meeting

Spring 2007, Wednesday 7–9:50 p.m., Pearsons 203

instructors

texts

We've ordered two books, available at Huntley Bookstore

• Ludlow, Nagasawa & Stoljar, (Eds.). 2005. There's Something About Mary. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
• Preston & Bishop, (Eds.). 2002. Views Into the Chinese Room. Oxford: Clarendon Press

We'll make small number of readings availabe on our course Sakai site, see the readings page.

Our jumping off point is two famous thought experiments in philosophy of mind, Mary-in-the-black-and-white-room and the Chinese room. We'll use these two cases to investigate broader issues in philosophy of psychology and philosophy of computation.

Our intention is to run this course like a graduate seminar. Each week we will examine two to three papers in detail (typically we'll discuss one paper for about half the session, take a break, and then turn to the others).

Sakai

We will be using the 5C/CGU course management package Sakai. If you are a 5C or CGU student you should have access to Sakai, and if you are registered for our course then our course site should already be listed.

weekly requirements

Regular participation in discussion is encouraged and expected.

Each week you can drop a brief note (one to two pages) in your Sakai Drop Box. Five times during the semester we will email you on Monday evening, typically around 8 p.m., to tell you that we will be grading your note for that week. The deadline for getting graded notes in will be an hour later on Monday. If you wrote your note in advance, you won't have to do anything when you get our email. If you haven't yet written your note, then you'll have an hour (or less, depending on when you get our email).

We ask for your notes on Monday to give us time to read and comment on them before Wednesday's class. If Monday is a problem we can negotiate...

Your note will be a précis of some material from the reading. A précis might focus on a single article or a section of a single article; it might take up instead an issue or argument discussed in one or more of the articles. Either way, your note should present the gist of the article, section, issue, or argument. These notes should also include your thoughts on the matter: an issue or distinction you think needs clarification, or some original comment, question, or objection you want to raise in discussion.[1]

We don’t think of this kind of preparation as “extra” work, especially for a seminar. We want you to read the articles carefully and critically. We want you to know what claim the author is arguing for, how she is arguing for it, and, most importantly, your critical thoughts on the position and arguments.

paper(s)

You have two options:

• Two roughly eight page papers; the first will be due at the beginning of March
• One twelve to fifteen page paper

To help you write your final paper, a report (roughly four pages) will be due in the 11th or 12th week of the semester. Your report will contain your original thoughts on a topic, which may take the form of a critique or discussion of some article, or of some argument or position developed in one or more of the articles.

presentations

Each student will present his/her report to the class for discussion, and on the basis of the discussion the report can be revised and expanded into the term paper.

[1] We may increase the number of notes required if only a few students regularly contribute to discussions.