Fall Quarter 2001. UCSD.
Time: M 2:30 - 5:20
Room: HSS 7077
Instructor: Rick Grush (rick@mind.ucsd.edu)
Office Hours: W 2:30 - 3:30
Office Phone: 822-4440
[ Schedule
]
[ Requirements and Grading ]
[ Email list ]
Short Description:
Texts: The required texts are Strawson's Individuals and The Bounds of Sense. Other readings (for weeks 9 and 10) will be made available either as photocopies in the department library, or electronically on this website.
Structure. We will meet once per week to discuss the scheduled readings. In addition to the weekly meetings, an email discussion list for the seminar will be maintained, and it is expected that a certain amount of continuing discussion will occur through this medium. Students are expected to participate in discussion (both verbal during seminar and via email on the discussion list), to do seminar presentations, and to write either three short papers or one long paper.
It will be noted that the total amount of reading for the seminar is significantly less than is typically required for a graduate seminar. This is on purpose. The goal will not be to read a lot of material in order to gain a superficial understanding of a broad area, but to carefully read and re-read a small amount of very good material, to discuss it in detail, and attempt to come to a very thorough and complete understanding of the ideas invovled. Strawson's work is not only worth going through carefully for its own sake, it is also commands significant continuing influence in a number of areas, and so having a solid grasp of the main lines of his program will prepare one well to approach a wide range of philosophical material more effectively and confidently. As a final note, I expect everyone to have read all of the readings for weeks sesions 1-8 by the end of September -- a total of less than 300 pages. And also the remaining readings listed on sessions 9 and 10 should be read through by October 8. Having read all of the material by the end of the second week will help us as we go through everything more slowly, and it will also help you to get your bearings as far as paper topics go at a reasonably early date. The schedule below is when we will re-read, and discuss in greater detail, specific sections of the reading.
Content. We will read two books by Strawson, Individuals and The Bounds of Sense. And we will read only roughly the first half of each book (the second half of Individuals is concerned with a detailed analysis of subject/predicate structure which would be of most interest to hard-core language-oriented analytic philosophers, and the second half of Bounds of Sense is concerned with Kant's Dialectic, and has less connection to Strawson's own positive metaphysics, or his reading of Kant's positive metaphysics). The final two weeks we will leave Strawson and follow the topic of self-identification/self-knowledge (one of Strawson's concerns in both Individuals and BoS) through other authors who are responding to or are continuing Strawsonian lines. These four additional reading will be availble in the department library in hard copy, and will also be available here electronically -- links to e-versions are below on the schedule. They are password protected for copyright reasons. If you are or are planning to attend the seminar, email me and I will give you the password.
Schedule:
[Remarks relevant to students writing short papers are in blue, remarks relevant to students writing one long paper are in red.]
Session 01 (09.24.01):
Individuals, Ch 01.
Session 02 (10.01.01):
Individuals Ch 01.
Session 03 (10.08.01):
Individuals Ch 02.
Session 04 (10.15.01):
Proposal for first short paper due.
Individuals ch 03.
Session 05 (10.22.01):
First short paper due.
BoS: pp 15-69
Session 06 (10.29.01):
BoS: pp. 72-117
Session 07 (11.05.01):
Proposal for second short paper due.
Proposals for long papers due.
BoS: pp. 118-152
Session 08 (11.19.01):
Second short paper due.
BoS: pp. 155-174
Session 09 (11.26.01):
Drafts of long papers given to me by today will be returned with comments by 11.28.01.
Shoemaker (1968) Self-reference and self-awareness. [hard copy in dept library]
Anscombe (1975) The first person. [hard copy in dept library]
Session 10 (12.03.01):
Proposal for third short paper due.
Evans (1980). Self-identification. (excerpts) [hard copy in dept library]
McDowell (1995) Refering to oneself. [hard copy in dept library]
December 7: Long paper due. Third short paper due.
Requirements:
There are 4 requirements for this course. I will go through each in more detail below.
1. Read all the assignments. (As stated above, I expect all of the readings listed under Sessions 1-8 to have been read through by the end of September, and the rest to have been read through by October 8. The chapters and sections listed under each session indicate when we as a class will focus on the indicated material. You should expect to read everything for this course multiple times. Not burdensome, since the total page count for the quarter is less than 350 pages, and Strawson is a very clear, easy to read writer.)
2. Participate in discussion, both verbal (in seminar) and written (email list).
3. Present material to the class -- either a normal seminar presentation on part of the material, or something related (more on this below).
4. Write either three short papers, or one long paper, along with proposal(s), according to the above schedule.
Final grades will be based on two components: participation and papers, each counting for about half. Participation has three components: seminar presentations, oral discussion during seminar and email discussion via th email discussion list. The papers are either three short papers, or one long paper, together with the associated proposal(s).
Readings:
I have purposefully kept the total amount of reading for this seminar low so that we can devote time to going through the material very carefully. I expect all of the Strawson (Individuals chapters 1-3, and Bounds of Sense pages 1 - 174), to be read by September 30th, and the readings listed under Sessions 9 and 10 should be read by October 7. This way, as we go through the chapters and sections more carefully over the quarter, you will already have a decent idea of what the main issues and lines of argument are. We will then devote each seminar session to carefully re-reading the material more slowly and carefully as per the schedule above.
Participation:
There are three aspects to participation: seminar presentation (which I will discuss below) discussion in seminar and contributions to the email list. Verbal seminar discussion requires little comment. The email list, though, calls for comment. The idea of the list is to provide a forum for continuing discussion outside of seminar hours. This has a number of benefits. First, the hurly burly of seminar discussion doesn't always allow for one to express ones thoughts or questions as well as one could, or to follow up on some questions or thoughts to the extent that one might like (I find that I often think of good questions or good answers hours after the seminar is over). And the medium of email allows you to work your thoughts out more adequately than during on-the-fly discussion. Second, it will allow you to get ideas and feedback that will likely form part or even most of your paper(s). [As a historical note, when I have run email lists with seminars in the past, it has invariably been the case that the best seminar papers grew directly out of exchanges that were developed on the email list, since these papers had the benefit of feedback and guided sharpening.]
Participation in the email discussion is a requirement (i.e. it will be a significant consideration when I determine final grades). You should plan on contributing at least a page per week. Contributions can be questions on the readings, or about someone else's verbal or email comment, trying out an argument that you plan to use in a paper, responding to someone else's comment or argument or objection, etc.
Papers:
Students can either write one large (17-25 page) end-of-term seminar paper, or can write three smaller (6-9 page) papers throughout the class. Deadlines for short and long papers are listed on the schedule. (If you are doing a long paper, you should start working in earnest on your long paper by the very beginning of November.) The deadlines are not recommendations, but are deadlines. And this goes for both the papers and the proposals. And for the record, the specific time at which things are due on a given date is noon. Not 12:01, but noon. Turning in anything late will have a significant negative impact on the grade it receives. And I will not be granting any incompletes, so don't even ask. [Of course, in the case of serious medical situations and the like -- which are fairly rare -- late work or even an incomplete can be acceptable. Though even in these cases I will be asking you to provide me with whatever notes and drafts you have so far.]
Proposals: For the short papers, the proposal is a couple of paragraphs explaining what you want to write on, preferrable given to me via email. The purpose of this is to save you from any unworkable paper projects, and to give me an opportunity to make suggestions that might be of help. These are due a week before the short paper is due. Students are also encouraged to turn them in earlier if possible, and also to see me in office hours either before or after giving me the proposal to talk with me about it in person, but this is not required.
For the long paper, the proposal should be about one and a half or two pages in length, and will go into some nontrivial detail about the thesis and structure of the proposed paper. I also strongly encourage students to see me in office hours either before or after (or both) turning in the proposal to discuss the paper in person. Also, as indicated on the schedule, I am happy to look at drafts of long papers in order to provide feedback and comments. I highly recommend giving me a draft. There is a strong correlation between the amount of feedback an author takes advanatge of the the quality of the final product
Seminar presentations:
About half of the time for the seminar will be a lecture/discussion on the material listed on the schedule for that week. The other half will be devoted to student presentations. The topics of the presentations are flexible. You might choose to go through some part of the text carefully, highlighting an argument and potential objections to it; you might show how something in the readings relates to some work or topic that we have not directly discussed; you might even present all or part of a paper (short or long) on which you are working for the class in order to get feedback. If you have an idea for what you'd like to do, just run the idea by me if you're not sure.
Grades:
When it comes time to assign final grades, I will take the following into consideration:
1. Readings. While I am not requiring summaries of the readings, I do expect all the readings to be done in accordance with the above. In verbal and email discussion and in papers it is often possible to get a sense for how much effort one has put into understanding the readings. This will be a factor.
2. Participation. While I will not keep records of how much everyone talks during seminar, there is a verbal participation component that I will take into consideration. But it is not a major factor. Provided you are not completely silent all quarter this aspect should be fine. More important to my mind is participation in the email discussion. I will be looking for evidence in your contributions that you are thinking about the material and the comments and arguments of the other participants. While I am uncomforable setting quotas, I think it would be fair to say that I will interpret anything less than about a page per week as sub-par. [As a matter of historical record, when I have run email discussion lists as parts of seminars at previous universities, it was not at all uncommon to have some students spontaneouly produce 5 or more pages per week of discussion and comments. But I don't expect this much from everybody.]
3. Papers. This is a major determinant of the final grade. For short appers I am looking for a philosophically responsible treatment of some argument or topic. There need not be an original thesis, and they can be mostly critical rather than positive, and even a paper that is mostly exegetical can be perfectly acceptable. Whatever the form of the paper, I do want to see evidence that genuine thought and care went into understanding the issue under discussion. For long papers, pure exegesis is out. Papers can be critical or have a positive thesis, but in either case there should be a clear statement of the issues, a clear argumentative structure showing how sub-arguments (if there are more than one) are put together, and fair articulations of and responses to any obvious objections, etc. I do realize that the quarter system places constraints on what can be achieved in a seminar paper, and so I am not expecting polished works of genius. On the other hand, if a student starts his/her paper early enough (around week 6) and takes advantage of opportunities to get feedback, very good papers are entirely doable.
There is an email distribution list for this course -- phil270@mind.ucsd.edu -- and subscribing to it is required. The two purposes of the list are i) to allow me to distribute information regarding changes of schedule, etc., and ii) to provide a means for students to ask questions and continue discussion outside of class time. The list is set up so that all and only people subscribed can post to the list.
To subscribe: send an email FROM THE ACCOUNT THAT YOU WANT TO BE SUBSCRIBED to sub-phil270@mind.ucsd.edu. The subject line and the body of the email can be blank. They will be ignored by the software that subscribes you.
To post: send the message you wish to post to phil270@mind.ucsd.edu.
To unsubscribe: send an email FROM THE ACCOUNT THAT YOU WANT TO BE UNSUBSCRIBED to unsub-phil270@mind.ucsd.edu. The subject line and the body of the email can be blank. They will be ignored by the software that unsubscribes you.