for A's earlier suffering?
2. If A knew that he were going to fission, should he feel self-interested
concern about what happens in the future to B, C, both or neither? Does A survive the fission?
THANKSGIVING
BREAK
22. (11-27) Caring about our future self
read: Schechtman, Ch. 3
1.
Is Parfit right, in the end, to suggest that we shouldnÕt worry so much about
our future selves welfare and survival because our relation to our future
selves isnÕt that much different from our relation to other persons?
2. Is numerical identity by itself
sufficient to ground moral responsibility assignments, compensation, claims to
have survived, and self-interested concern?
23. REVISION (11-29) Characterizing identity
read: Schechtman, Ch. 4 and Ch. 5 through p. 105
1. What does "personal
identity" mean in the context of the characterization question if it does not
mean reidentification?
2. Is she right to think that the
four features are more connected with identity in the characterization sense
than in the reidentification sense?
24.
(12-4) Narrative self-constitution
read: Schechtman, Ch. 5 p. 105 to
end of Ch. 5.
1. Do you
think that personal identity is something one could have more or less of? If
you say Òyes,Ó what might lead you to conclude that someone doesnÕt have much
of a personal identity?
2. Does she give the best possible
explanation of why being in the same (reidentifiable) human body is important
to personal identity?
25.
(12-6) Discussion of Memento
1. Just what is the role of memory
in personal identity?
2. If you were Marya Schechtman,
what would you say about Leonard?
Fourth
Essay due on the Final Exam Date, in my mailbox outside Lovejoy 247.