Research Seminar on Mind and Language: Content

RESEARCH SEMINAR ON
LANGUAGE AND MIND
Offered Spring 2001

The Explanatory Role of Content

The research seminar on Language and Mind will be conducted for the Spring of 2001 by Hartry Field and Stephen Schiffer. It will meet in the Philosophy Department on Tuesdays from 4:00 to 7:00 PM. Papers for discussion will be available one week in advance and will be distributed at the preceding seminar. They can also be picked up at the Department of Philosophy, Main Building Room 503, 100 Washington Square East. Many of the papers will also be available on this web page by clicking on the title of the paper.

Students may take this seminar for credit. For information on course requirements and meeting times, please see the Spring 2001 Graduate Course Announcement.

Schedule of Visitors:

January 16, 2001:	Stephen Schiffer NYU "An Introduction to Content and Its Role in Explanation" This is an overview of the issues to be discussed in the course; "Remarks on Content and Its Role in Explanation" by Hartry Field.
January 23, 2001:	Allan Gibbard University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Note: Professor Gibbard's session has been canceled. It will be rescheduled for May 1st. "Horwich on Meaning" [PDF]; Chapter three of Paul Horwich's Meaning is recommended.
January 30, 2001:	Martin Davies Australian National University "Mental Simulation, Tacit Theory, and the Threat of Collapse" [PDF] by Martin Davies and Tony Stone; "The Mental Simulation Debate" by Martin Davies (1994) and Jane Heal's commentary on that paper (1994) are recommended.
February 6, 2001:	Christopher Peacocke NYU "Does Perception have a Nonconceptual Content?" [PDF] (requires password); Suggested background reading includes: Evans, Varieties of Reference; McDowell, Mind and World Lecture III and Afterword II; the McDowell-Peacocke exchange in Philosophy and Phenomenological Affairs, 1998; and chapter three of Peacocke, A Study of Concepts.
February 13, 2001:	Paul Horwich CUNY Graduate Center "The Use Theory of Meaning"; Chapter three of Meaning is recommended.
February 20, 2001:	Hartry Field NYU A recent postscript to the 1978 article "Mental Representation" [PDF]; The 1994 article "Deflationist Views of Meaning and Content", with an expanded Section 2 (and a few other small changes) [PDF]; An excerpt from a recent postscript to that article [PDF]; "Attributions of Meaning and Content" [PDF]. The material most central to the topics of the seminar is the postscript to "Mental Representation", the early sections of "Deflationist Views", and Section 7 of the postscript to "Deflationist Views".
February 27, 2001:	Karen Neander Johns Hopkins University "The Narrow and the Normative" [PDF].
March 6, 2001:	Robert Stalnaker MIT "On Considering a Possible World as Actual" [PDF].
March 20, 2001:	Simon Blackburn UNC Chapel Hill "Pragmatism, Minimalism, and the Space of Reasons" [PDF].
March 27, 2001:	Timothy Williamson The University of Edinburgh "Primeness", Chapter Three of Knowledge and its Limits.
April 3, 2001:	Crispin Wright The University of St. Andrews "What Could Anti-Realism About Ordinary Psychology Possibly Be?" [PDF].
April 10, 2001:	Louise Antony The Ohio State University "Equal Rights for Swampersons" [PDF]; "What Are You Thinking? Character and Content in the Language of Thought" [PDF].
April 17, 2001:	Dorothy Edgington Oxford University "The Content of Counterfactuals and their Role in Explanation or The Benefit of Hindsight" [PDF].
April 24, 2001:	Mark Crimmins Stanford University "Are Propositions Fictional?" [PDF].
May 1st, 2001:	Allan Gibbard University of Michigan, Ann Arbor "Explaining with Mental Content: Prospects for Content Expressivism" [PDF].

updated 1/12/01
philo.web@nyu.edu