Analytic Philosophy

obowiązkowe

The course is designed to acquaint students with major tenets of 20th century analytic philosophy.

I have selected seven topic areas of examination: I. The beginnings of analytic philosophy (Frege, Russell, early Wittgenstein), II. Truth and meaning (Tarski, Davidson, Quine), III. Language in action (Austin, Grice, late Wittgenstein), IV. Mind-body problem (Ryle, Place, Smart, Kripke, Putnam, Block), V. Cognitive architecture (McClelland, Rumelhart & Hinton, Fodor & Pylyshyn, Smolensky, Ramsey, Stich &Garon), VI. Nativism versus constructivism (Piaget, Chomsky, Fodor, Putnam), VII. Modularity (Fodor, Sperber).

Essential literature: Frege: On sense and nominatum, Russell: On denoting; Strawson: On referring; Kripke: Naming and necessity; Wittgenstein: Tractatus logico-philosophicus; Davidson: Truth and meaning; Quine: Quantifiers and propositional attitudes; Wittgenstein: Philosophical investigations; Austin: How to do things with words; Grice: Logic and conversation; Ryle: Descartes’ Myth; Place: Is consciousness a brain process?; Putnam: The nature of mental states; Block: Troubles with functionalism; McClelland, Rumelhart & Hinton: The appeal of parallel distributed processing; Fodor & Pylyshyn: Connectionism and cognitive architecture: a critical analysis; Smolensky: The constituent structure of connectionist mental states; Ramsey, Stich &Garon: Connectionism, Eliminativism, and the Future of Folk Psychology; Piaget: The psychogenesis of knowledge and its epistemological significance; Chomsky: On cognitive structures and their development: a reply to Piaget; Putnam: What is innate and why? Comments on the debate; Fodor: Modularity of Mind; Sperber: The Modularity of Thought and the Epidemiology of Representations.

The student will be made familiar with major tenets of analytic philosophy and will be acquainted with the concepts and methods used by eminent representatives of this philosophy. (K_W03, K_W06, K_W09, K_W10, K_W13, K_W14).

The student will be suspicious of facile proposals to solve difficult questions by intuitive insights and will be warned against philosophical simplifications of any kind. (K_U03, K_U04, K_U05, K_U07, K_U10)

Clarity of thought and inquisitiveness. (K_K02, K_K10).

Class participation, class presentation and exam testing the understanding of fundamental concepts and problems of analytic philosophy.

Acceptable number of missed classes without formal explanation: 2