Week 9 March 5-9
Monday, March 5
9:00 am, Group A essays due

Please use the prompt for Week 8.

Monday-Thursday Seminars: Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, through p. 138. This will be our reading for both this week and week 10.

Week 8, Feb. 26-March 2
Monday, Feb. 26
9:00 am, Group B essays due
Suggested topic for this essay:

These will be the last essays of the quarter (not counting rewrites),and we need help from one another in bringing our lengthy study of Kant to a satisfying end.  Close work on a few pages of CPR will be more helpful than anything else, as you’ve discovered from recent essays and writing workshops.  Here’s what I’d like you to do:

Find a few pages in CPR where Kant develops his critique in a significant way, pages that you know to be important and that you’d like to understand better.  The “Analytic of Principles” (A131/B170-A293/B349, pp. 267-383) is particularly rich, complex and challenging: it includes his discussion of “schematism,” the “Axioms of intuition” and “Anticipations of perception,” the “Analogies of experience,” the “Refutation of Idealism,” “Phenomena and Noumena” and more.

Aim at mastery of the pages you choose, at knowing front to back what Kant is saying in these pages.  Identify key concepts, arguments and conclusions.  Then show how these pages fit into the larger picture, the role they play in Kant’s overall project.  Kant often offers direct help with this, particularly when comparing his own position to his predecessors'.  Finally, identify any questions you’re left with.

Please go at this as straightforward, expository, interpretive writing.  Set aside more playful approaches.

Monday-Thursday Seminars: continue Kant with pp. 409-415, 445-458, which concludes "On the paralogisms of pure reason," then go on to pp. 459-507 and "The antinomy of pure reason."

Friday, March 2
Post your answers to each of the study questions on Kant, which were circulated on Monday. I have set up discussion sites in Web-x (Mind and the World>Winter quarter>Study Questions on Kant>individual sites for each question). Treat these as short essay answers, post a few thoughtful, concise sentences in response to each question.

Week 7, Feb. 19-23
Monday, Feb. 19

No class, President's Day

Tuesday, Feb. 20
9:00 am, Group A essays due.
Suggested topic for this essay: (This is the same topic Group B wrote on last week. Give both sides of the argument, and use the distinction between "matters of fact" as facts about natural objects and as something about things-in-themselves. Stephen points out that pp. 115-16 prove helpful.)

Remember this?

Realism thesis (thick, vague):  There are matters of fact in the world, which in some sense are independent of our ideas and judgments: (1) our ideas and judgments are (often) about these matters of fact; (2) and these matters of fact serve (often) to make our ideas and judgments correct or incorrect.

Let’s suppose that an adequate Philosophy of Mind must preserve the Realism Thesis.

Present a case that Kant does meet this standard, that he does preserve the Realism Thesis.

Present an alternative case that he fails to meet this standard, that he does not preserve the Realism Thesis.

You can offer individual statements (e.g. for the "prosecution" and for the "defense"), a dialogue (Kant as witness and under cross examination), a series of Q &As (as in a deposition) …  Your mission, should you choose to accept it: provide your readers with deeper insight into Kant’s CPR and philosopy of mind.

Tuesday-Thursday Seminars: keep going with the "The Analytic of Principles," up through the First and Second Chapters, pp. 267-337. We will focus particularly on Kant's discussions of substance, cause, and the "Refutation of Idealism." Also, pp. 354-365 (added 2-19-07). Following this, please read pp. 384-408, Kant's introduction to the "Transcendental Dialectic." Next week we'll dig into the "Paralogisms" and "Antinomies."

Week 6, Feb. 12-16
Monday, Feb. 12
9:00 am, Group B essays due.
Suggested topic for this essay:

Remember this?

Realism thesis (thick, vague):  There are matters of fact in the world, which in some sense are independent of our ideas and judgments: (1) our ideas and judgments are (often) about these matters of fact; (2) and these matters of fact serve (often) to make our ideas and judgments correct or incorrect.

Let’s suppose that an adequate Philosophy of Mind must preserve the Realism Thesis.

Present a case that Kant does meet this standard, that he does preserve the Realism Thesis.

Present an alternative case that he fails to meet this standard, that he does not preserve the Realism Thesis.

You can offer individual statements (e.g. for the "prosecution" and for the "defense"), a dialogue (Kant as witness and under cross examination), a series of Q &As (as in a deposition) …  Your mission, should you choose to accept it: provide your readers with deeper insight into Kant’s CPR and philosopy of mind.

Monday-Thursday Seminars: go ahead with the "The Analytic of Principles," up through the First and Second Chapters, pp. 267-337. We will focus particularly on Kant's discussions of substance, cause, and the "Refutation of Idealism." Following this, please read pp. 384-408, Kant's introduction to the "Transcendental Dialectic."

Week 5, Feb. 5-9
Monday, Feb. 5
9:00 am, Group A essays due.
Suggested topic for this essay:

Recall that the truths of mathematics have been called to the witness stand repeatedly, from Meno on.  Hume finds that “…the sciences of Geometry, Algebra, and  Arithmetic…” offer only propositions that “… are discoverable by the mere operations of thought…” (EHU, § 4.1, p. 108).  (Would Socrates disagree?)  Considering Kant’s discussion in his “Introduction” to CPR, shall we say that Kant disagrees?  Are the truths of mathematics, in Kant’s view, ones we can justify by appeal to the “operations of thought” alone?

Your larger aim is to compare Kant’s and Hume’s view of Reason: what it is, how it works, the methods for using it well.  This is too much for a short essay, but use their contrasting views of mathematics as a case study.  Do not assume your reader knows much about either EHU or CPR.  Explain how Kant and Hume could disagree about something as fundamental as whether or not, in Kant’s language, the truths of mathematics are “analytic.”

For Monday-Thursday Seminars: reread everything up through p. 266. Having done that, get a start on the "The Analytic of Principles," whch is the Second Book of The Transcendental Analytic.

Week 4, Jan. 29-Feb. 2
Monday, Jan. 29
9:00 am, Group B essays due.
Suggested topic for this essay:

Concept Empiricism is the view that all of our concepts are derived from sense impressions.  Both Locke and Hume are concept empiricists.  Focus primarily on Hume and his account of how our whole array of viable concepts are derived from impressions, which give rise to simple ideas, which can be sorted, mixed, combined and so on.  From ideas, Hume moves to judgments, combinations of ideas, and divides these into relations of ideas and matters of fact. 

Discuss what Kant values and rejects in Hume’s concept empiricism.  Where do the critical differences, the fundamental disagreements, between them show up?  Where does Kant agree with Hume, particularly with Hume’s concept empiricism?

(Italics indicate that the term calls for clarification, that it shouldn’t be taken at face value.)

At 9:30 in Sem 2 E2107, Joe Tougas will discuss Kant's distinction between form and content, his defense of the possibility of synthetic apriori truths, and the relationship of this to Wittgenstein's Tractatus.

Reading and seminars this week: read up through p. 266 and "The Analytic of Concepts, First Book,The Analytic of Concepts." We are likely to be working on these sections beyond this week, but push ahead through this whole section as soon as possible.

Tuesday, Jan. 30
Both writing workshops this week, and from now on, will be held on Thursday (see the revised schedule). On Tuesday at 10:00 in E3107, I would like to meet with students for a conversation about spring quarter. If you'd like to join in, please let me know.

Monday-Thursday Seminars:
Seminars : we'll focus on "The Analytic of Concepts" throughout the week.

Week 3, Jan. 22-26
Monday, Jan. 22
9:00 am, Group A essays due. At 9:30 in Sem 2 E2107, Chuck will get us started on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Be fully prepared to begin discussion of Kant by this time. Read the introduction by Guyer and Wood (Cambridge edition) and Kant's introductions to both the first and second editions (everything through p. 152).

Tuesday - Thursday, Jan. 23-25
This week we will concentrate on Kant's prefaces and introductions to both the 1781 and 1787 editions and the first part of the "Doctrine of Elements," the "Transcendental Aesthetic."

If you have not, go ahead with the "Transcendental Aesthetic" is this order: pp. 155-162 (to B 46); 172-176; 162-171; 178-188; 188-192 (for Thursday).

Suggested topics for the essays due Monday, January 22:

1. Hume says in Section 2 of his Enquiry…, “… all this creative power of the mind amounts to no more than the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the materials afforded us by the senses and experience.”  (p. 97 of the Oxford edition).  How is it, then, that we find ourselves in a world of publicly familiar things (and people), and that these things fall into various publicly familiar kinds?  Give a persuasive exposition of Hume’s account and what you think is most problematic about it.
2. In Section 5, Part I, of his Enquiry…, Hume concludes, “All inferences from experience, therefore, are effects of custom, not of reasoning.”  He goes on to say, “Custom, then, is the great guide of human life.  It is that principle alone which renders our experience useful to us…”  (pp. 121-122 of the Oxford edition). Give your best account of his argument and explain its strengths and limitations.
3. In Section 5, Part II, Hume says “It follows, therefore, that the difference between fiction and belief lies in some sentiment or feeling…”  Again, Give your best account of his argument and explain its strengths and limitations.
   

Week 2, Jan. 15-19
Monday, Jan. 15

In preparation for our work on Kant, outline the first 19 pages of Guyer and Woods' introduction to the Critique, after reading pp. 20 - 23, "The Message of the Critique."

9:00 am, Group B essays due. Because of the campus holiday, post your essay on Web-x.

Suggested topics for the essays due Monday, January 16:

1. In the Second Meditation, Descartes reflects on his experience with a piece of wax.  Some fifty years later, Locke similarly reflects on his experience with snow balls and other small objects.  Both conclude that some of the qualities we usually attribute to things are real qualities of the objects and some are mere appearances.  How do their arguments compare?  Who's on the better track?  [Note to new students:  you might concentrate on Locke and offer a detailed exposition of his arguments, and this would be fine.  You also could dive into Descarte's Second Meditation and see what you come up with.  It’s quite accessible.]
   
   
2. Working with the text itself, to whom was Locke addressing An Essay Concerning Human Understanding?  Who might find the work “pleasant and useful,” as Locke hoped?   Again, you might compare Locke’s sense of audience with Descartes', or another philosopher you have read.
   
   
3. Work through Hume’s critique of a critical concept, distinction or argument in Locke’s philosophy of mind.  Assess the value of Hume’s critique.
    
   
4. Was Hume addressing the same audience as Locke?

Tuesday, Jan. 16
At 9:00 in Sem 2 E3107, the Tuesday writing group will meet.

At 12:30 in Sem 2 E2105 and E2107, seminar on Locke and Hume: be prepared with all of Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Undestanding and Hume's An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. We will continue with Hume's criticisms of Locke.

Thursday, Jan. 18
At 9:00 in Sem 2 E3105 and E3107, continuation of our discussion of Hume.

11:00 am, Sem 2 E3107, workshop on assessing the merits of secondary resources. Place TBA - further details to follow. [This has been postponed until Thursday of Week 4.]

At 12:30 in Sem 2 E3107, the Thursday writing group will meet.

Week 1, Jan. 8-12
Monday, Jan. 8
At 9:00 in Sem 2 E2107, we will have our first meeting of the quarter. We will organize into seminars, writing workshops, plan a potluck for later in the week, and Chuck will lecture on Locke and Hume.

At 12:30 in Sem 2 E2105 and E2107, first seminar on Locke: be prepared with all of Locke's Essay Concerning Human Undestanding.

Tuesday, Jan. 9
At 9:00 in Sem 2 E3107, the Tuesday writing group will meet and organize its work for the quarter. Half of those in this group (Group B) will have an essay due on Monday, Jan. 15.

At 12:30 in Sem 2 E2107 and E2109, second seminar on Locke: be prepared with all of Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Undestanding.

Thursday, Jan. 11
At 9:00 in Sem 2 E3105 and E3107, third seminar on Locke: be prepared with all of An Essay Concerning Human Undestanding and Hume's An Enquiry Conerning Human Understanding. We will begin to consider Hume's criticisms of Locke.

11:00 am, Sem 2 E3107, all program meeting

At 12:30 in Sem 2 E3107, the Thursday writing group will meet and organize its work for the quarter. Half of those in this group (Group B) will have an essay due on Monday, Jan. 15.