We will move on to Metzinger's paper on Thursday.

Please don't forget to do the class evals!

We'll finish the Morality paper by Haidt and Kesebir on Tuesday then talk about Metzinger's "Spirituality and intellectual honesty" on Thursday. I'll put questions for Metzinger up today or tomorrow.

We'll get on Haidt and Kesebir tomorrow. No new study questions.

We'll finish up Greene's article and try to get halfway through Haidt and Kesibir's piece "Morality." I'll have study questions relating to the latter posted by today.

I'll have your essays graded by Sunday.

We'll finish up Campbell's paper on Schizophrenia and hopefully do Greene's "From neural "is" to moral "ought" " It is very short and I will have study questions up on that paper by early this afternoon.

I'll get your 3rd analyses graded by the weekend. The target article for you last analysis is 

What's the use of consciousness? T. Metzinger & C. Frith.

I am changing the due date to May 17th which is the day scheduled for our final. (There is no final.)

Here's a recent piece by Alison Gopnik in The Atlantic reviewing Frans de Waal's new book on animal intelligence.

We'll do Campbell on Schizophrenia Tuesday. I'll get the rest of the questions up by tomorrow.

Good luck to Joe and Danielle this weekend!

As noted we'll try to finish up Pickard and get started on Campbell. Listen to the Campbell podcast and do at least half of the questions. You can do the remaining ones with the second installment w/o penalty.

We'll do Pickard's piece on addiction Tuesday and Campbell's on Schizophrenia Thursday. Study questions on the first will be up by today or tomorrow.

We will discuss Knobe' paper on free will and the scientific vision tomorrow.  Don't forget that today at 1:30 PM in the Forest Suite Danielle and the other winners of the Nammour student essay competition will be presenting their papers.

It looks like the strike has been averted. Plan on a normal week next week.

We'll do Prinz's Are Emotions Feelings? on Tuesday. It's a short article and the first half covers ground we are familiar with. I'm going to give you a break from study questions on that day. Instead, for Tuesday I want everyone to come in with one well-developed question relating to these two papers, as well as a proposed answer to it. We'll discuss each one in detail.

If we meet on Thursday we'll move on to Free Will and the Scientific vision by Knobe. I'll have questions for you on that by Monday in any case.

We're currently hopeful that the strike will be called off sometime today, but I'll let you know.

We'll try to finish up Prinz's "Which emotions are basic?" on Thursday.

Next week there is faculty strike scheduled which I will be honoring. If it occurs, this will affect our Thursday class and we will not meet. However, we will definitely meet if the strike does not occur or if it ends prior to Thursday, even if it is late Wednesday night. I will keep you posted in this space. It is possible that the strike will continue into the following week and affect our Tuesday class as well.

Your 3rd analysis assingment is "Destructive Emotions," by Owen Flanagan. I have pushed back the due date one week, so it is now due on the 24th.

Joe shared this Daniel Dennett video which Professor McCormick assigned in a different class. At the 53 minute mark he has a discussion with Patricia Churchland about animal cognition and the evolution of reasons.

We'll start on Jesse Prinz's piece "Which emotions are basic?" on Tuesday.  I'll get study questions up by Friday and will have your analyses graded by the end of the weekend.

We're going to skip the Sperber article on epistemic vigilance. I'll put questions up on Daniel Dennett's article "The evolution of reasons" (which connects more naturally to the Flanagan piece anyway) by Friday.  Uh, I mean Saturday, sorry.

Please remember that I will not be able to hold office hours Thursday 3/17.

We'll finish Flanagan and Martin on Tuesday. No new study questions prior to Spring Break. See below in case you missed the new analysis assignment.

Shannon pointed out that I used the wrong point scale for grading the essays. I graded out of 50 rather than 25. I'll change that on your journals so that your raw score is cut in half. This, of course, has no impact on your grade.

Don't forget about Lok Chi Chan's paper on Monday. 1 free point for anyone who attends, and of course you can do a colloquium analysis as well.

We'll finish up Flanagan and Martin tomorrow.

The target article for your next essay is "Personhood and neuroscience: naturalizing or nihilating?" It is uploaded to BB

As noted in class, this essay is due on the 20th because I do not want to assign you work for spring break. However, you may work on it during spring break if you like and turn it in on or before the 27th without penalty.  If you turn it in by the 20th, I'll get it graded during spring break. If you turn it in on the 27th, it may take me up to a week after that.

We'll get started on "Science and the modest image of epistemology by O.Flanagan & S. Martin". It's available in Blackboard. I'll have study questions posted today. In class I said I'd have your first analyses graded by today or Saturday, but it may end up being more like Sunday or Monday. Sorry for the delay.

Thanks again to all of you who have been logging so much time observing and interviewing our second round job applicants.

Also: As I mentioned in class, we will not be meeting on Thursday March 17th.

We'll finish up the Schwitzgebel article on Thursday.

Unfortunately, I will not be able to hold my usual office hours this week. I will hold office hours on Wednesday from 8-9:30 and from 12-1:15. Please contact me if you need to see me outside of class and absolutely can't make those times. I will try to figure something out.

Since we didn't get to Schwitzgebel's article at all yesterday, and since you are all working on your first analyses, due Sunday, I won't make the second set of questions due until Thursday. I'll put them up sometime this weekend. 

This weekend I'll post on your Google Doc where everyone is with class participation points. Review the syllabus to see how these work. Your ideal score is a 0, with + values being exceptional.

When you post your analysis, be sure to indicate the time and date of posting at the bottom. Anything past the due date has to be written in blue.

The remaining study questions for Papineau's article have been posted.

Tomorrow we'll finish up Ross' article and move on to Papineau's. (I'll only hold people accountable for the first 6 questions of the latter.)

Your first analysis assignment will be this article by Stephen Law. It is a response to Alvin Plantinga's famous evolutionary argument against naturalism. There are many, many formulations, critiques and defenses of this argument easily available, so you should definitely do some background reading and use them in support of your essay where appropriate.

If you are generally friendly to naturalism, this assignment is going to put you in the position of thinking very critically about it. Please do not talk to me about how you have read Stephen Law's paper several times and can't find anything to critique because you agree with him. The job of a philosopher is to learn to develop a critical stance on his or her own beliefs. (If you are suspicious of naturalism, your job may be easier.)

Also, carefully review my analysis instructions on the schedule page. My expectations of the introduction have changed somewhat since last semester (note that I haven't made a new video which reflect these changes, so it is reflected in the document only at this point.) If you haven't watched the video, watch it, and then watch it again. This is a class where the highest standards of writing and argumentation are in effect from the very beginning. Any fundamental violations on the structure, form, or writing expectations will result in a failing or near-failing grade.  E-mail me or talk to if you have any uncertainty about these requirements.

Tuesday we'll start on "Will scientific philosophy still be philosophy?" I'll have the first set of study questions up by this afternoon.  Sorry, make that tomorrow morning. The link goes to an academia.edu page. You might need to create an account to get it.

Your first analysis is due on the 28th. I'll assign the article by midweek next week.

As I noted in class, please make every effort to get to class on time. If you come in after we've started, you can assume you've already been asked a question and have lost a point. You lose two points for every absence.

Study questions for the first half of "Naturalism and the a priori" are posted. I'll have questions for the second half posted by Sunday.

As noted in class today, we'll try to finish up the Naturalism and common sense article on Thursday. I'll post study questions over "Naturalism and the a priori" by Friday.

I strongly recommend reading the articles before looking at the study questions, then reviewing with an eye to answering the questions. Reading with my questions in mind robs you of the pleasure of deciding what you think is interesting in the article.

Please read Maddy's Naturalism and Common Sense. I'll have the first set of journal questions up by this afternoon and the second by tomorrow or Sunday.

Hi everyone, we'll talk about Maddy's piece Second Philosophy tomorrow.  The first article for which I'll assign study questions will be the next one, Naturalism and Common Sense, which will be due for Tuesday. Please be sure to sign up for your journal if you haven't. I'll get those shared with you by the end of the day.

I just sent everyone an email, but in case you didn't get it, we are not going to meet in Eureka 107. We will meeting in the Philosophy Office conference room instead, MND 3000.

Hi everyone, for Tuesday please begin reading Second Philosophy, by Penelope Maddy.

The full schedule for this course will be available by Monday. Sorry for the delay.

Here is a link to the page where you sign up to get your journal. Please sign up right away.

Hi everybody, this What's Up link is where you'll be coming on a daily basis to find out what's going on in class. I'll have the syllabus up pretty soon to be followed by the reading schedule. Hope you enjoyed your winter break and that you are looking forward to getting back to work.

Please be aware that this is an advanced course in philosophy.  You should not be taking it unless you have had at least 3 or 4 upper-division courses, preferably 150 or above.

This course is also a lot of work, requiring regular, active, deep engagement both in class and out. If you are ready for all this, great, you will more than likely enjoy the course quite a bit!

Stay tuned and see you soon.

Randy