Phil 440: Philosophy of Mind

Overview

Canvas Site, Zoom, and Regular Updates

There is no Canvas webpage for this course.

Zoom links for any course meetings you need to attend remotely, and for Professor Pryor’s office hours can be retrieved from this restricted page.

Course Description

This seminar will investigate a number of issues surrounding the notion of “belief.” We’ll explore the relation between belief and other attitudes like confidence, agnosticism, doubt, and trust. We’ll explore the relation between believing and attitudes sometimes called “accepting.” Some of the relevant literature focuses on when it’s rational to believe, but our main concern will be with the more descriptive question of when someone counts as believing. We’ll consider what “contextualist” views contribute to these questions, and also “pragmatic” views. We’ll consider debates about whether (and if so in what ways) belief can be voluntary. Finally, an overarching question will be whether philosophers’ (and psychologists’ and others’) talk of “belief” is always discussing a single thing.

Target Audience

This seminar is aimed at grads and undergrad majors in Philosophy.

As stated in the catalog listing, it’s recommended that you have taken Phil 340 (Philosophy of Mind) or its equivalent, and in any case at least two regular courses in philosophy (not counting formal courses like Logic). Familiarity with formal languages, for example from Phil 155 (Logic) will also be helpful but not required.

Students who aren’t philosophy grads should discuss their preparation with the instructor and need his permission to enroll.

I’ll expect that all students have prior experience writing philosophical papers, reading texts critically, analyzing and responding to philosophical arguments, and so on. This will be necessary in order to adequately understand and engage with the readings, and to participate effectively in our class discussions.

For Philosophy grads, this course counts towards the “Metaphysics and Epistemology” distribution requirement. See below for what’s required if you elect to take this course in “Reduced Writing” mode.

Instructor

The course is offered by Professor Jim Pryor (he/him). Undergrads generally address me as “Professor Pryor,” and grad students as “Jim.”

Professor Pryor can best be reached by email, at jimpryor@unc.edu.

Professor Pryor’s office hours are on Mon and Fri 12:15–1:15 pm. (If you have a quick question, you can also ask just after class.) We will either meet in Bynum 115 132 or elsewhere on campus. If you’re unable to meet in person or at these times, we can also arrange to meet by Zoom. The Zoom link for office hours can be found on this restricted page.

The Philosophy Department’s usual building, Caldwell Hall, will be under construction this year. Professor Pryor was using a temporary shared office but has now moved to a more stable office Bynum 132. This office may be tricky to locate: it can be found “inside” the room Bynum 133, which is where the mailboxes are.

Feel free to meet me during office hours to discuss anything you like about our course. I’m happy to talk about paper ideas, continue discussion, and so on. Since I may sometimes meet students elsewhere on campus than Bynum 132, it’s prudent to check ahead of time about where. If you find I’m already speaking with someone, please make sure that we know you’re waiting for us to finish.

Course Requirements and Expectations

The University advises you that a 3 credit course should be expected to demand 9–12 hours of work per week on average, including the time for classroom meetings. For our course, that means in a standard week (when no assignment is due) you should still expect to be devoting about 7 hours to this course outside of our in-class meetings. This includes reading (and re-reading, analyzing, and taking notes on) the assigned texts, reviewing any lecture notes or handouts, making use of my office hours, discussing the issues with other students, and so on. When you’re working on papers, you should expect to need more time.

It is essential that you attend the class meetings regularly. Material not in the readings will often be presented there, and useful background and framing for many of the readings will also be provided.

Students taking the class for credit will write two papers during the semester, one in the middle of term and one at the end. The first paper should be around 3000 words (roughly 8–10 pages). The second can be a new paper of the same size, or a substantial development and refinement of the first paper.

Philosophy grads who choose to take the seminar in “Reduced Writing” mode will be expected to prepare all of the readings, participate fully when we have group discussion. They won’t have to write papers.

Calendar

Meeting 1 / Wed Aug 20

Introduction

What this course is and isn’t about

Meeting 2 / Wed Aug 27

Contextualism, Pragmatic Encroachment, and Question-sensitivity

Read for this week: Schwitzgebel SEP on Belief (background overview; our topics this term will mostly concern his section 2; though some of his section 1 will sometimes be relevant, for example when we discuss “pseudobeliefs” and “acceptance”); SEP on Contextualism; Phil Compass on Pragmatic Encroachment. The Contextualism piece is long and lots of the details won’t matter for our discussion, so feel free to read it quickly. (If you find these last two readings challenging, see the “gentler reading” mentioned below.)

We’ll begin Meeting 2 by talking through the surveys of Contextualism and Pragmatic Encroachment, making sure we understand the basic mechanics of those views and exploring how those mechanics might also be used in analyses of belief. Have a look at these notes summarizing what these views say and how they relate to each other. (This includes a link to an article that gives a gentler introduction than the survey pieces do, in case you’d find that helpful.)

The preceding is what I’ll expect everyone to read before Meeting 2.

In the Meeting, I’ll also be introducing setup for the view Yalcin proposes in “Belief as Question-Sensitive,” and explaining main components of Yalcin’s proposal. I encouraged you to have a look at that article, but I expect it may be more demanding than the survey pieces on Contextualism and Encroachment.

We’ll decide when we meet whether to continue with these issues into Meeting 3, or use meeting 3 to start our discussion of Belief and Credence (giving that topic two weeks, rather than just one).

Meeting 3 / Wed Sept 3

Belief and Credence week1

Here is some introductory reading to credences if they are a notion you’re not already comfortable with: Titelbaum Ch 1. That reading does not spell out the formal specifics of credences, and I expect we won’t need to do so for this course.

Armed with that background, or with your pre-existing familiarity with credences, here are three readings about what is the relation between credence and belief. I am reviewing the readings and will update this page soon to designate some of these readings as “Assigned for our course” and the others as merely “Optional.” But all of them are worthwhile, so if you want to get started reading before I’ve made that decision, by all means go ahead:

• Elizabeth Jackson, “The Relationship between Belief and Credence” (Phil Compass)
• Foley, “Beliefs, Degrees of Belief, and the Lockean Thesis”
• Clarke and Staffel, “Are Credences Different from Beliefs?”

Meeting 4 / Wed Sept 10

Belief and Credence week 2

Meeting 5 – 6 / Wed Sept 17 – Wed Sept 24

Fragmentation, Pseudobeliefs, and Policies

Meeting 7 / Wed Oct 1

Doxastic Voluntarism

Meeting 8 / Wed Oct 8

Acceptance

Meeting 9 / Wed Oct 15

Trust

Meeting 10 / Wed Oct 22

Doubt

Meeting 11 – 12 / Wed Oct 29 – Wed Nov 5

Suspension

Meeting 13 – 14 / Wed Nov 12 – Wed Nov 19

Inquiry

Wed Nov 26 – Fri Nov 28

Thanksgiving, No classes

Meeting 15 / Wed Dec 3

Last regular meeting, leaving topic unscheduled as slack

Sat Dec 6 at 4pm

Final session, when exam would have been scheduled from 4–7 pm. Instead, your final papers will be due by 4 pm, and we’ll meet to finish our last topics, and review and reflect on the seminar.

Syllabus Updates

The instructor reserves the right to make changes to the syllabus, including assignment due dates. These changes will be announced as early as possible so that students can adjust their schedules.

Feedback

I welcome your input about the course at any time. You are welcome to approach me directly. I’ll also provide opportunities for anonymous evaluation and feedback during the term.