Philosophy of Physics, Science, and Metaphysics at Brown University
PHIL 2200 Graduate Pro-seminar
Schedule with Links to Papers
Note for Brown students: Some of the links to the papers require that your IP address is seen as being from Brown. You either need to be on campus or use the VPN software that Brown provides. You never need to pay any money for access to articles. For non-Brown readers, for some papers, you will need access through a library that has a subscription to the relevant journal.
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Sept 5 |
Discussion of Goals and Activities |
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| George Santayana, Reason in Religion, Chapters 1-4. | DK | |
| Sept 12 | Report | DH |
| G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica, sections 1-15. (20 pp.) | NB | |
| Philippa Foot, "Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives," Philosophical Review 81 (3) (July 1972), 305-316. (11 pp.) | DB | |
| Sept 19 | Report | DB |
| Thomas Nagel, "Moral Luck," in Mortal Questions, (1979). | DH | |
| John McDowell, "Values and Secondary Qualities," in Ted Honderich, ed. Morality and Objectivity. (20 pp.) | NB | |
| Sept 26 | Report | NB |
| Bernard Williams, "Persons, Character, and Morality," in Moral Luck (1981). | DH | |
| Susan Wolf, "Moral Saints," Journal of Philosophy 79 (8) (1982). (21 pp.) | DB | |
| Oct 3 | John Rawls, "Two Concepts of Rules," Philosophical Review 64 (1955), 3-32. (30 pp.) | NB |
| Getting Things Done | ||
| Oct 10 | Report | NB |
| John Rawls, "Justice as Fairness," Philosophical Review 67 (1958), 164-194. (31 pp.) | DB | |
| John Rawls, "The Sense of Justice," Philosophical Review 72 (1963), 281-305. (25 pp.) | DH | |
| Oct 17 | Report | DB |
| R. G. Collingwood, "Art and Craft" and "Art and Representation", in The Principles of Art. (32 pp.) | DH | |
| Arthur Danto, "The Artworld" (14 pp.) | NB | |
| Oct 24 | Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," in Illuminations. (20 pp.) | DB |
| Discussion of Presentation Techniques (Cooper, Speech Communication for the Classroom Teacher; Tufte, The cognitive style of PowerPoint) | ||
| Oct 26 | First Draft of Journal Submission Due | |
| Oct 31 | Gilbert Ryle, "Descartes' Myth" and "The Will," in The Concept of Mind. (34 pp.) | DB |
| Peter Strawson, "Freedom and Resentment" (25 pp.) | DH | |
| Nov 7 | Report | DH |
| Richard Taylor, "Fatalism" (10 pp.) | DB | |
| Michael Dummett, "Bringing About the Past," Philosophical Review 73 (3) (July 1964), pp. 338-359. (22 pp.) | NB | |
| Nov 14 | John Perry, "The Essential Indexical" Noûs 13 (1) (Mar., 1979), pp. 3-21. (19 pp.) | NB |
| Derek Parfit, "Personal Identity" (25 pp.) | DH | |
| Nov 21 | Second Draft of Journal Submission Due | |
| Nov 28 | Ernest Nagel, "The Meaning of Reduction in the Natural Sciences" (24 pp.) | DH |
| Jerry Fodor, "Special Sciences," Synthese 28 (1974) 97-115. (18 pp.) | DB | |
| Dec 5 | Hilary Putnam, "The Nature of Mental States," in Mind, Language, and Reality, 429-40. (12 pp.) | DB |
| Davidson, "Mental Events" in Experience and Theory, L Foster and J W Swanson, eds (1970). (20 pp.) | NB | |
| Dec 14 | Final Draft of Journal Submission Due |
Very Tentative Spring Semester Schedule
The continuation of the pro-seminar will be taught by Richard Heck.
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Week 1 |
Gottlob Frege, ‘On Sense and Reference’ [Philosophical Review 57 (1948), 209-30] | |
| Gottlob Frege, ‘The Thought’ [Mind 65 (1956), 289-311] | ||
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Week 2 |
Bertrand Russell, ‘Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description’ [Logical and Philosophical Papers, vol. 6, pp. 148-161] | |
| Bertrand Russell, ‘On Denoting’ [Mind 14 (1905), 479-93] | ||
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Week 3 |
A.J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic, Chs. 1-4 | |
| W.V.O. Quine, ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’ [Philosophical Review 60 (1951), 20-43] | ||
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Week 4 |
W.V.O. Quine, Word and Object, Ch. 2 | |
| Noam Chomsky, ‘Quine’s Empirical Assumptions’ [Synthese 19 (1968-9), 53-68] | ||
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Week 5 |
W.V.O. Quine, ‘Three Grades of Modal Involvement’ [in The Ways of Paradox, 156-74] | |
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Week 6 |
Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity, Lecture 1 | |
| Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity, Lecture 2 | ||
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Week 7 |
Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity, Lecture 3 | |
| Hilary Putnam, "The Meaning of 'Meaning'" [Mind, Language, and Reality: Philosophical Papers, vol. 2, pp. 215-71] | ||
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Week 8 |
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Week 9 |
Moore's Epistemology | |
| Russell's Epistemology "Knowledge by Acquaintance"; Chapters 1-11 of The Problems of Philosophy; "The Relation of Sense-Data to Physics" | ||
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Week 10 |
Carnap on Epistemology | |
| Peter Strawson, "Perception and its Objects," in MacDonald ed., Perception and Identity. | ||
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Week 11 |
(Sections of?) J. L. Austin, Sense and Sensibilia | |
| A. J. Ayer, "Has Austin refuted the s-d theory?" in Metaphysics and Common Sense. | ||
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Week 12 |
(Sections of?) Wilfrid Sellars, "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" | |
| Nelson Goodman, "The New Riddle of Induction" | ||
| Week 13 | Nelson Goodman, "The Problem of Counterfactual Conditionals," The Journal of Philosophy 44, 113-28. (16 pp.) | |
Other Versions of This Course
Richard Heck: Fall 2006
Related Papers
John McDowell, "Non-Cognitivism and Rule-Following," in Holtzman, Steven & C. Leich, eds. (1981) Wittgenstein: to Follow a Rule.
Robert Causey, "Attribute-Identities in Microreductions"
Larry Sklar, "Types of Inter-Theoretic Reduction"
Leslie Stevenson, "The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms," Mind 46 (1937), 14-31. (18 pp.)
Peter Geach, "Assertion," Philosophical Review 74 (1965), 449-65. (16 pp.) and Peter Geach, "Ascriptivism," Philosophical Review 69 (1960), 221-5. (4 pp.)
