PHGA 6459 Mind, Matter and Form
Spring 2008
Professor William Jaworski
Tuesday 12:00 – 2:00 pm

Course Objectives and Expectations
The goal of this course is to introduce students to the nature of mind-body problems, to a range of standard solutions to them, and to an alternative approach to mind-body problems which originates in Aristotle's psychology. Students successfully completing the course should have greater facility reading, understanding, and critically evaluating current literature in philosophy of mind; they should be able to engage experts in the field, and be competent to teach an introductory course in it at the undergraduate level. They should also have a clear sense for the similarities and differences between Aristotelian psychology and the mind-body theories that have been developed since the 17th century. Students are expected (i) to familiarize themselves with the Arts and Sciences Policy on Academic Integrity and the severe consequences of violating it; (ii) to attend each class session (barring extenuating circumstances); (iii) to have read the assigned material and completed the assigned written work on time; and (iv) to be active participants in class discussion. The professor is expected (i) to familiarize himself with the Arts and Sciences Policy on Academic Integrity; (ii) to attend each class session (barring extenuating circumstances); (iii) to have read the assigned material; (iv) to be an active participant in class discussion; (v) to grade assignments in a timely fashion; and (vi) to be available to students who need help.

Texts
Rosenthal, David M. The Nature of Mind. Oxford U.P. (required)
Kim, Jaegwon. Philosophy of Mind. Westview Press. (recommended)
There will be additional required readings on eRes or in journals online.

Grading Policy
Grades will be determined according to the following percentages:
Argument Rehearsals: 50% (10 rehearsals total)
Final Paper: 50%

Argument Rehearsals: Students are required to submit ten (10) short (approx. 1-2 page) papers rehearsing arguments discussed in class or in the readings. A rehearsal is not a summary of something covered in class or in the readings; it is not a description of a theory; it is not a comparison of what competing theories would say about a particular point; it is not a report of what someone said; it is rather the presentation of an argument, of reasons for thinking a particular claim is true or false, written from the perspective of someone who would endorse those reasons. Rehearsals are due at the class session immediately following the session at which the argument is covered. Rehearsals can be chosen from among the following: (1) The mereological essentialist argument against the organic identity thesis; (2) the conceivability argument for substance dualism; (3) one argument against substance dualism; (4) the inductive generalization for physicalism based on past scientific success; (5) Jackson’s knowledge argument against physicalism; (6) Smart's argument for the identity theory; (7) Lewis’s argument for the identity theory; (8) the multiple-realizability argument against the identity theory; (9) the liberalism objection to functionalism; (10) Putnam’s or Burge’s argument against internalism; (11) Davidson’s argument for anomalous monism; (12) Kim’s dilemma for nonreductive physicalism; (13) Kim’s exclusion argument; (14) Hempel's dilemma for physicalism.

Papers: Papers are graded in terms of a single criterion: how well the student presents and evaluates the arguments. Topics must be pre-approved by the professor, and will focus on a contemporary challenge to the attempt to rearticulate an Aristotelian psychology. Papers cannot be purely expository; they must have significant argumentative content, and aim at making an original contribution to the literature. Students should work closely with the professor to insure their paper topics meet these requirements. Final papers are due by the last day of class unless otherwise stated.

Weeks 1-6
Introduction of basic concepts, theories, and problems: “Private” vs. “public” conceptions of mentality: intentionality, rationality, consciousness, subjectivity. The concept of the physical and the natural sciences. Post-Cartesian assumptions, mind-body problems, mind-body theories: what they are, what they claim, their motivations and implications. Searle ‘The Nature of Intentional States’ (eRes). Chalmers from The Conscious Mind.

Substance Dualism
Descartes Meditations II and VI, and selections from Principles of Philosophy (eRes); Plantinga “Could Socrates Have Been an Alligator?” (eRes); Arnauld “from the Fourth Set of Objections” (eRes); Descartes “from the Fourth Replies”; Kripke “from Naming and Necessity” (excerpts from Lectures I and II). Aristotle De Anima I.3 (407b14-26); Ryle “Descartes’ Myth”;  Malebranche (eRes); Leibniz (eRes). Gendler and Hawthorne. From ‘Introduction: Conceivability and Possibility’ (eRes).

Dual-Attribute Theories I: Psychophysical Substances: Organic vs. Non-organic
Chisholm, “Which Physical Thing Am I?” (eRes); Eric Olson The Human Animal.

Idealism and Neutral Monism
James “Does Consciousness Exist?”, “A World of Pure Experience”; Russell from The Analysis of Mind; Berkeley A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Sections 1-33.

Physicalism
Melnyk, A Physicalist Manifesto, 13-18. Nagel “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”; Jackson “Epiphenomenal Qualia” (eRes), “What Mary Didn’t Know”.

Behaviorism
Churchland “Behaviorism, Materialism, Functionalism” (eRes); Hempel “The Logical Analysis of Psychology” (eRes); Putnam “Brains and Behavior”; Quine "Two Dogmas of Empiricism".

Identity Theory I: Theoretical identification, intertheoretic reduction, and the multi-levels picture
Place “Is Consciousness a Brain Process?” (eRes); Smart “Sensations and Brain Processes”; Kim “What is Reduction?” (eRes); Putnam and Oppenheim “The Unity of Science as a Working Hypothesis” (eRes); Kripke “from Naming and Necessity” (all).

Identity Theory II: Central state theory (“Australian materialism”)
Armstrong “The Causal Theory of Mind”; Lewis “An Argument for the Identity Theory” (eRes), “Psychophysical and Theoretical Identifications”, “Mad Pain and Martian Pain”; Jaworski "Multiple Realizability" (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

Functionalism I: The first generation: Classical Functionalism
Putnam “The Nature of Mental States”; Lewis “Review of Putnam” (eRes); Kim “Physicalism and the Multiple Realizability of Mental States” (eRes); Putnam “Philosophy and Our Mental Life”; Block “Troubles with Functionalism”; Searle “Minds, Brains and Programs” (eRes).

Functionalism II: The second generation: Homuncular and Teleological Functionalism
Putnam “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’”; Burge “Individualism and the Mental”; Lycan Consciousness, Ch 4; Sober “Putting the Function Back into Functionalism”. Cummins “Functional Analysis” Journal of Philosophy 72(1975): 741-65.

Nonreductive Physicalism: Supervenience Physicalism, Realization Physicalism, and Anomalous Monism
Kim “Concepts of Supervenience”; Melnyk “From A Physicalist Manifesto”; Fodor “Special Sciences, or the Disunity of Science as a Working Hypothesis”; Kim “Multiple-Realizability and the Metaphysics of Reduction” (eRes); Kim “The Myth of Nonreductive Physicalism”; Davidson “Mental events”; Sosa “Mind-Body Interaction and Supervenient Causation”.

Eliminativism and Instrumentalism
Feyerabend “Materialism and the Mind-Body Problem” (eRes); Churchland “Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes”; Fodor Psychosemantics, Ch 1; Haldane “Understanding Folk”; Dennett “True Believers: The Intentional Strategy and Why It Works”.

Dual-Attribute Theories II: Psychophysical Relations: Emergentism and Epiphenomenalism: Kim “Making Sense of Emergence” (eRes); McLaughlin “The Rise and Fall of British Emergentism; Searle The Rediscovery of the Mind, Chps 1,2,4,5; Kim “The Nonreductivist’s Troubles with Mental Causation”; Kim "Emergence: the Core Idea"; Chalmers from The Conscious Mind.

Weeks 7-14
Is post-Cartesian philosophy of mind a degenerating research program?
Wittgenstein from Philosophical Investigations; Ryle The Concept of Mind; Kenny from The Metaphysics of Mind; Sellars “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man”, “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind”; Jaworski “Hylomorphism and post-Cartesian Philosophy of Mind”; Jaworski Twilight of the Mind, Chs 1 and 2 (draft).

Classical hylomorphic theory: Aristotle Physics I.7-8; II (all); De Anima I.1, 3(407b14-26), 4(408a18-b32), 5(all); II.1-5, 12; III(all); De Motu Animalium, 6-11; De Sensu 1-5; Post An. II.19; Metaphys I; VII.10-17; VIII (all); Nicomachean Ethics I.7; De Partibus Animalium I(all), II.1. Burnyeat “Is an Aristotelian Philosophy of Mind Still Credible? A Draft”; Nussbaum and Putnam “Changing Aristotle’s Mind” (eRes); Haldane “A Return to Form in the Philosophy of Mind”.

Foundations for contemporary hylomorphic theory: Mayr, Ernst: The Growth of Biology Thought, Ch 1; Toward a New Philosophy of Biology, Ch 1; Ayala, Francisco "Biology as an Autonomous Science" American Scientist; Kitcher, Phillip "1953 and all that: a tale of two sciences" Phil Review; van Inwagen, from Material Beings; Craver, Carl Explaining the Brain, Ch 5; Boorse "Health as a Theoretical Concept"; Bennett and Hacker The Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, Ch 13; Van Fraassen The Scientific Image, Ch 5. Jaworski Twilight of the Mind, Chps 3-6 (draft). Additional readings: TBA.