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 |