Topic

We'll spend the first half of the course working through some of the main texts from M&E in the 20th century. Topics covered will include Frege's theories of reference and sense; Russell's theory of descriptions and uses thereof; debates over the relationship between linguistic conventions, a prioricity, necessity, and the a priori; and Kripke's Naming and Necessity. In the second half of the class, we'll spend the first few weeks discussing more recent work on analyticity and the a priori, and for the last few weeks, students will give brief presentations of some parts of, or ideas for, their term papers.

Format

This course is a seminar rather than a lecture; but the first half will contain a bit of lecturing.

Texts

Everyone should get a copy of Kripke's Naming and Necessity. Other readings will be made available in PDF form via links from the syllabus.

Assignments

Everyone will write two short papers + a term paper. You'll be welcome, and encouraged, to submit drafts of the term paper. The term paper needn't be especially long; the goal is that it should approximate a publishable journal article.

Contact information

You should of course feel free to get in touch with me if you have any questions about the course, or about how you're doing in the course --- or if you just want to pursue some of the topics we're discussing further.

You can always get in touch with me by email. You should also feel free to stop by my office, which is 205 Malloy Hall. My office hours are Tuesday afternoons between 3:00 and 4:00, but these are often pretty crowded, so it might be preferable to make apointments for other times during the week, or just stop by my office unannounced. My office phone is (574) 631-6468.

How to access readings for the course

Online readings for the course are accessible via links from the syllabus. All readings are in PDF format. In the unlikely event that you're not familiar with downloading, reading, and printing PDF files, one easy way to do this is by downloading them by right-clicking (control-click on a Mac), and saving the linked file to your computer, then opening the downloaded file using Adobe Reader, Preview, or some other PDF viewer, and printing from that application.

When you click on the link for a paper, you'll be asked to enter a user name and password. You should enter the user name and password that you use to access your Notre Dame email.

If you are having trouble getting access to the papers, one of the following tips might help:

1. If your netID and password are being rejected, assuming that you have not forgotten your password, the most likely explanation is that your name has not yet been added to the list of permitted users for this course. If this is the case, send me an email with your netID so that I can fix the problem. (There is no need to send me your password as well.)

2. If a link which you expected to see is not appearing, try refreshing your browser.

3. If when you click on a link nothing seems to happen, or a blank screen appears, your browser may have downloaded the PDF to a location on your computer. Try searching your computer for the file, or right-clicking the link and saving the file to an easy-to-find location on your computer, like the Desktop.

4. Try using a different browser.

5. If none of these work, send me an email.

Some online philosophy resources

Reference sites

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Places to search for papers online

JStor
Philpapers
Notre Dame's QuickSearch for Philosophy

Some leading journals

Analysis
Australasian Journal of Philosophy
Ethics
Erkenntnis
European Journal of Philosophy
Journal of Philosophical Logic
Linguistics and Philosophy
Mind
Mind & Language
Nous
Pacific Philosophical Quarterly
Philosophical Perspectives
Philosophical Quarterly
Philosophical Review
Philosophical Studies
Philosophy & Phenomenological Research
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society

Grading

There will be two short papers and a term paper. Each short paper will be worth 10% of the grade, and the term paper will be worth 60 % of the grade. The remaining 20% of the grade will be given on the basis of presentations and participation.

Each assignment is required, in the sense that failure to complete one or more assignments is sufficient to fail the course.

Notre Dame has no official way of indexing numerical grades to letter grades. This is the system that will be used in this course:

A	94+
A-	90-93
B+	87-89
B	83-86
B-	80-82
C+	77-79
C	73-76
C-	70-72
D	60-69
F	59-

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