24.500 Consciousness

TIME AND PLACE: W 10-1, E39-335.

TEXTS: I recommend you buy David Chalmers' The Conscious Mind, available at the Harvard Book Store. We will be discussing at some length an argument from Frank Jackson's Locke Lectures, allegedly published last month by OUP as From Metaphysics to Ethics: a defence of conceptual analysis, so, although it's not about the ostensible topic of this seminar, you might like to buy it. (According to the Book Store , it isn't published yet, but in any case I have the MS.) Other worthwhile books are:

Armstrong, A Materialist Theory of the Mind
Block et al (eds.), The Nature of Consciousness
Davies and Humphreys (eds.), Consciousness
Dennett, Consciousness Explained
Dretske, Naturalizing the Mind
Lycan, Consciousness and Experience
Tye, Ten Problems of Consciousness

Commit almost all the rest to the flames. The readings will be available for copying in the rack by the graduate student mailboxes.

STUDENT PAPERS: Graduate students taking this course for credit will be required to write the usual substantial paper (NB: in accordance with department rules, you must hand in a draft by the end of the term). If any undergraduates are foolhardy enough to wish to take the course for credit, they should schedule an appointment with me asap.

READING:

2/11 Chalmers chs. 1, esp. 2; Jackson, lectures 1, 2, esp. 3; Stalnaker, "Assertion" (for background).

2/18 Same as last week.

2/25 Jackson, lecture 3, Byrne; "Cosmic Hermeneutics", esp. 2.4.

3/4 Same as last week

3/11 Chalmers, chs. 1, 2, 3; "Cosmic Hermeneutics", 2.2, 2.3

3/18 Chalmers, chs. 2, 3, 4 "Cosmic Hermeneutics", 2.2, 2.3

4/1 Chalmers, chs. 3, 4, "Materialism and the Metaphysics of Modality", "Modal Rationalism"

4/8 Chalmers,"Materialism and the Metaphysics of Modality", Yablo, "Concepts and Consciousness", "Textbook Kripkeanism..."

4/15 NO CLASS

4/22 Kim, "Reduction, Reductive Explanation, and 'the Explanatory Gap'", Block and Stalnaker, "Conceptual Analysis, Dualism, and the Explanatory Gap"

4/29 Kim, "Reduction, Reductive Explanation, and 'the Explanatory Gap'", Block and Stalnaker, "Conceptual Analysis, Dualism, and the Explanatory Gap", Levine, "On Leaving Out What It's Like".

5/6 Wrap up Levine. Then: Peacocke, Sense and Content, chapter 1; Tye, "Visual Qualia and Visual Content"; Langsam, "Experiences, Thoughts, and Qualia".

5/13 Tye, "Visual Qualia and Visual Content"; Langsam, "Experiences, Thoughts, and Qualia".

5/18 Langsam, "Experiences, Thoughts, and Qualia"; Tye, "Qualia, Content, and the Inverted Spectrum".