Percepts and Concepts,

Fall 2005

Instructors:

Michael Strevens strevensATnyu.edu

Ned Block ned.blockATnyu.edu

The ‘@’ has been replaced by ‘AT’ in these addresses to foil spam-bots

Wednesdays 4:30-6:30, Philosophy Seminar Room

Syllabus

Many of the links below require NYU library privileges. If you are logging in from an NYU campus account, you will have no difficulty. If you are logging in from off campus, first go to https://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu/login?url=http://www.jstor.org and put in your ID and password. Or else use a proxy account. If you have privileges at another university library, you can use the information given below to get to these items via your library web site.

September 7: Organizational Meeting

PHENOMENAL CONCEPTS

September 14 (NB)

Phenomenal Concepts, Physicalism and the Explanatory Gap

• Joe Levine, "Phenomenal Concepts and the Materialist Constraint" in T Alter and S Walter (eds) Phenomenal Concepts and Phenomenal Knowledge: New Essays on Consciousness and Physicalism, Oxford University Press, 2006
• Daniel Stoljar, “Physicalism and phenomenal concepts, Mind and Language, 2005

The first few sessions of the course will assume a background of recent debates about the metaphysics of mind, most importantly, Kripke’s and Chalmers’ arguments to the effect that the conceivability of zombies and disembodied minds shows that physicalism is false. Some of these ideas are explained in chapters 2,3 and 4 of Papineau’s book, which is linked to below. If you are unfamiliar with these debates, read that right away. Everyone should have read Kripke’s Naming and Necessity, Harvard University Press, 1980. An excerpt which pertains to the argument for dualism is reprinted in N. Block, O. Flanagan and G. Güzeldere, The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates (MIT Press, 1997). It would also be useful to be familiar with the first 3 chapters of David Chalmers’ The Conscious Mind, Oxford 1997. They are available on the web with a password which will be mentioned in class and can also be obtained by emailing Anupum Mehrotra (aqm4735@nyu.edu) if you are a student in the class.

• Chapter 2: "Supervenience and Explanation"
• Chapter 3: "Can Consciousness be Reductively Explained?"
• Chapter 4: "Naturalistic Dualism"

Another option would be to read the first three chapters of Joe Levine, Purple Haze, Oxford 2001

September 21 (NB)

Phenomenal Concepts and Recognitional Concepts

• Brian Loar, Phenomenal states, in Consciousness, ed Block, Flanagan, Güzeldere, MIT Press, 1997.
• Michael Tye, A theory of phenomenal concepts, Philosophy, 2003

September 28 (NB)

Quotational-Indexical Model of Phenomenal Concepts

• David Papineau, Thinking about Consciousness, Oxford University Press, 2002, Chapter 4
  The full text of this book is available at Oxford Scholarship On-Line, which can be accessed via the NYU Library system. One way to do it is to go to the ‘O’ section of the Bobst on-line databases, choose Oxford Scholarship On-Line, put in your web ID, and then choose Papineau’s book. The quicker and chancier way: This link should take you right there. If not, go here and choose Papineau’s book. If you are from another university, no doubt your library web site has Oxford Scholarship On-Line.
• David Papineau, “Phenomenal and Perceptual Concepts, in T Alter and S Walter (eds) Phenomenal Concepts and Phenomenal Knowledge: New Essays on Consciousness and Physicalism, Oxford University Press, 2006

Background reading for this class: Papineau, Thinking about Consciousness, Chapters 2 and 3. The material in these chapters has mostly been covered in previous classes, but if you aren’t sure you understand that material, it would be best to read Chapters 2 and 3.

October 5 (NB)

Phenomenal Concepts: Epistemology and Metaphysics

• David Chalmers, The Content and Epistemology of Phenomenal Belief, in Q. Smith and A. Jokic (eds), Consciousness: New Philosophical Perspectives (Oxford, 2003)
• David Chalmers, Phenomenal Concepts and the Explanatory Gap. In (T. Alter & S. Walter, eds) Phenomenal Concepts and Phenomenal Knowledge: New Essays on Consciousness and Physicalism. Oxford University Press, forthcoming.

CONCEPTS: HEARTLAND

Warning: the EZProxy links have a habit of going bad without warning. If they are not functioning, you will need to take the long route through the online library catalog (e.g. BobCat at NYU).

Click here for BACKGROUND READING FOR THIS SECTION OF THE COURSE

October 12 (MS)

Empiricism

· Prinz, J. J., Furnishing the Mind: Concepts and Their Perceptual Basis, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2002, chapters 5 and 6 (pp. 103–164), except 111–121, i.e. everything except §5.22, 5.23 (For those who do not have an NYU account, this book is available on-line via Cognet (here is the NYU link) which you should be able to get from your university library.) Warning: you have to read this on the screen

October 19 (MS)

Causalism and Essentialism 

· Gelman, S. A., J. Coley, and G. Gottfried, Essentialist beliefs in children: The acquisition of concepts and theories, in L. Hirschfeld and S. A. Gelman (eds.), Mapping the Mind, pp. 341–365, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994 

· Strevens, M., The essentialist aspect of naive theories, Cognition 74:149–175, 2000 

October 26 (MS)

Fodor and Millikan

· Fodor, J. A., Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong, Chapter 7 (on natural kind concepts), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998  The full text of this book is available at Oxford Scholarship On-Line. Go to the ‘O’ section of the Bobst on-line databases, choose Oxford Scholarship On-Line, put in your web ID, and then choose Fodor’s book

· Millikan, R. G., A common structure for concepts of individuals, stuffs, and real kinds: More Mama, more milk, and more mouse, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 21:55–65, 1998 

November 2 (MS)

Artifact Concepts 

· Malt, B. C. and E. C. Johnson, Do artifact concepts have cores?, Journal of Memory and Language 31:195–217, 1992 

· Bloom, P., Intention, history, and artifact concepts, Cognition 60:1–29, 1996

CONCEPTS: BORDERLAND

November 9 (NB)

Non-conceptual Content

• Alex Byrne, "Perception and Conceptual Content" in Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, eds. E. Sosa and M. Steup (Blackwell, 2005)
• Michael Tye Nonconceptual Content, Richness, and Fineness of Grain, Perceptual Experience, T. Gendler and J. Hawthorne (eds), Oxford University Press, 2005.

November 16 (NB)

More Non-conceptual Content

• Byrne and Tye papers from last week plus Michael Tye, “On the Nonconceptual Content of Experience” in Reicher, M.E. and Marek, J.C. (Eds) Experience and Analysis, 2005

November 30 (MS)

Dretske 

· Dretske, F., Knowledge and the Flow of Information, Blackwell, Oxford, 1981, first half of chapter 6 (pp. 135–153). In Y.H. Gunther (ed) Essays on Non-Conceptual Content, MIT (2003) which is available on Cognet.

· Martin, M., Perception, concepts, and memory, Philosophical Review 101:745–764, 1992. In Y.H. Gunther (ed) Essays on Non-Conceptual Content, MIT (2003) which is available on Cognet.

December 7 (MS)

Peacocke 

· Peacocke, C., A Study of Concepts, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1992, chapter 3 The whole book is available from Cognet. In addition, Chapter 3 is in Y.H. Gunther (ed) Essays on Non-Conceptual Content, MIT (2003) which is available on Cognet.

· Peacocke, C., Nonconceptual content: Kinds, rationales, and relations, Mind and Language 9:419–429, 1994. In Y.H. Gunther (ed) Essays on Non-Conceptual Content, MIT (2003) which is available on Cognet.

December 14 (NB &MS)

Dretskean Account of Non-Conceptual Content

• Murat Aydede & Güven Güzeldere, Cognitive architecture, concepts, and introspection: An information-theoretic solution to the problem of phenomenal consciousness

Requirements for course 2 10 page papers, due October 26th and December 14^th