Tutorial #10. Kripke on Names. Discussion Questions

After having read the relevant parts of Naming and Necessity think about these questions.

• What is the difference between a priori-a posteriori and necessary-contingent?
• Kripke argues that some a priori propositions are contingent. Do you find his argument convincing?
• What is Kripke’s argument against Frege and Russell? Why does he think that names do not have some form of descriptive meaning?
• What reasons does Kripke have for claiming that names are rigid designators?
• How does it happen that 'Pegasus' is a non-referring name at our world?
• How are contingent identity statements possible?
• Are mental states identical to brain states for Kripke?
• What’s essential to pain? Could pain be painless?

Tutorial #10. Kripke on Names. Some Consequences

---> Essentialism
+ Essential property: a property an object (or kind) cannot fail to have.
- Example: being a football player is not essential to Ronaldo but being human is essential to him.
- Example: Water is H2O. There could be a colorless, tasteless liquid that was just like water, and also called 'water' by people, but with molecular structure XYZ. Then, that liquid would NOT be water: The essence of water is it’s molecular structure (H2O).

+ What about what seem to be contingent identity statements involving rigid designators?
E.g.
- 'Hesperus is Phosphoros.'
- 'Heat is the total energy of molecular motion.'

Kripke: The alleged contingency of both these sentences is an illusion!
They are a posteriori but necessary. The illusion comes from confusing necessity and a prioriticity!

--> How are contingent identity statements possible?
Everything that exists is necessarily self-identical.
Referring expressions in some identity statements pick out different objects at different possible worlds.

Tutorial #10. Kripke on Names. Rigid Designators

Rigid Designator
A rigid designator designates (picks out, denotes, refers to) the same thing in all possible worlds in which that thing exists and does not designate anything else in those possible worlds in which that thing does not exist.

--> Kripke: Ordinary proper names are rigid designators!

NOTE
In saying that 'Saul Kripke' is a rigid designator we mean that the name as we use it in our actual world language refers to the same individual at all possible worlds--including worlds in which he has a different name.
Kripke couldn’t be Ronaldo even though he could have been named 'Ronaldo.'

Kripke vs. Russell
- Ordinary proper names are NOT disguised descriptions for Kripke.
- Ordinary proper names are mere tags (they don’t have senses or convey descriptions).
- We confer names on objects by tagging (baptizing, dubbing) or via descriptions that fix reference.

--> Names are passed down in the linguistic community through a causal chain going back to the tagging (the "baptism").

Tutorial #10. Kripke on Names. Nuts and Bolts

Bits of Terminology

Possible Worlds: Ways things could have been.
The actual world: the way things actually are.
Possible worlds, in philosophy, are used to explain modal notions like logical possibility, necessity and contingency.

--> Necessary & Contingent
- A state of affairs is logically possible if it’s true at some possible world.
- A proposition is necessarily true if it’s true at all possible worlds.
- A proposition is contingently true if it’s true at the actual world (or the world we’re considering) but false at some other possible world.


--> A priori & A posteriori
- A priori: knowable "before" experience. E.g. "All bachelors are unmarried."
- A posteriori: can only be known "after" experience. E.g. "Miriam is 10 ft. tall"

NOTE
A priority and a posteriority are epistemic notions.
Necessity and contingency are metaphysical notions.


+ Kripke On A Priori\A Posteriori & Necessity\Contingency:

Some a priori propositions are contingent!
Example: The standard meter rod in Paris is one meter long.

Some a posteriori propositions are necessary!
Example: Water is H2O.

Tutorial # 9. Russell. On Denoting. Discussion Questions

After having read Russell's On Denoting, try to think about the following questions.

• What is a definitive description? Give examples.
• What is the logical form of a sentence? Why is it important?
• How would Russell analyze the sentence “Catwoman is hot”?
• Is ordinary language “good enough for philosophy”, or does it require modifications? Why?
• How can we talk about things which do not exist? Think about Meinong’s, Frege’s and Russell’s answers to this question. Which is the most convincing? Why?
  
• What is Russell’s criticism to Frege’s theory of meaning?
  
• How does Russell treat propositional attitudes? How would he analyse the sentence "Matteo believes that the present queen of Italy is hot"?
  
• What is the difference between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description? Give examples. Why is it related to Russell’s analysis of definitive descriptions?

Tutorial # 9. Russell. On Denoting. Denoting in "On Denoting"

The subject of denoting is of very great importance, not only in logic and mathematics, but also in the theory of knowledge.

- No general characterization of denoting is given, only a list of “denoting phrases.”

A man,
Some man,
Any man,
Every man,
All men,
The present King of England.

"A phrase is denoting solely in virtue of its form"

+ The notion of a variable is fundamental to the theory of denoting.

A variable x "is essentially and wholly undetermined."

A proposition is always of the form C(x)

A proposition results from replacing the variable with a denoting phrase, as with C(a man).

Russell’s general thesis is that propositions containing denoting phrases are reducible to propositions not containing them.

*The Reduction

C(a man) means C(x) and x is human for some values of x.

"I met a man." means "I met x, and x is human for some values of x."
"All men are mortal” means “If x is a man, then x is mortal for all values of x"

--> “a man” and “all men” are contextually defined:
they have meaning only when embedded in a larger context.

*Definite Descriptions
Denoting phrases preceded by "the" are "by far the most interesting and difficult of denoting phrases."
Like the other denoting phrases, definite descriptions are contextually defined.

- Strict use of a denoting phrase in the sentence “The father of Charles II was executed” involves:

Existence: x was father of Charles II, for some value of x.

Uniqueness: if y was father of Charles II then y is identical with x, for any values of x who was father of Charles II and any value of y.

The Reduction of Definite Descriptions
The definite description "the father of Charles II" may occur in propositions of the form C(the father of Charles II).

The general analysis of C(the father of Charles II) combines existence and uniqueness:

For some value of x, x was father of Charles II, and C(x), and if y was father of Charles II, then y is identical to x, for any value of y

"The father of Charles II was executed” is:
For some value of x, x was father of Charles II, and x was executed, and if y was father of Charles II, then y is identical to x, for any value of y.


*** Consequences for Knowledge


Acquaintance and Description
The theory of denoting has consequences for knowledge.
We know things in two ways:

I) By being acquainted with them,
II) Through descriptions of them.
If we can apprehend (think about) a proposition, then we are acquainted with all its constituents.
If we know an object (say, someone else’s mind) only by description, then our knowledge can be expressed in propositions with denoting phrases, which do not contain the object itself.
We then know only the properties of the object and do not know any propositions
which contain the object itself.

Tutorial # 9. Russell. On Denoting. The Problem

The Puzzles.

"How can I think the thing which is not?"
(Plato)

* A denoting phrase may or may not denote an actual object.
In 1905
"The present King of England" denoted a certain man.
"The present King of France" denoted nothing at all.
Pegasus is a winged horse
Unicorns don’t exist

What, if anything, am I talking about when I talk about Zeus, unicorns, the Fountain of Youth, etc?

If I’m not talking about anything, how can my talk be meaningful?
If I’m not talking about anything, how can my talk be true or false?


*A second problem
Some denoting phrases denote ambiguously.

In “I saw a man,” “a man” denotes an “ambiguous” (or undetermined) man.

A good theory of denoting will accommodate all these kinds of cases.

Russell's Solution!
Analyze ordinary talk to reveal its true logical form beneath the surface
--> Denoting expressions are not names
A proper analysis of sentences in which denoting expressions occur solves our problems!

Tutorial #8. Frege On Sense and Reference. Discussion Questions

After having read Frege's On Sense and Reference, try to think about the following questions.

• What is the compositionality thesis?
• What is Frege’s identity puzzle? Can you give examples?
• What’s the Propositional attitude puzzle?
• How can expressions with the same sense refer to different things?
• Think about ‘Zeus’. How can a proper name have sense without reference?
• Why is the sense of a proper name not an idea in the mind of a thinker?
• Why does Frege think the distinction between sense and meaning is important?
• What are intensions?
• How would you analyze the sentence:
• "Matteo believes that Maria hopes that Miriam fears that Superman will not join us tonight."
• When is the connection between thought and truth-value important, and when is it not?
• How does Frege characterize a "logically perfect language"?

Tutorial #8. Frege On Sense and Reference. The Basics

Compositionality Thesis
The meaning of a whole sentence is determined by the meaning of its parts.
Substitutivity Principle
Replacing parts of a sentence with other expressions that mean the same thing should leave the of the whole sentence unchanged.

Frege’s Identity Puzzle
Informative identity statements like
(1) The Morning Star = The Evening Star.
Are different in “cognitive value” from trivial ones like
(2) The Morning Star = The Morning Star.

(2) appears to be true in virtue of language alone -everything is identical with itself-but (1) says something about the world.

"The Morning Star" and "The Evening Star" both mean (refer to) the same heavenly body.

So, by substitutivity, (1) and (2) should mean the same thing.
But they don’t so either we reject substitutivity or we show that “The Morning Star” and “The Evening Star” don’t mean the same thing.


Frege’s Propositional Attitude Puzzle

Propositional attitudes: ways in which people are related to propositions, e.g. believing, hoping, desiring, etc.

(3) Matteo believes that that Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn.
(4) Matteo believes that Samuel Clemens wrote Huckleberry Finn.

(3) may be true even if (4) is false, even though.

(3) and (4) seem to ascribe the same belief to Matteo and hence to say the same thing, so how can one be true but the other false???

!Substitutivity seems to be violated

Toward a solution: the sense/reference distinction

“meaning” is ambiguous

Sense: dictionary meaning, the “thought” (NOT the idea that an individual has) behind an expression or sentence.

Reference: “aboutness,” what an expression picks out.

The sense of a name is an individual concept.
The sense of a predicate is a property or relation.
The sense of a sentence is a proposition.

The reference of a name is an individual.
The reference of a predicate is a set (of individuals or n-tuples of individuals).
The reference of a sentence is a truth value: either The True or The False.

The meaning of a whole sentence is determined by the meaning of its parts, but “meaning” is ambiguous.

Substitutivity Principles

- replacing parts of a sentence with other expressions that have the same sense leaves the sense of the whole sentence unchanged.

- replacing parts of a sentence with other expressions that have the same reference leaves the reference of the whole sentence unchanged.

Tutorial #7. Embodied Cognition. Discussion Questions

After having read Clark's Where Brain, Body and World Collide, think about the following questions:

• Does the state of your brain determine the phenomenal experiences you have?
• What is the sensorimotor theory of perception?
• What is the relationship between evolutionary thinking and embodied cognition?
• Is cognition a graded notion that comes in degree? Where does it start?
• What is the relation between perception and action?
• What role do intentions play in action? Try to make examples (think also about Clark’s examples).
• EC theorists argue that minds are shaped by particular bodies inhabiting particular environments. To what extent is this true? How would they account for highly abstract thinking e.g. chess playing, decision-making?
• What problems are faced by explanations of the mind that neglect to take the body into account?
• Think about Tetris. To what extent we use the environment to simplify our cognitive processes? Does the environment changes the nature of the processing or does it simply enable the organisms to use other inexpensive cognitive abilities?
• In which sense the environment is part of the cognitive system? Is this a trivial claim?
• Do blind people see with their canes? In which sense?
• Consider bees learning to forage on certain kind of highly-rewarding flowers. Is it necessary to consider the cognitive activities of the bees to include their environment? Or the environment simply a source of visual input?
• Consider the role of gesture during speech in different cultures. What is the effect of gesture on communication? Does it change the cognitive processes underlying communication (either in the listener or in the speaker) in any interesting way?
• Is it (at least sometimes) explanatorily more useful to see mind/brain as a computer? If so, why?

Tutorial #7. Embodied Cognition. Nuts and Bolts

Picture from Giulio Casseri(1552 ca. - 1616)


From "Embodied Cognition" by Monica Cowart, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
http://www.iep.utm.edu/embodcog/

Embodied Cognition is a growing research program in cognitive science that emphasizes the formative role the environment plays in the development of cognitive processes. The general theory contends that cognitive processes develop when a tightly coupled system emerges from real-time, goal-directed interactions between organisms and their environment; the nature of these interactions influences the formation and further specifies the nature of the developing cognitive capacities. Since embodied accounts of cognition have been formulated in a variety of different ways in each of the sub-fields comprising cognitive science (that is, developmental psychology, artificial life/robotics, linguistics, and philosophy of mind), a rich interdisciplinary research program continues to emerge. Yet, all of these different conceptions do maintain that one necessary condition for cognition is embodiment, where the basic notion of embodiment is broadly understood as the unique way an organism’s sensorimotor capacities enable it to successfully interact with its environmental niche. In addition, all of the different formulations of the general embodied cognition thesis share a common goal of developing cognitive explanations that capture the manner in which mind, body, and world mutually interact and influence one another to promote an organism’s adaptive success.

Tutorial #6. Consciousness. The Knowledge argument. Discussion Questions

After having read Churchland (1985) "Reduction, Qualia and the Direct Introspection of Brain States", and after having got through Jackson's Knowledge Argument, try to think about these questions.

• What are qualia?
• Is consciousness the mark of the mental?
• How could the sciences (e.g. neurosciences, psychology, anthropology, etc) help us understand consciousness?<
• When Mary leaves her black-and-white room, does she acquire knowledge (in any sense)?
• Does she acquire factual (propositional) knowledge?
• Does her new knowledge consist in learning new facts (facts she did not previously know)? Or does she merely represent old facts in a new way? Does the Ability Hypothesis provide a successful response to the knowledge argument?
• What are qualia?
• What is the Explanatory Gap, and is it possible to close it?
• Can you explain to someone what it is like to taste Nutella?
• Consider such features of scientific method as publicity and objectivity. Is consciousness intrinsically private and subjective? Can it be studied scientifically?
• If consciousness is not reducible to physics (i.e. cannot be explained in physical terms), would it follow that physicalism (i.e. the thesis that everything is physical) is false? Or rather, that consciousness doesn’t exist (since physicalism is true)?

Tutorial #6. The Knowledge Argument in Cartoons

What Mary Didn't Know

Mary lives in a black and white room. She has never seen any color.

She is educated through reading black and white books, and watching lectures on a black and white television screen.

Mary becomes a brilliant scientist: she has, in fact, complete physical knowledge of the world. She specializes in human vision and knows all the physical facts about color experience.

At some stage she leaves her black and white room. For the first time in her life she sees colors. She learns something new. She learns how colors look like. She learns what it's like to see in color.

Therefore, there are non-physical facts about color experiences.

Therefore, physicalism is false.

The original cartoon can be found HERE

Tutoriaal #6. There's something about Mary. The Knowledge argument

Frank Jackson argues that there's more to the world than what physics can explain:

Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specializes in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like ‘red’, ‘blue’, and so on. She discovers, for example, just which wavelength combinations from the sky stimulate the retina, and exactly how this produces via the central nervous system the contraction of the vocal cords and expulsion of air from the lungs that results in the uttering of the sentence ‘The sky is blue’. [...] What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a color television monitor? Will she learn anything or not?

Jackson 1982, p. 130.

Tutorial #5. Intentionality Naturalised. Discussion Questions

After having read Millikan (1989) Biosemantics, try to think about the following questions.

• What are the main accounts of intentionality?
• What is a representation?
• Do images represent in the same way words do?
• How can our beliefs be about non-existent objects? For example, how can I believe that Santa Claus lives in Rovaniemi (Finland)? How can such a belief be about Santa Claus? How can it be true (or false)?
• How can two distinct beliefs be about the very same object? For example, I may believe at the same time that Catwoman is hot and that Selina Kyle is not hot. But Catwoman is Selina Kyle...
• Can non-mental things exhibit intentionality? Do compasses exhibit intentionality? In which sense?
• Can Deep Blue (the chess computer) perceive a knight fork as a knight fork?
• How do biological states come to have meanings?
• What is the difference, if any, between malfunctioning and getting things wrong by mistaking them? Think about the role of evolution in Millikan’s account.
• What’s the difference between ‘normal’ and ‘normative’? Think about how Millikan uses ‘normal’.
• What does the frog's brain represent when it sees a fly?
• What are the differences between human representations and bacterial representations? Consider Millikan's argument.
  

Tutorial #5. Intentionality. Black dot vs. Fly. A Classic Objection to Teleosemantics

From Mark Rowlands Teleosemantics A Field Guide

Frogs catch flies by way of a rapid strike with their tongue. Thus, it is plausible to suppose, mediating between the environmental presence of a fly and the motor response of a tongue strike is some sort of neural mechanism that registers the fly's presence in the vicinity and causes the strike of the frog's tongue… According to the teleofunctional account, the content of state S should be, roughly, `fly!', or `fly, there!', and it derives this content from the fact that the proper or Normal function of its underlying mechanism is to detect the presence of flies. The state is, thus about flies; it means that there are flies in the vicinity.

There is, however, an alternative construal of the function of the mechanism. On this construal, what the mechanism in question has been selected to respond to are little ambient black things (To avoid becoming entangled in a completely different issue, let me make it clear that the little ambient black things are environmental entities and not dots on a retinal image). The proper function of the mechanism, on this construal, is to mediate between little ambient black things and tokenings of a state that causes the frog's tongue to strike. This state will then be about little ambient black things and will, therefore, mean that there are little ambient black things in the vicinity.

The proper function of the mechanism is different in each case since, in the latter case but not the former, the frog's mechanism is functioning properly or Normally when the frog strikes at a little ambient black thing that is not, in fact, a fly (but, say, a lead pellet or ‘BB’). And the content underwritten by the function is different in each case since not all little ambient black things are flies.

VIDEO... Frogs catching flies

Tutorial #5. Intentionality. Nuts and Bolts

Ruth Millikan

- Beliefs, desires, intentions, perceptions are all examples of mental representations. Representations are interesting objects because they bear a semantic relation to the world.
They represent something, are about things, properties, states of affairs extrinsic to them.

- Intentionality is a philosophers’ word. It is 'aboutness': words, pictures, signs, beliefs, desires, and, indeed, intentions are all about things.

- The problem of intentionality: How do mental representations mean?

- One naturalistic way to tackle the problem

Teleosemantics
The satisfaction condition for a desire is the result it is selected to produce, the truth condition for a belief the condition that ensures that this result will ensue.
More generally (Millikan), an indicative representation stands for the condition that will enable the behaviour it prompts in its ‘consumer’ to achieve its end.

Tutorial # 4. The Intentional Stance. Discussion Questions

After having read Dennett's True Believers think about the following questions:

• Give some examples of intentional states.
• Can intentionality be naturalized?
• Paul Churchland once reported of this conversation he had with his wife Pat (in The New Yorker, February 2007): "[Pat] said, 'Paul, don’t speak to me, my serotonine levels have hit bottom, my brain is awash in glucocorticoids, my blood vessels are full of adrenaline, and if it weren’t for my endogenous opiates I’d have driven the car into the tree on the way home. My dopamine levels need lifting. Pour me a Chardonnay, and I’ll be down in a minute'." Do you think that folk psychological talk can\will be replaced by neurobiological talk? Why?
• Does intentional talk (i.e. beliefs – desire talk) describe or explain any real phenomenon?
• If we knew the (physical) laws that govern the behaviour of a physical system, would intentional talk still be useful?
• Is belief-desire talk a good tool for prediction? Prediction of any system (think about the Heider-Simmel’s experiment)? What’s the role of rationality assumptions in such predictions?
• How can belief-desire talk enable us to make good predictions if it doesn’t describe or explain anything real?
• What is the intentional stance?
• In which sense Dennett’s intentional stance is a form of instrumentalism?
• How should we understand Dennett’s claim that propositional attitudes are abstracta comparable to centres of gravity and economic recessions?
• Do we really take attributions of centers of gravity to be a matter of interpretation in the same way we may take propositional attitudes to be a matter of interpretation?

Tuttorial #4. The Intentional Stance. Heider & Simmel's film

In the mid 1940s, Fritz Heider and Mary-Ann Simmel produced a short film animation.
They asked observers to describe what they saw in the film.
Most subjects spontaneously took the itnetnional stance...
They developed elaborate stories about the circle and the little triangle being in love, about the big-bad grey triangle trying to steal away the circle, about the blue triangle fighting back, yelling to his love to escape into the house, and following her inside where they embraced and lived happily ever after.

You can see the film on youtube. HERE
How would you describe what is going on there?

Tutorial # 4. The Intentional Stance. In a Nutshell

From The Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind

Picture from Dan Dennett's website

"intentional stance, the - A strategy, proposed and defended by Daniel Dennett, for understanding an entity's behavior. When adopting the intentional stance towards an entity, we attempt to explain and predict its behavior by treating it as if it were a rational agent whose actions are governed by its beliefs and desires. The intentional stance contrasts with two other strategies, the physical stance and the design stance."

Tutorial #3. Functionalism. Discussion Questions

After having read Ned Block's Troubles with Functionalism try to think about these questions:

Image from Geoff Draper's Cartoon Page

• Can pain turn out to be correlated with different brain processes in different creatures? If so, would that be the same “kind” of pain?
• Could a robot feel pain?
• Unlike the behaviorist, the functionalist believes that mental states are real internal states that cause our behavior. But the functionalist wants to retain the behaviorist's idea that there are close conceptual connections between our mental states and the types of behavior caused by them. How can the functionalist describe the connections between any one mental state (e.g. a belief) and behavior, until he has already defined lots of other mental states (e.g. desires, intentions, emotions, thoughts, hopes etc.)?
• Is the mind a computer?
  
• What is multiple realizability and how it motivates functionalism?
• From Bickle, J (2006). Multiple Realizabilityn In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
  

Consider what appears to be a genuine case of multiple realizability: two objects that “do the same thing” but in very different ways. Either the realizing kinds genuinely differ in their causally relevant properties or they do not. If they do not, then we don't really have a case of multiple realizability (like the corkscrews that differ only in color or composition). If they do, then they are different kinds. But then they are not the same kind and again we don't have an instance of multiple realizability—of a single kind with distinct realizations.

• Do you find this argument convincing? Can you give an example of a genuine case of multiple realizability?
• What is the "input-output" problem for functionalism?
• Can a functionalist account for what we take to be the causal efficacy of our mental states? For example, if pain is realized in me by some neural state-type, then insofar as there are purely physical law-like generalizations linking states of that type with pain behaviour, one can give a complete causal explanation of my behaviour by citing the occurrence of that neural state (and the properties by virtue of which it figures in those laws). Are functional properties causally irrelevant then?
• Functionalists attempt to characterize mental states exclusively in relational, causal, terms. A common and persistent objection, however, is that no such characterizations can capture the qualitative character, or “qualia”, of experiential states such as perceptions, emotions, and bodily sensations, since they would leave out certain of their essential properties, namely, “what it's like”. Do you agree?

Tutorial #3. Functionalism. In a Nutshell

In Nutshell

see also: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/functionalism/

Functionalism is the view that the mind is the “functional organization” of the brain, or any other system that is functionally equivalent to the brain.

Another formulation of functionalism is that what makes something a thought, desire, pain (or any other type of mental state) depends not on its internal constitution, but solely on its function, or the role it plays, in the cognitive system of which it is a part.

More precisely, functionalist theories take the identity of a mental state to be determined by its causal relations to sensory stimulations, other mental states, and behavior.

Example, a functionalist theory might characterize as a state that tends to be caused by bodily injury, to produce the belief that something is wrong with the body and the desire to be out of that state, to produce anxiety, and, in the absence of any stronger, conflicting desires, to cause wincing or moaning. According to this theory, all and only creatures with internal states that meet these conditions, or play these roles, are capable of being in pain.

Hilary Putnam’s main example of a description of functional organization is the machine table of a Turing Machine

On this view, functionalists about the mind thinks that all there is to being intelligent, having thoughts and other mental states, is implementing some very complicated program. In a slogan, our brain is the hardware and our minds are the software. In us, this software is implemented by a human brain, but it could also be implemented on other hardware, like a Martian brain or a digital computer.

On How to Improve your Essay...

The most common comments you are likely to receive on your essays - and that I also receive on my own essays, are the following:

- "The structure and the goal of yor paper are not stated" "They are not obvious to the reader";
- "Explain this claim";
- "Inaccurate in reconstructing Mr X's view" "Be charitable!";
- "What do you mean here?" "I don't get it";
- "This is unclear, or confused, too hard to follow";
- "This is a technical term, be precise!";
- "Why? Give reasons!";
- "What's the relation between this claim and that claim?";
- "What is the conclusion?"; "Does your conclusion follow from the premisses?"
- "This is irrelevant" "Stick to the topic"
- "Give an example!"

MORALS:
If you anticipate these comments, you can prevent me to make them!
Thus, your essay will improve.

If your essay does not received the mark you expected, don't be discouraged.
Writing philosophy is not an easy task. But working seriously and constantly, your writing will improve for sure.

On Referencing

Here is some examples for referencing:

For a book:
Hempel, C. G. (1965). Aspects of Scientific Explanation, New York: Free Press.

For a joural article:
Thaler, R. H. (1988) "Anomalies: The Ultimatum Game", Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2, pp. 195–206.

For an article reprinted in a volume:
Cartwright, N. (1983) "Do the Laws of Physics State the Facts?", in Curd, M. & Cover, J. A. eds. (1998) Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues. London: W. W. Norton and Company, pp. 865-877.

For an online article:
Beyer, C. (2007). “Edmund Husserl”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2007 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2007/entries/husserl/.

For an "old" classic - there are a few ways:
Anselm, St., Proslogion, in St. Anselm's Proslogion, M. Charlesworth (ed.), Oxford: OUP, 1965

or

Kant, I., 1781, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 1781, vols. 3 and 4 of Gesammelte Schriften, de Gruyter & Co., 1969; page references are to the English translation, Critique of Pure Reason,
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

or

Kant, I., 1780 (1965), The Metaphysical Elements of Justice: Part I of the Metaphysics of Morals, J. Ladd, Trans., Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Co.

- Finally, here is an example for brief quotations in the body of your essay:
"… thus we come to see that ‘”meanings” just ain’t in the head!" (Putnam 1977, p. 704).

Some Tips for your Essay

Here is Some Suggestions for your essay.

- First, Jim Pryor has an excellent website, where you can find some Guidelines on Writing a Philosophy Paper.
They are very useful! Try to take a look.

- Second, make clear the structure of your paper right at the beginning.
State the goal of your paper: What is your aim? What are you going to do?
Give a brief outline of how you are going to proceed to make your point:
What are you going to do first?; What are you gonna do then? How are all the steps in your argument related?

- Third, try to "delimit your own territory".
Focus! Make small points; be "modest" in your claims.
Don't be afraid of using such expressions as "it seems", "it may be the case", "it might be".
Always give reasons! Motivate your claims -

- Fourth, polish, polish, polish!
Use short sentences, with very few adjectives, and connect the sentences logically with the right conjunctions.

- Fifth, use relevant references and the right referencing.

Tutorial #2. Behaviourism. Discussion Questions

After having read the article on behaviourism on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/behaviorism/ and Descartes' Myth (Chapter 1 of The Concept of Mind) by Gilbert Ryle, think about these questions.

Another highly recommended reading is Jaegwon Kim Philosophy of Mind (Dimensions of Philosophy 2nd Edition, Perseus books, 2006) ch.3

• What is the difference between methodological, psychological and logical behaviourism?
• What counts as behaviour and of what counts as observable?
• What is Descartes’ myth? What is Ryle’s argument against the myth?
• In which sense Ryle can be considered a behaviourist?
• What is the relationship between pain and pain behaviour?
• What is pain? What is typical in pain behaviour? and why is it typical? Can you show pain behaviour without feeling pain? Can you be in pain but showing joy-behaviour?
• What’s the role of context when a person tries to infer one’s mental state from her behaviour?
• What problems do we run into if we attempt to translate psychological concepts into talk of behavioural dispositions?
• What’s the role of our understanding of how the mind works when we try to study people’s behaviour?
• Your friend’s observable behaviour (e.g. her movements, physiological reactions, facial expression, posture, and so forth) provides the best evidence for attributing a certain mental state to her?
• Assuming that observable behaviour provides the best evidence for mental states ascription, would it follow that mentality just consists in behavioural tendencies?
• If you were a behaviourist how would you identify “pretence behaviour”? What differences there may be between creatures who—on a certain restrictive notion of behaviour—do indeed behave identically?
• Do you think that behavioural\observable data are the only admissible data for science?
• Is psychology a respectable science?

Tutorial #2. A Joke about behaviourism...

Two behaviourists have sex.
When they are finished, one turns to the other and says:
"It was great for you... How was it for me?"

Tutorial #2. Behaviourisms.

Take a look at George Graham Behaviourism in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/behaviorism/

+ Three senses of Behaviourism

1) Philosophical behaviourism:
Having a mind is a matter of exhibiting, or having the propensity to exhibit, certain appropriate patterns of observable behaviour.

2) Psychological behaviourism:
The meanings of psychological terms derive from operational definitions based on observable behaviour.
E.g. the meaning of mental expressions such as 'pain' or 'belief' are to be explained away by reference to publicly observable behaviour, not to internal states.

3) Methodological behaviourism:
- The only admissible data for the science of psychology are behavioural data.
-Psychological theories\explanations must not invoke internal\psychological states; nor should references to such states in deriving predictions about behaviour.
- Psychological theories must not make reference to inner mental states in formulating psychological explanations.

Tutorial #1. Mind -Body Dualism. Discussion Questions

After having read the relevant sections of Descartes' Meditations (II and VI), think about the following questions. Make sure you have understood what 'a priori', 'a posteriory', 'conceivability', and 'possibility' mean.

• Think about some example of mental and physical aspects of the world.
• Consider a situation where you are dancing, what are the mental aspects of this situation?What are the physical aspects? Are these aspects the very same thing? Or can you find any substantial difference?
• How does Descartes conceive of the essences of mind and body?
• Do we know better the properties of the mind, or the properties of the body?
• Consider the wax example (Meditation ii). If there were no minds to attend the wax, would the wax have a certain color, say white?
• According to Descartes, can a mind exist without a body?
• Is Descartes' concevability argument sound?
• Can you conceive a square circle? What can you conclude about its existence? Can you conceive a living human being without a brain?
• “When we stand in need of drink, there arises from this want a certain parchedness in the throat that moves its nerves, and by means of them the internal parts of the brain; and this movement affects the mind with the sensation of thirst, because there is nothing on that occasion which is more useful for us than to be made aware that we have need of drink for the preservation of our health.” What is the role of the mind here, and what is the role of the body?
• Can a non-physical mind be investigated "scientifically"?
• If mind and body are radically different types of stuff, how can they interact with each other?
• If all physical effect is fully caused by physical causes, then can the mind have a causal influence on anything physical?
• Can dualists provide a satisfactory account of the causal interaction of mind and body?
• Does the mind affect the brain? Make examples.
• What are the arguments for the distinct existence of mind and body? What is the best? Why?
• What is the difference between substance and property dualism?

Tutorial #1. Mind -Body Dualism. Descartes

Descartes was a substance dualist.
There are two kinds of substance:
- Matter, of which the essential property is that it is spatially extended;
- Mind, of which the essential property is that it thinks.

Descartes used a conceivability argument in support of dualism.
The argument goes from the conceivability of my existing without a body to the possibility of my existence without a body, and from there to the conclusion that I am not physical.

A detailed reconstruction of Descartes' argument can be found in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy HERE

A Trilingual HTML Edition of Descartes' Meditations can be found HERE Edited by David B. Manley and Charles S. Taylor, think about these questions.

Tutorial #1. Conceivability & Possibility - A priori & A posteriori

Often in philosophy a priori methods are used to draw conclusions about what is possible and what is necessary.

Here is some excertps from Dave Chalmers ' Does Conceivability Entail Possibility?

"Arguments like this typically have three steps: first an epistemic claim (about what can be known or conceived), from there to a modal claim (about what is possible or necessary), and from there to a metaphysical claim (about the nature of things in the world)."

The method of conceivability.

"One argues that some state of affairs is conceivable, and from there one concludes that this state of affairs is possible. Here, the kind of possibility at issue is metaphysical possibility, as opposed to physical possibility, natural possibility, and other sorts of possibility. Metaphysical conclusions turn most directly on matters of metaphysical possibility: if one domain is reducible to another, the facts about the second should metaphysically necessitate the facts about the first. So it is metaphysical possibility that is relevant in the three-step argument above. And there is at least some plausibility in the idea that conceivability can act as a guide to metaphysical possibility. By contrast, it is very implausible that conceivability entails physical or natural possibility.

For example, it seems conceivable that an object could travel faster than a billion meters per second. This hypothesis is physically and naturally impossible, because it contradicts the laws of physics and the laws of nature. This case may be metaphysically possible, however, since there might well be metaphysically possible worlds with different laws. If we invoke an intuitive conception of a metaphysically possible world as a world that God might have created, if he had so chosen: it seems that God could have created a world in which an object traveled faster than a billion meters per second. So in this case, although conceivability does not mirror natural possibility, it may well mirror metaphysical possibility."

- What is meant by "conceivability" anyway?

In that paper, Chalmers distinguishes 8 senses...

In general,

Definition:
- conceivability is an epistemic notion (i.e. it has to do with a way of knowing).
It is the capability of "being conceived", of "being imagined". "What can be thought". It is NOT the ability to form mental images.
Chalmers characterizes it as "a property of statements, and the conceivability of a statement is in many cases relative to a speaker or thinker."

Example
You can conceive golden mountains.
You cannot conceive round squares.
You can conceive chiliagons, God, but presumably you cannot form a mental image of chiliagons or God.

- possibility is a metaphysical notion. It has to do with how things can be.
"Possibility" can also be understood in many different ways.
We have:
physical \ natural possibility.
metaphysical \logical possibility.

HERE You can find some very good lecture notes on possibility and conceivability by Jim Pryor


+++

The terms "a priori" and "a posteriori" are used in philosophy to distinguish between two different ways of knowing.
"A priori" and "A Posteriori" are also often used to distinguish different types of arguments.

Definition:
- a priori knowledge is independent of experience or experimentation. It is knowledge based on pure reason.

- a posteriori knowledge is dependent on experience or experimentation.

Examples

You know a priori that cubes have six sides; or that if today is Wednesday then today is not Thursday; that two plus five equals seven, etc.
In all these cases, it suffices that you understand the meaning of the relevant terms for you to gain that knowledge, you don't need to set up an experiment or to observe the world.

You can know a posteriori that some bachelors are beautiful; that Edinburgh is in Scotland; that water is H2O; that pain is correlated to he activation of certain brain areas.
In all these cases, it is not sufficient to sit comfortable in your armchair and reason about the meaning of the relevant terms for you to gain that knowledge. You have to go outside and observe how things are in the world.