Philosophy 350
Epistemology and Metaphysics
Spring 2007
Instructor: Bonnie Paller
Class meets: Tuesday/Thursday: 2:00 p.m. – 3:45 p.m. in JR 204
Office hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays: 12:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.
Other hours by appointment
Office: ST 533
Office phone: (818) 677-2746
Instructor’s email: bonnie.paller@csun.edu
Required Text: Knowledge and Reality, Cahn, Eckert, and Buckley (eds), Pearson-Prentice-Hall (2004).
Writing Text: The Philosophy Student Writer's Manual, Graybosch, Scott, and Garrison, Prentice-Hall (2003).
Aims of the Course: This 4-unit course will provide an opportunity to examine some leading historical and contemporary problems and views in epistemology, or the theory of knowledge, and metaphysics. In addition to our examination of the philosophical material, there will be time devoted to writing about many of the topics examined in the course literature. Thus, our aims are both to sharpen your ability to read, understand, and discuss philosophical texts but also to write about a number of these same topics. We hope that you sharpen both your ability to write about philosophical issues and your ability to write in general.
Attendance: Regular attendance is essential to doing well in the course. You are responsible for all material presented in class and each class represents an important opportunity to discuss the material. Furthermore, class attendance will help you to do better on the exam as well as on the other assignments.
The deadline this semester for dropping a course with only the instructor’s signature is Friday, February 16. After that date, according to CSUN’s regulations, withdrawals will require additional approvals and can be obtained only for “serious and compelling reasons” and provided that there is “no viable alternative”. See CSUN’s Schedule of Classes and Catalog Supplement, online at http://www.csun.edu/a&r/current/. If you enroll in a course and do not officially drop it, you will remain enrolled and will receive a grade, even if you never attend. There are no “automatic” drops, and I cannot drop you from any class.
Evaluation: Your final grade in the course will be based on:
Argument/reading summaries: 25%
In-class exam: 25%
Mid-term paper: 20%
Final paper: 30%
Course Outline (all articles in course text except as noted)
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3 Week 4 Week 5
Week 6 Week 7 |
Knowledge
What is Knowledge?
Introduction to the course 1. Plato, Meno 2. Edmund Gettier, Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?
Skepticism 1
Foundationalism, Coherentism, and Reliabilism
In class Exam
The A Priori
1. Leibniz, On What is Independent of Sense and Matter (1702) 2. David Hume, Sceptical Solution of These Doubts 3. Immanuel Kant, Introduction to The Critique of Pure Reason 4. W. V. O. Quine, Two Dogmas of Empiricism 5. Paul Boghossian, Analyticity Reconsidered
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Week 8 Week 9
Week 10 Week 11
Week 12
Week 13 Week 14 |
Reality
Identity, Change, and Causation
1. Plato, The Republic 2. Aristotle, Categories 3. Aristotle, Physics 4. Aristotle, Metaphysics 5. David Hume, Of the Idea of a Necessary Connection 6. Nelson Goodman, The New Riddle of Induction
Mid-term Paper Due
Sensory Perception and the External World
1. Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy 2. John Locke, Of Power 3. George Berkeley, Dialogues I and II 4. William Poundstone, Brains in Vats 5. Daniel Dennett,…How are Hallucinations Possible?
Skepticism 2
1. David Lewis, Elusive Knowledge 2. Peter Unger, A Defense of Skepticism
Contextualism – Solving the problem of Philosophical Skepticism One of more of the following to be distributed:
1. David Annis, The Contextualist Theory of Epistemic Justification, American Philosophical quarterly 15 (1978): 213-219 2. Keith DeRose, Solving the Skeptical Problem, Philosophical Review 104 (1995): 1-52, excerpts 3. Stewart Cohen, Contextualist Solutions to Epistemological Problems: Skepticism, Gettier, and the Lottery, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 76 (1998): 289-306
Final Paper Due
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