Philosophy 208
Seminar on History of Analytic Philosophy

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Where: Philosophy seminar room (H&SS 7077)
When: Wednesday 1-3:50

Instructor: Jonathan Cohen
joncohen AT aardvark DOT ucsd DOT edu
office: (858) 534 6812

Office hours: Thursdays 10:30-12 in H&SS 8072 (and by appointment; please feel free to call)

This graduate seminar in philosophy will be devoted to the history of analytic philosophy. We'll organize discussion around Scott Soames's relatively recent, two volume collection Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century. Because we only have one quarter, there's no way we can cover everything in these works. In particular, we'll be ignoring the chapters devoted largely to ethical topics from volume 1, and the chapters about Kripke and about ordinary language from volume 2. (Rationale: at least some of these topics are covered in greater depth by existing graduate course offerings.)

Readings

In addition to the assigned readings, I highly recommend you look at some of the recent (as of this writing, many still forthcoming) reviews of Soames's volumes so you'll get a sense for what in them is controversial. I'd particularly recommend the review by Michael Kremer (NDPR), and a cluster coming out in a forthcoming symposium on the books in Phil Studies, with contributions from Daniel Stoljar, John Burgess, Ian Proops, Mark Sainsbury, Brian Weatherson, Alex Byrne , and Stephen Yablo. Soames's web site also contains several replies to his critics.

Requirements

Presentation: All attendees (including auditors) will be required to lead a seminar discussion (or maybe more than one, depending on our numbers). A presentation should be a critical discussion rather than a summary or book report (the presenter can assume that other participants have done the reading, and the other participants will make it the case that such an assumption is correct!), and should contain a thesis and arguments for that thesis. It can concern any topic connected with the week's reading that is of interest to the presenter. You must discuss your presentation with me sometime before the session in which you present, just to make sure we're on the same page. Seminar presentations may be given using notes or overheads, but they may not be read aloud from a pre-written paper.

Final Paper: Students taking the course for credit will pass in a single 15 page paper by the end of the quarter (extensions will be granted only in cases of extreme emergency), on a topic of their own choosing that relates to the subject matter of the course. All such papers must be pre-approved in conversation with me. I mean it. Really.

Grading

Tentative Schedule