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Course: |
Phil 488/594 |
Title: |
Seminar on Intuitions in Philosophy |
Term and Year: |
Winter 2012 |
Time and Place: |
Mondays 18.00 -- 20.50; ETLC 008 |
The notion of an intuition intersects with several areas in philosophy. This seminar is intended as a way to investigate what intuitions are, how they differ from other forms of information-gathering, the extent to which they are reliable (and if so, in which areas), how they are used in philosophy (and other areas of inquiry), and whether they should be used in these areas.
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Course: |
Phil 428/522 |
Title: |
Logic and Language
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Term and Year: |
Winter 2009 |
Time and Place: |
Wednesdays, 1400 - 1650
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The thrust of the course concerns the role of logic in language, as well as in some of the alternatives to classical first-order logic. We will look at some alternative logical systems (e.g., many-valued logics and possibly modal logics) as well as non-standard methods of representation in first-order logic. One topic we will look at in detail is vagueness.
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Course: |
Phil 428/526 |
Title: |
Logic and Language / Philosophy of Language |
Term and Year: |
Fall 2011 |
Time and Place: |
Tuesdays, 1800 - 2050 |
This course is the updated version of the Phil 428/522 course (above). As before, the thrust of the course concerns the role of logic in the representation of language, as well as in some of the alternatives to classical propositional and first-order logic. We will look at some alternative logical systems (e.g., many-valued logics and possibly modal logics) as well as non-standard methods of representation in first-order logic (such as supervaluations). Topics to be investigated are vagueness, implication, knowledge and belief, and ``contradictions in the world".
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Course: |
Phil 426/526 |
Title: |
Philosophy of Language |
Term and Year: |
Winter 2010 / Fall 2010 |
Time and Place: |
Tue/Thur 0930 - 1050 |
Language plays a central role in human life: much that we do depends on it. We would like to know how it can perform these tasks. What is it that we know, when we know a language? What is communication? What is meaning? Can animals have a language, in the same way humans do? What are the essential properties of a language? What is the relationship between the language ability and languages?
The six general topics we will discuss are: Reference and Meaning, Speech and Action, Meaning and Truth, Knowledge of Language, Meanings and How they Combine, and Non-Literal Meaning.
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Course: |
Phil 448/547 |
Title: |
Topics in 20th Century Philosophy
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Term and Year: |
Fall 2012 |
Time and Place: |
Mondays, 1800 - 2050; CAB 357 |
A history of "middle-aged" analytic philosophy. This is the period after Wittgenstein's Tractatus up to the senility of analytic philosophy (mid-1960s). Some have even said analytic philosophy died at this time. We'll investigate why people have said that. Readings will include works by Russell, by some of the logical positivists, by some of the ordinary-language philosophers, and by some critics of ordinary-language philosophy. The course will focus on the philosophy of language, the metaphysics, the epistemology, of the movements, and the meta-philosophical topics of what is the purpose of philosophy and how should it be pursued.
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Course: |
Phil 526 |
Title: |
Philosophy of Language [Generics and Mass Terms] |
Term and Year: |
Winter 2011 |
Time and Place: |
Mondays, 1400 - 1650 ; Ed 128 |
This is an in-depth study of two related topics in the philosophy of language: generics and mass terms. There are a number of very puzzling semantic-pragmatic issues that have prevented researchers from giving an adequate description of the semantics for these topics. These issues range from the philosophical (what sort of entities should we admit into our ontology?) to the logical (how can we maintain the truth of a generic statement while simultaneously acknowledging exceptions? How can we reason about stuff as opposed to things?) to the psychological (how do people reason using prototypical information? What makes people think of things rather than the stuff of which they are made?).
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