Date

Topic

Reading
(blue= required, green=optional)
Handouts & assignments
Tuesday, August 28 Introduction to the course none Chronological bibliography of philosophy in England, 1893-1939
Thursday, August 30 Background to early analytic philosophy: British idealism Bradley, "Substantive & adjective" and "Relation & quality" (from Appearance and Reality)
Hylton, "F. H. Bradley"
Bradley's monist idealism
Tuesday, September 4 Relations and the possibility of analysis

Moore, "External and internal relations"
Russell, Principles of Mathematics §§94-99
McTaggart, "Derivatives" & "Determination" (from The Nature of Existence)
Bradley, "Note B: Relation and quality" (from A&R)

McTaggart on the doctrine of internality
Moore's defense of external relations
Russell's reply to Bradley's regress argument
Thursday, September 6 Moore and the "new philosophy"

Moore, "The nature of judgement"
Moore, "The refutation of idealism"

Leibniz's law and the doctrine of internality
Moore and the `new philosophy'
Tuesday, September 11 Russell's theory of propositions Russell, "Proper names, adjectives, and verbs" (Principles of Mathematics §§46-55) Russell view of propositions in Principles of Mathematics
Thursday, September 13 Moore's and Russell's early theories of truth

Moore, "Truth and falsity "
Russell, "The nature of truth"
Cartwright, "A neglected theory of truth"

Truth as a simple property of propositions
Tuesday, September 18 Moore on the simplicity of goodness Moore, "The subject matter of ethics," from Principia Ethica Moore's view of goodness as a simple nonnatural property
Thursday, September 20
Tuesday, September 25
Thursday, September 27
Russell's theory of descriptions Russell, "On denoting"

Russell's "On denoting"
The mysterious "Gray's elegy" argument

Tuesday, October 2
Thursday, October 4
The reduction of mathematics to logic Russell, "Definition of number", from Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy
Soames, "Logic and mathematics: the logicist reduction"
First short paper due October 2
Russell's reduction of arithmetic to logic
A very un-rigorous introduction to the incompleteness theorems
Tuesday, October 9 Russell's second thoughts about truth and propositions, and the multiple relation theory of judgement

Russell, "On the nature of truth and falsehood"
Russell, "On the nature of truth"
Russell, "The understanding of propositions" and "Truth and falsehood" (from 1913 Theory of Knowledge manuscript)
Wittgenstein, "Notes on logic" (excerpt)

Russell's second thoughts about propositions
Thursday, October 11 Acquaintance and thought

Russell, "Knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description"
Russell, "Appearance and reality", from the Problems of Philosophy

Russell on acquaintance, names, and the possibility of thought
Tuesday, October 16
Thursday, October 18
Knowledge of the material world

Russell, "The relation of sense-data to physics"
Russell, "On our knowledge of the external world"

The arguments from illusion & hallucination
Russell on sense data and the material world
Objections to Russell's phenomenalism

October 23 & 25: fall break
Tuesday, October 30 The metaphysics of the Tractatus

Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, §1-2
Russell, "The philosophy of logical atomism," I-III (1918)
Russell, "Logical atomism" (1924)

An outline of the Tractatus
Facts and objects: the metaphysics of the Tractatus
Thursday, November 1 Midterm exam  

Midterm study guide

Tuesday, November 6 The picture theory of representation Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, §3 The picture theory of representation
Thursday, November 8 All propositions are truth functions of elementary propositions Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, §4-5 Wittgenstein's theory of elementary propositions
Tuesday, November 13 Logic, value, and meaning Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, §6-7 Challenges to the doctrine of truth-functionality: generality, identity, & psychology
Logical form and the nature of philosophy
Thursday, November 15 Wrapping up the Tractatus none The subject and solipsism
Value and what can only be shown
Tuesday, November 20 Reactions to the Tractatus

Wittgenstein, "Some remarks on logical form"
Ramsey, "Critical notice of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus"
Moore, "Wittgenstein's lectures in 1930-33"

Church's theorem
The problem of color incompatibility
Wittgenstein on naming and ostension
November 22: Thanksgiving
Tuesday, November 27 Moore's response to skepticism Moore, "Proof of an external world" Moore's proof
Thursday, November 29 The verification criterion of meaning Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic, Introduction & Ch. I Ayer's verifiability criterion of meaning
Tuesday, December 4 The linguistic explanation of necessity and the a priori Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic, Ch. IV

Second short paper due
Ayer's linguistic theory of the a priori
Quine on truth by definition

Thursday, December 6 Emotivism Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic, Ch. VI  
Tuesday, December 11 Concluding discussion none Final papers due
Saturday, December 15 Final exam (10:30-12:30), in 302 DeBartolo
Final exam study guide