Announcements

12/8
The final exam is on Wednesday Dec 17, starting at 8 am in Silver #405.
12/8
We've posted a complete review sheet for the final exam.
12/1
Your second graded papers are due Sunday Dec 14.
12/1
Tonight (Monday) we'll be showing The Prestige at 7 pm, in Silver 405.

There will be a short written assignment about the movie, due by Wednesday. We'll distribute and explain the assignment after showing the movie. If you won't be able to make the showing, you'll need to watch the movie on your own and make arrangements with your TA to get the assignment. This assignment won't be graded, but everyone must do it: it will be part of your participation grade for the class.

Course Description

This course is an introduction to the methods of contemporary philosophy, concentrating on the following questions:
  1. The Problem of Other Minds: How can we tell whether animals and future computers have minds, or whether they're instead just mindless automata? How can we tell that other people have minds?  
  2. Free Will: Is it already settled how the future is going to turn out? If so, does that mean you have no free will? Are your actions and decisions all part of the mechanical chain of causes and effects studied by physicists?  
  3. The Mind/Body Problem: What is the relation between your mind and your body? Are they made up of different stuffs? If a computer duplicates the neural structure of your brain, will it have the same thoughts and self-awareness that you have?  
  4. Life and Death: What does it mean to die? Why is death bad? Do you have an immortal soul which is able to survive the death of your body?
  5. Personal Identity: What makes you the person you are? Why would a clone of you have to be a different person than you are yourself? If we perfectly recorded all the neural patterns in your brain right now, could we use that recording to "bring you back" after a fatal accident?  

Testimonial

Details

The course meets on Mondays and Wednesdays, from 9:30-10:45, in Silver #405.

In addition, you will meet in 1 smaller discussion section each week. The section meetings will be:

Syllabus

Handouts and Lecture Notes

Contact Info

The course is taught by Prof. Jim Pryor. You can reach me as follows:
Email: jim.pryor@nyu.edu
Office: 5 Washington Place #403
Office hours: Wednesdays after class

Feel free to drop in for any reason any time during my office hours. (If I'm already speaking with someone, let me know that you're waiting.) I am happy to talk about paper ideas, continue class discussion, and so on. If these hours are inconvenient, we can arrange to meet by appointment. Or you can email me. I read my email several times each day and usually respond right away.

The teaching assistants for the course are Ang Tong, Eli Alshanetsky, and Dean Chapman
Ang has the Wednesday sections (online says different). You can reach him as follows:
Email: <ang@pobox.com>
Office: 5 Washington Place #313
Office hours: to be announced

Eli has the Thursday sections (online says different). You can reach him as follows:
Email: <ea779@nyu.edu>
Office: 5 Washington Place #315
Office hours: to be announced

Dean has the Friday sections. You can reach him as follows:
Email: <deanchapman@nyu.edu>
Office: 5 Washington Place #611
Office hours: to be announced