PHIL 512: Seminar in Philosophy of Mind

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1 PHIL 512: Seminar in Philosophy of Mind Information, Representation, and Intentionality: From Brains to Subjects RICE UNIVERSITY, SPRING 2017 COURSE SYLLABUS Time & Location: Tue, 2:30-5:00pm, HUM 227 Instructor: Alex Morgan Contact: Office Location: HUM 214 Office Hours: Thu, 2:00-5:00pm, or by appt. COURSE DESCRIPTION Our mental states seem to be in some sense directed at mind-independent entities such as objects, properties, or states of affairs. Franz Brentano famously held that this phenomenon is the mark of the mental: that all and only mental states exhibit this intentional directedness. A puzzling feature of intentional directedness is that mental states can seemingly be directed at mind-independent objects that do not in fact exist. So, for example, you might hallucinate a red tomato where there is none. It is tempting to think of intentional directedness as a kind of relation; but if it is, it s unlike any other relation, since it might obtain even if one of its relata does not exist. This set of ideas led many philosophers to worry that intentionality might prove to be fundamentally different from the rest of nature, and in the late 20th C. several philosophers set out to show that it isn t they sought to naturalize intentionality. Many of these philosophers were strongly influenced by the cognitivist tradition in psychology, which proposes to explain psychological processes by appealing to the manipulation of inner, information-bearing representations. They thus sought to identify naturalistic conditions, expressed in terms of notions like information and causation, that would fix the intentional content of internal representations. But it turns out that these naturalistic accounts almost invariably encompass states in all sorts of mindless systems, such as information-bearing states inside plants. These accounts might capture a legitimate notion of representation, but they fail to illuminate what s distinctive of mental representations. So there s work to be done to show what makes mental representations mental to show how the internal representational states of brains are related to the inner intentional states of subjects. This is the work we'll undertake in the seminar. We ll read some classic early work in phenomenology and analytic philosophy, some contemporary work in philosophy of mind & psychology, and perhaps some empirical literature in mind & brain science. "1

2 COURSE MATERIALS All readings will be made available electronically via the Canvas site for the seminar. Assigned readings for each week are listed under the schedule at the end of this syllabus. GRADING Reading responses (10%) You are required to post a total of ten short responses to one of the readings assigned for a given week on the Canvas discussion board. Your post should be about half a page in length, and should briefly address the central point(s) the author is trying to make, how she argues for that point, and (most importantly) any questions or concerns you had about the argument. Your response must be submitted by the Sunday evening before the meeting that week to receive credit. Class presentations (2 10% = 20%) You are required to give a total of two presentations on one of the texts assigned for a given week. Your presentation should last approximately 30 mins, and should aim to (a) give an overview of the text s main points, perhaps drawing on secondary literature, and (b) provide a critical response to the text in order generate subsequent discussion. You may organize your presentation as you wish, using powerpoint, handouts or other media. Presentations will begin on Week 2 or 3. Papers (70%) You are required to write either one or two papers on any topic covered in the seminar. The total amount of material should add up to approximately 18 pages (double-spaced, standard font) or 8,000 words. Please make an appointment with me to discuss your paper topic(s) before you begin writing. The content your papers may overlap with the content of your presentations. Papers are due by midnight on the last day of April. SCHEDULE Here is a tentative schedule of readings for the seminar. The schedule is liable to change; any changes will be announced via Canvas. "2

3 WEEK 1: HISTORY: BRENTANO S CONCEPTION OF INTENTIONALITY Jan. 10 Morgan, A. (in progress). Cognitive Neuroscience: Information, Representation, and Intentionality. Brentano, F. (1874 [1995]). Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. London: Routledge ( B2.I). Crane, T. (1998). Intentionality as the Mark of the Mental, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 43: WEEK 2: HISTORY: INTENTIONALITY IN ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY Jan. 17 Chisholm, R. (1955). Sentences about Believing, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 56: Sellars, W. (1956). Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 1(19): ( 10-16). Quine, W. (1960). Word and Object. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press (selections). WEEK 3: HISTORY: INFORMATION IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE Jan. 24 Greenwood, J. (1999). Understanding The Cognitive Revolution in Psychology, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 35(1): Morgan, A. (unpublished). On the Matter of Memory ( 2.2). OPTIONAL: Shannon, C. (1948). A Mathematical Theory of Communication, The Bell System Technical Journal, 27(7): WEEK 4: NATURALIZING INTENTIONALITY Jan. 31 Fodor, J. (1987). The Persistence of the Attitudes. In his Psychosemantics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Adams, F. & Aizawa, K. (1994). Fodorian Semantics. In Mental Representation: A Reader, edited by S. Stich and T. Warfield. Oxford: Blackwell (pp ). WEEK 5: NATURALIZING INTENTIONALITY Feb. 7 Dretske, F. (1986). Misrepresentation. In Belief: Form, Content, and Function, edited by R. Bogdan. Oxford: Clarendon (pp ). Kingsbury, J. (2006). A Proper Understanding of Millikan, Acta Analytica, 21(3): WEEK 6: INTERPRETIVISM Feb. 14 Dennett, D. (1991). Real Patterns, The Journal of Philosophy, 88(1): Egan, F. (2014). How to Think about Mental Content, Philosophical Studies, 170(1): "3

4 WEEK 7: REPRESENTATIONALISM & MINDEDNESS Feb. 21 Fodor, J. (1987). Why Paramecia Don t Have Mental Representations, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 10(1): Sterelny, K. (1995). Basic Minds, Philosophical Perspectives, 9: WEEK 8: REPRESENTATIONALISM AND ITS CRITICS Feb. 28 Grush, R. (2003). In Defense of Some Cartesian Assumptions Concerning the Brain and Its Operation, Biology and Philosophy, 18(1): Ramsey, W. (2007). Representation Reconsidered. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (selections). WEEK 9: STRUCTURAL REPRESENTATIONALISM Mar. 7 Isaac, A. (2013). Objective Similarity and Mental Representation, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 91(4): Morgan, A. (2014). Representations Gone Mental, Synthese, 191(2): Morgan, A. (unpublished). Mindless Accuracy. WEEK 10: Mar. 14 NO CLASS: SPRING BREAK WEEK 11: THE PERSONAL LEVEL Mar. 21 Dennett, D. (1969) Content and Consciousness. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul (pp.90-96). Hornsby, J. (2000). Personal and Sub-Personal: A Defence of Dennett s Early Distinction, Philosophical Explorations, 3(1): McDowell, J. (1994). The Content of Perceptual Experience, Philosophical Quarterly, 44(175): WEEK 12: THE PERSONAL LEVEL Mar. 28 Drayson, Z. (2012). The Uses and Abuses of the Personal/Subpersonal Distinction, Philosophical Perspectives, 26(1): Shea, N. (2013). Neural Mechanisms of Decision-Making and the Personal Level. In Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry, edited by K. Fulford et al. Oxford: Oxford University Press (pp ). "4

5 WEEK 13: OBJECTIVITY Apr. 4 Schmidt, E. (2015). Does Perceptual Content Have to be Objective? A Defence of Nonconceptualism, Journal for General Philosophy of Science, 46(1): Masrour, F. (2013). Phenomenal Objectivity and Phenomenal Intentionality. In Phenomenal Intentionality, edited by U. Kriegel. Oxford University Press (pp ). WEEK 14: ACTION, SPACE AND PERSPECTIVE Apr. 11 Matthen, M. (2014). Active Perception and the Representation of Space. In Perception and Its Modalities, edited by D. Stokes, M. Matthen, and S. Biggs. Oxford: Oxford University Press (pp ). Smith, J. (2014). Egocentric Space, International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 22(3): WEEK 15: NATURALIZING PERSPECTIVES Apr. 18 Morgan, A. (unpublished). Naturalizing Perspectives. Seth, A. (2014). A Predictive Processing Theory of Sensorimotor Contingencies: Explaining the Puzzle of Perceptual Presence and Its Absence in Synesthesia, Cognitive Neuroscience, 5(2): "5

Intentional Horizons

Mind Knowledge Communication Intentional Horizons The Mind from an Epistemic Point of View von Magdalena Balcerak Jackson 1. Auflage mentis 2009 Verlag C.H. Beck im Internet: www.beck.de ISBN 978 3 89785