PHL340H5F - Issues in Philosophy of Mind home
In this course we will explore three interrelated questions in the philosophy of mind. The first is ‘what is the mind’, the second, ‘what is consciousness’, and the third, ‘what is intentionality’. Our main focus, and half of the lectures, will be on this last question – but to set things up properly we will take a good look at the first questions too.
The first question challenges us to decide what sort of thing the mind is. Is the mind an immaterial substance, as Descartes believed in the 17th century? Or is it just the brain, as you might expect people to believe today? Or is it something else again?
The second question, ‘what is consciousness’, addresses one of the most fundamental facts about experience – the fact that there is something it is like to experience. For example, there is something that it is like to experience your favorite team winning the league. On the other hand, it's doubtful that there is anything it's like to be a toaster, or a chair. The ‘what it’s like’ aspect of experience seems to be exclusive to creatures with minds. Whether this can be explained in terms of the physical properties of those creatures is an ongoing debate.
The final question, ‘what is intentionality’, concerns the fact that mental states are typically about something. Cigar thoughts are about cigars, and piano thoughts are about pianos. What makes a thought about what it is about? Does the thought in some way look like or resemble its object? Does the thought somehow provide enough descriptive information about its object to pick that object out? Or could it be that a thought is about whatever caused it to originate in the mind of its thinker? Is consciousness necessary for a mental state to have this property of 'intentionality'? Or is intentionality reducible to facts about causation?
We will explore readings from the 17th century to the 21st, and touch on subjects as diverse as robotics and aesthetics. Issues we will explore in some detail will include modality, a priori reasoning, the possible role of language in thought, and the relation between consciousness and intentionality.
Course Text: Chalmers, David (ed.), Philosophy of Mind: Classic and Contemporary Readings, Oxford University Press, 2008
Evaluation: Weekly Reviews submitted in class (10%); Short Essay (15%); Long Essay (40%); Final Exam (35%)
PART I: What Are Mental States?
Lecture 2: Dualisms Old and New
Readings: Descartes, Meditations 2 and 4
Lecture 3: Materialism and the Identity Theory
Readings: Ryle, “Descartes’ Myth”
Place, “Is Consciousness a Brain Process?”
Readings: Putnam, “The Nature of Mental States”
Block, “Troubles with Functionalism”
Movie (in class) Invasion of The Body Snatchers
PART II: What is Consciousness?
Lecture 5: The New Dualism - the Knowledge Argume
Readings: Nagel, “What is it like to be a Be a Bat"
Dennett, “Quining Qualia"
Lecture 6: The New Dualism II - the Conceivability Argument
Readings: Kripke, from “Naming and Necessity”
Lecture 7: Consciousness and Representation
Readings: Peacocke, “Sensation and the Content of Experience: A Distinction"
Tye, “Visual Qualia and Visual Content Revisited
PART III: What is Intentionality
Lec 8: Internalist Theories of Intentionality: Images and Description
Readings: Goodman, Nelson, 1968, from Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols, Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company online
Searle, from “Proper Names”, Mind 67 (1958): 166-173 online
Lec 9: Causal-Externalist Theories of Intentionality
Readings: Putnam, excerpt from “Brains in a Vat”, from Reason, Truth, and History, chapter 1, pp. 1-21 (Cambridge University Press: 1982) online
Putnam, excerpt from “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’”
Lec 9: Informational Theories of Intentionality
Readings: Dretske, “A Recipe for Thought”
Fodor, “Information and Representation” online
Lecture 10: Social Theories of Reference
Readings: Burge, excerpt from “Individualism and the Mental”
Loar, “Social Content and Psychological Content” online
Lecture 11: A Multiple-Layers View
Readings: Chalmers, “The Components of Content”
Lecture 12: Essential Connections? Intentionality and Consciousness
Readings: Horgan and Tienson, “The Intentionality of Phenomenology and the
Phenomenology of Intentionality”