Time: MW 12pm-2pm
Room: Philosophy Seminar Room
Instructor: Rick Grush (rick@mind.ucsd.edu)
Office Hours: TBA
Office Phone: 2-4440
This webpage will be expanded as more details become clear.
Readings here. [1.94MB pdf file, password required]
Brief Description
The point of this proseminar is to help first year students, as far as possible given the time constraints, develop the skills necessary to have a successful graduate career. Skills to be emphasized will include: close critical reading of philosophical texts (with a priority on understanding first, criticism second); writing for expository, exegetical, and argumentative purposes; philosophical discussion, and discussion etiquette; preparing and delivering presentations; and reading others' papers for purposes of providing useful feedback. This is a lot to do in 10 weeks, which is one reason we will meet twice per week. The choice of content for the seminar is secondary, serving mainly as a vehicle for the attainment of the relevant philosophical skills. Nevertheless, the material is not unimportant, and has been selected because of its philosophical importance and clarity. The quarter will be devoted to the Transcendental Aesthetic section of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. In addition to stage-setting texts from Locke, Hume, the Leibniz-Clarke correspondence, some pre-critical works, and the Transcendental Aesthetic itself, we will read modern interpretive material by Strawson, Sellars, Allison, Guyer, and possibly others.
Though there will be some flexibility, to a first approximation, each week one of the two-hour sessions will be devoted to discussion of the material, and the second two-hour session will be a workshop-style session devoted to working on writing and eventually presentations.
Schedule:
Preliminary: Guyer, Introduction to The Cambridge Companion to Kant; Strawson, 'General Review' from The Bounds of Sense.
Week 1: Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book II, Chapters 13 & 14; Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature Book I, Part 2, Section 3.
Week 2: Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence
Week 3: Pre-critical work: Inaugural Dissertation; 'On the differentiation of directions in space'.
Week 4: Transcendental Aesthetic
Week 5: Strawson, Individuals: Chapter 1, 'Bodies'; Chapter Two, 'Sounds'.
Week 6: Strawson, Bounds of Sense: Part II, Section 1, 'Space and Time'
Week 7: Sellars, Science and Metaphysics: Chapter One, 'Sensibility and Understanding'
Week 8: Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism Chapter 5, The Sensible Conditions of Human Knowledge
Week 9: Guyer Kant and the claims of knowledge, Selections TBD
Week 10: Warren, 'Kant and the apriority of space'.
Texts and readings:
All the necessary readings will be made available as photocopies in the department. If you wish to have your own books, you ought to think about getting:
Kant, I. Critique of Pure Reason (Guyer and Wood translation recommended)
Allison, Henry. Kant's Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense.
Strawson, Peter. The Bounds of Sense.
Guyer, Paul. Kant and the Claims of Knowledge.
Alexander (ed.) The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence.
Sellars, Wilfrid. Science and Metaphysics.