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Instructor: Jonathan Cohen
joncohenREMOVETHIS@aardvark.ucsd.edu (omit text in caps, which reduces
automated spam)
office: (858) 534 6812
Office hours: Mondays 1-2 in H&SS 8072 (and by appointment;
please feel free to call)
This graduate seminar in philosophy will be devoted to philosophical
theories of the nature of the perceiving relation --- that
relation that obtains between a subject and an object when the subject
perceives the object.
Interest in this topic has revived in recent years after a couple of
decades of relative neglect, and some older theories are attracting
new adherents.
Therefore, it will serve our purposes to work through some older
(mid-twentieth century) literature as well as some more recent
writing.
Much of this material has connections with (and therefore will give students exposure to) central issues in contemporary philosophy of mind. However, I'll be trying to presuppose as little as possible about such matters, and you should do your best to hold me to this!
This seminar counts as a core seminar in philosophy and counts toward the distribution requirement in the area of metaphysics and epistemology.
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 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 (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.
| Week | Topic | Reading | Presenter |
| 1 | Introduction, planning | none | Jonathan |
| 2 | Some Problems of Perception | Robinson, Perception, ch1; Valberg, "The Puzzle of Experience" (in Crane, ed., The Contents of Experience), *Crane, "The Problem of Perception" in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy | Tarun |
| 3 | Sense Data | Price, Perception, 1-20, 27-33; Austin, Sense and Sensibilia, Chapters III, V; Jackson, Perception: A Representative Theory, ch 1, 3, 4; Peacocke, "Sensational Properties: Theses to Accept and Theses to Reject"; *Broad, "The Theory of Sensa", in his Scientific Thought | Damon, Vidit |
| 4 | Adverbialism | Ducasse, "Moore's Refutation of Idealism" in Schilpp (ed.) The Philosophy of G. E. Moore; Tye, "The Adverbial Approach to Visual Experience" *Jackson, Perception: A Representative Theory, 63-72; | Nanhee |
| 5 | Intentionalism | Harman, "The Intrinsic Quality of Experience"; Block, "Inverted Earth"; Byrne, "Intentionalism Defended"; *Pautz, "An Argument for the Intentional View of Visual Experience" (long) | Peter, Theron |
| 6 | The Qualia View | Block, "Mental Paint"; Shoemaker, "Qualities and Qualia: What's In the Mind?"; Tye "Visual Qualia and Visual Content Revisited" | James, Nat |
| 7 | Disjunctivism | Hinton, "Visual Experiences"; McDowell, "Criteria, Defeasibility, and Knowledge"; Byrne and Logue, "Either/Or" | Daniel, Nate |
| 8 | Naive Realism | Martin, "On Being Alienated" (long); Crane, "Is There a Perceptual Relation?"; Hellie, "Beyond Phenomenal Naivete"; *Martin, "The Transparency of Experience" (long) | Sarah |
| 9 | The Property Complex View | Johnston, "The Obscure Object of Hallucination" (long); David Sosa, "Perceptual Friction"; *Bealer, Quality and Concept | Joyce, Damon |
| 10 | Catch up and party! | ? | ? |