Untitled Document

Syllabus

Date	Topics		Readings orange = main reading
Tuesday, August 25	What does it mean to say that experiences have contents, and do they? Some more thoughts about the idea that perceptions have contents		Byrne, "Experience and content" Johnston, "Better than mere knowledge? The function of sensory awareness" Crane, "Is perception a propositional attitude?" Brewer, "Perception and content" Brewer, "How to account for illusion" Travis, "The silence of the senses" Alston, "Perception and representation" Siegel, "Do visual experiences have contents?" Pautz, "What are the contents of experiences?," §§I-II
Tuesday, September 1	Arguments for intentionalism Intentionalism and phenomenal continua		Byrne, "Intentionalism defended" Harman, "The intrinsic quality of experience" Tye, "Representationalism and the transparency of experience" Speaks, "Transparency, intentionalism, and the nature of perceptual content" (sec. 1) Pautz, "The interdependence of phenomenology and intentionality" Pautz, "How visual experience reaches to the world"
	Varieties of intentionalism		none
	Counterexamples to local intentionalism		Tye, "Blurry images, double vision, and other oddities"
Tuesday, September 8	Global intentionalism and bodily sensations		Tye, "Orgasms Again" Block, "Mental paint" Bain, "Intentionalism and pain"
	Intentionalism and the "other" senses		O'Callaghan, "Auditory perception" Batty, "A representational account of olfactory experience" Batty, "Scents and sensibilia"
	Attention shifts and intentionalism More thoughts about attention		Nickel, "Against intentionalism" Speaks, "Attention and intentionalism" Macpherson, "Ambiguous figures and the content of experience"
Tuesday, September 15	A link between global and intermodal intentionalisms		none
	Intermodal vs. intramodal intentionalism More on cross-modal binding and singular propositions		John, "Representationalism, phenomenism, and the intuitive view", §4 Tye, "The problem of common sensibles" O'Callaghan, "Seeing what you hear: cross-modal illusions and perception" Nudds, "The significance of the senses"
	Interpersonal comparisons of phenomenal character		Stalnaker, "Comparing qualia across persons"
	Spectrum inversion & intentionalism		Byrne, "Inverted qualia" Marcus, "Intentionalism and the imaginability of the inverted spectrum"
Tuesday, September 22	Inverted earth		Block, "Inverted earth" Block, "Is experiencing just representing?" Tye, "Swampman meets inverted earth" Macpherson, "Colour inversion problems for representationalism"
	An argument for the impossibility of spectrum inversion without difference in representation		Speaks, "Spectrum inversion without misrepresentation is impossible"
Tuesday, September 29	Introduction to the metaphysics of color Contrast effects in vision	Dispositionalism	Boghossian & Velleman, "Colour as a secondary quality" Johnston, "How to speak of the colors" Johnston, "A mind-body problem at the surface of objects Johnston, "Is the external world invisible?" Cohen, "Color: A Functionalist Proposal" Cohen, "Color properties and color ascriptions: a relationalist manifesto"
		Reductive physicalism	Byrne & Hilbert, "Colors and reflectances" Byrne & Hilbert, "Color realism and color science" (with critical commentaries and replies by the authors) Hardin, "A spectral reflectance doth not a color make" Pautz, "Can the physicalist explain colour structure in terms of colour experience?" Kuehni & Hardin, "Churchland's metamers"
Tuesday, October 6		Primitivist realism	Campbell, "A simple view of colour" Byrne & Hilbert, "Color primitivism" Watkins, "A posteriori primitivism"
		Eliminativism	Hardin, Color for Philosophers (excerpt) Pautz, "Color eliminativism"
Tuesday, October 13	Intentionalism, spectrum shifts, and the puzzle of true blue		Block, "Sexism, racism, ageism and the structure of consciousness" Tye, "The puzzle of true blue" Cohen, Hardin, & McLaughlin, "True colours" Tye, "The truth about true blue" Byrne & Hilbert, "Truest blue" Tye, "True blue redux"
	Appearance properties		Shoemaker, "Phenomenal character" Shoemaker, "On the ways things appear" Egan, "Appearance properties?"
	Color constancy		Hilbert, "Color constancy and the complexity of color" Kalderon, "Metamerism, constancy, and knowing which" Cohen, "Colour constancy as counterfactual"
fall break
Tuesday, October 27	Chris Tucker presentation		Tucker, "Why open-minded people should endorse dogmatism"
	Fregeanism about perceptual content		Chalmers, "The representational character of experience" Chalmers, "Perception and the fall from Eden" Thompson, "Senses for senses" Thompson, "Colour constancy and Russellian representationalism"
	From transparency to Russellianism		Speaks, "Transparency, intentionalism, and the nature of perceptual content"
Tuesday, November 3	The scope of perceptual content I: external particulars		Johnston, "The obscure object of hallucination" Schroeder & Caplan, "On the content of experience" Siegel, "How does visual phenomenology constrain object-seeing?" Tye, "The admissible contents of visual experience"
Tuesday, November 10	Ron Belgau presentation
	Three problems for Millian-Russellian views of content	The problem of self-representation	Peacocke, A Study of Concepts (excerpt) Siegel, "Subject and object in the contents of visual experience"
		The problem of the unity of the proposition The problem of propositions, pt. 2 A note on impossible worlds semantics	Russell, Principles of Mathematics (excerpt) Frege, "On concept and object" Soames, "Propositions" Soames, "Why propositions cannot be sets of truth-supporting circumstances" Speaks, "Facts, properties, and the unity of the proposition"
Tuesday, November 17		Existentialism & Plantinga's argument More on existentialism	Plantinga, "On existentialism" Fine, "First-order modal theories" Adams, "Actualism and thisness" Bennett "Two axes of actualism" Speaks, "On possibly nonexistent propositions"
Tuesday, November 24	The scope of perceptual content II: properties		Siegel, "Which properties are represented in perception?" & "Misperception" Siegel, "How can we discover the contents of experience?" Siegel, "The visual experience of causation" Bayne, "Perception and the reach of phenomenal content" Price, "Aspect-switching and visual phenomenal character" Pautz, "What are the contents of experiences?,"§III Byrne, "Experience and content" §VII
	Biconditional intentionalisms and phenomenal content		Horgan & Tienson, "The intentionality of phenomenology and the phenomenology of intentionality" Loar, "Phenomenal intentionality as the basis of mental content" Kriegel & Horgan, "The phenomenal intentionality research program" Kriegel, "Phenomenal content" Chalmers, "The representational character of experience"
Tuesday, December 1	Class replaced by workshop on two-dimensionalist semantics	Background to two-dimensionalist semantics: the distinction between character and content and its applications	Kaplan, "Demonstratives" Davies & Humberstone, "Two notions of necessity" Evans, "Reference and contingency" Stalnaker, "Assertion"
		Contextual two-dimensionalism	Chalmers, The Conscious Mind (selection) Byrne, "Cosmic hermeneutics" Chalmers, "Components of content" (1995 version) Soames, "Ambitious two-dimensionalism" Dever, "Low-grade two dimensionalism" Soames, "The substance and significance of disputes about two-dimensionalism" Stalnaker, "On considering a possible world as actual"
		Epistemic two-dimensionalism	Chalmers, "On sense and intension" Byrne & Pryor, "Bad intensions" Chalmers, "Epistemic two dimensional semantics" Chalmers, "The foundations of two dimensional semantics" Chalmers, "Scott Soames' two dimensionalism" Soames, "Reply to critics" Soames, "Actually" Chalmers, "Response to Soames" Schroeter, "Considering empty worlds as actual" Speaks, "Epistemic two-dimensionalism and the epistemic argument" Chalmers, "The nature of epistemic space" Chalmers, "Propositions and attitudes: a Fregean account"
Tuesday, December 8	Conflicts between internalism about phenomenal character, externalism about content, and intentionalism		Egan & John, "A puzzle about perception" Byrne & Tye, "Qualia ain't in the head"
	Nonconceptual content		Evans, Varieties of Reference (excerpt) McDowell, Mind & World (excerpt) Kelly, "Demonstratives and nonconceptual content" Martin, "Perception, concepts, and memory" Peacocke, "Does perception have a nonconceptual content?" Speaks, "Is there a problem about nonconceptual content?" Roskies, "A new argument for nonconceptual content" Peacocke, "Phenomenology and nonconceptual content" Crane, "The waterfall illusion" Tye, "Content, richness, and fineness of grain" Tye, "The nature of nonconceptual content" Stalnaker, "What might nonconceptual content be?" Heck, "Are there different kinds of content?"