3/30: Next week we will be discussing Frank Jackson’s example (in `What Mary didn't know' and ‘Epiphenomenal Qualia’) of Mary, the color-blind color scientist. You should read, in addition to the Jackson, the argument presented in Byrne, ‘Something About Mary.’ The seminar on Monday, April 3 will be our last meeting of the semester.
3/26: Casey O'Callaghan's talk this week is cancelled; so there will be no meeting of PHIL 515 this week. Use the week off to work on your papers! Get in touch with me if you would like to meet, or have me read a draft.
3/16: Next week, we'll begin discussion of the relationship between the contents of perceptions and the contents of thoughts. The reading is a paper of mine on concept possession that does not exist yet. When it does come to exist in a suitable form, I will post it here. But there is no real need to read it before class, since I'll be presenting the ideas in seminar.
3/6: Next week we'll finish up our discussion of the challenge to intentionalism provided by the possibility of spectrum inversion without misrepresentation. We will then move on to discuss another challenge to minimal intentionalism: that posed by the supervenience of phenomenal character on intrinsic properties of the perceiver. For a good introduction to the problem, read Egan and John, "A Puzzle About Perception." Though on a different topic, Hawthorne's "Why Humeans are out of their minds" does a nice job of expressing the intuition that phenomenal character is intrinsic in the relevant sense. Both these are also in the folder in 908 Leacock.
3/1: Next week, we will be presenting a few different versions of intentionalism, and discussing the challenge posed to intentionalism by the possibility of spectrum inversion without misrepresentation. The main reading will be Shoemaker's "Phenomenal Character" and Kalderon & Hilbert, "Color and the Inverted Spectrum". For a more general introduction, you might want to look at the Stanford Encyclopedia article on the inverted spectrum. It also strikes me that we have not read very much by anti-intentionalists. I've therefore also placed a copy of Ned Block's "Mental Paint and Mental Latex" in the folder.
2/23: In our first meeting after break, we'll be finishing our discussion of Johnston's "The authority of affect" in the first half of the class, and discussing Byrne's "Intentionalism defended" in the second half. Handouts are available online to accompany each.
2/9: Next week Brian will be leading a discussion of Husserl's alternative to Russellian and Fregean views of the contents of experience. He will not presuppose any reading, but sugggests the following for people who might be interested in looking at some relevant parts of Husserl before class:
Brian has also generously put photocopies of these passages in the folder in the office. In the second half of the seminar, we will begin discussing Johnston's "The Authority of Affect", which is now in the folder in the office.Sections 3 and 7 of the Introduction (6 pages). Remarks on the phenomenological method.
Sections 9-14, 30-35 of Investigation I (13 pages). Husserl's theory of meaning.
Sections 11 and 14 of Investigation V (7 pages). Husserl's theory of intentionality as a monadic property; perception vs. sensation.
Sections 4-6, 10 and 14 of Investigation VI (14 pages). Remarks on perceptual recognition.
2/5: This week we'll be discussing the question of which properties can be parts of the contents of experiences. You should look at Siegel's papers "Which properties are represented in perception?" and "Misperception."
1/24: For next week (Jan. 30) we will be beginning our discussion of the contents of experience. I will talk a bit about the relationship between the objects of experience and the contents of experience, and about different possible views about what sorts of things the contents of experience are. An excellent piece to look at to give you the lay of the land is Susanna Siegel's piece on "The contents of perception" in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. All of it is worth reading, but the parts most relevant to next week's discussion will be sections 1 and 3. The main contenders we will be discussing are the views that the contents of experience are Russellian propositions, and that they are Fregean propositions. For a defense of the former view, we'll look at selections from Mike Thau's Consciousness and Cognition. I'll put a copy of that in the office tomorrow (Wednesday). For a defense of the latter view, you can look at Chalmers, "The representational content of experience." The relevant sections here are 5-7. One of the topics we'll be talking about is the phenomenon of color constancy. An optional piece of reading which gives an interesting treatment of this phenomenon is Matt Kennedy's "Visual Awareness of Properties", which I'll also copy and put in the folder in the office.
1/17: On Monday (Jan. 23) we will be talking about Mark Johnston's criticisms of disjunctivism, and defense of a common kind version of direct realism. The reading is his "The obscure object of hallucination."
Many of the readings for this course are available online. When that is the case, you can follow links to the readings from the online version of the syllabus. These links often require you to be connected to the McGill network. If this is difficult for you, you can also look on the WebCT CE page for this course. When readings are not available online, they will be made available for photocopy in a folder with the course number (515) on it in the Philosophy Department office. Please make copies quickly and return the originals to the folder so that they will be available for others.