Philosophy 207: Core Seminar in Philosophy of Mind

Where: Philosophy seminar room (H&SS 7077)
When: Fridays 1-4, spring quarter 2019

Instructors

Matthew Fulkerson
mfulkerson@ucsd.edu
Office hours: Wednesdays 2-3:30 and by appointment, in H&SS 8073

Jonathan Cohen
Last name, followed by the at sign, followed by the four letter abbreviation for the university, followed by '.', followed by 'edu'
Office hours: Thursdays 10-11:30 and by appointment, in H&SS 7022

Overview

This graduate seminar will focus on the philosophical work of Daniel Dennett and Jerry Fodor --- two giants of philosophy of mind (and related disciplines inside and outside philosophy).

Fulkerson will focus on Dennett, and Cohen will focus on Fodor. Discussion of Dennett will include his work on the intentional stance and his various theories of consciousness. The Fodor themes will include his views on psychological explanation, the language of thought hypothesis, the compositionality of mental representation, content holism, innateness, and modularity. The goal will be to expose students to the fundamental ideas of two major figures who have shaped the agenda in philosophy of mind for generations, and whose influence can scarcely be measured.

This seminar counts toward the distribution requirement in the area of philosophy of mind and language; it also counts as a core seminar.

Requirements

The seminar requirements are of two main kinds: presentations, and a medium length (15 page) final paper.

Presentation: All attendees (including auditors) will be required to lead a seminar discussion. A presentation should be a critical discussion rather than a mere 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 one of the instructors 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, a handout, or slides, 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, 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 the instructors. We mean it. Really.

Grading

We will determine your grade based on the following breakdown:
25% seminar presentations and participation
75% final paper

Further notes:

Note that there is reading assigned for the first meeting of the seminar; please come having read the Fodor material listed for week 1 and ready to discuss it.
Below we list core readings for the seminar; we'll be adding secondary readings from the critical literature. Other changes may happen as well.
Most readings are linked below (though in some cases only accesiible from a UCSD ip number, possibly through vpn).
Class will be cancelled on 19 April and 31 May (both instructors will be at conferences), so we'll schedule makeup sessions.

Tentative Schedule

Date	Topic	Reading	Presenters
5 April	Fodor on psychological explanation, RTM	Fodor, Psychosemantics, ch1; Language of Thought, ch2	Jonathan
12 April	Fodor on compositionality	Fodor and Pylyshyn, "Connectionism and cognitive architecture: A critical analysis"; Smolensky, "On the proper treatment of connectionism"; Fodor and McLaughlin, "Connectionism and the problem of systematicity: Why Smolensky's solution doesn't work"; Fodor, Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong, ch5	Haggeo, Isabella
26 April	Dennett on psychological explanation, I	Dennett, The Intentional Stance, ch 1-3; Dennett, "Real Patterns"	Matt, Ahmed
3 May	Dennett on psychological explanation, II	Dennett, The Intentional Stance, ch 4-6	Jada
10 May	Fodor and Lepore on holism	Fodor and Lepore, Holism: A Shopper's Guide, ch1, 5, 7	Isabella
17 May	Fodor on innateness	Fodor, "The present status of the innateness controversy"; Cowie, "Mad dog nativism"; Fodor, Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong, ch 6, 7; *Laurence and Margolis, "Radical Concept Nativism"	Ahmed, Elizabeth
24 May	Fodor on modularity	Fodor, Modularity of Mind, ch 3-4	Elizabeth, Marcus
7 June	Dennett on consciousness, I	Dennett, "Why you can't make a computer that feels pain"; "Quining Qualia"	Haggeo, Robert
11 June	Dennett on consciousness, II	Dennett, "Seeing is Believing, or is it?"; Dennett and Kinsbourne "Time and the observer"	Jada
14 June	Dennett on consciousness, III	Dennett, Consciousness Explained (excerpts), "Are we explaining consciousness yet?"	Robert