PHILOSOPHY 345: METAPHYSICS AND EPISTEMOLOGY– Spring 2007

INSTRUCTOR: James A. Keller OFFICE: Daniel 217 PHONE: Ext. 4594

OFFICE HOURS: MW 1:30-2:30; TTh 11:00-11:45 (except during convocations and faculty meetings); and by appt.

CONTACTING ME: Call my office. If I am not there, leave a voice-mail message. Or you may contact me by e-mail at kellerja@wofford.edu. I check both regularly, so they give you two ways to contact me. If you need to reach me quickly and I have not responded to the other ways to contact me, you may call me at home (579-7313).

CONTACTING YOU: From time to time I may need to contact the entire class or individuals in it. I will use the Wofford email system to do so. Therefore, I ask you to check your Wofford email account at least once a day for messages.

TEXTS: Richard Taylor, Metaphysics. 4th ed. Prentice-Hall.

John Perry, A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality.

Louis Pojman, What Can We Know? Wadsworth

Various handouts

BASIS OF GRADING:

Two tests: 12.5% each

Weekly quizzes: 10% in aggregate

Final exam: 15%

Two papers: 25% each

Possible extra points as described under ALTERNATE FINAL

Good class participation may also raise your grade

COURSE DESCRIPTION: The aim of this course is to acquaint you with some issues in metaphysics and epistemology and to stimulate you to formulate your own positions on some of them. We will begin with metaphysics, using Taylor's book and some handouts; then we will turn to epistemology, using Pojman’s book. Class sessions will be devoted to discussion of issues in the reading material assigned. During class sessions I will also sometimes give my analysis of some of the issues, criticize the arguments in the books, present other theories, and lecture on various important historical figures in these fields. You are responsible for what is said in class as well as the contents of the reading. And remember, the overall goal is to get you thinking about your own position on the issues and to help you to refine that position. Thus you will be required to develop and display your own skills at identifying, analyzing, and evaluating arguments and at synthesizing and defending a position of your own.

TESTS: The test after each of the two parts will be in-class. It will focus on the important terms and concepts that have occurred in the readings and in class. You will be expected to be able to define and/or explain these terms. You may also be asked to identify the positions that various philosophers have taken on the issues under discussion. The aim of the tests will be to measure your mastery of certain factual knowledge that you must have in order to read and discuss issues in metaphysics and epistemology. The final exam will probably also be similar in format, though I reserve the right to use a different format; if I do, I will give you ample notification.

WEEKLY QUIZZES: Each Monday you will be asked to define 5-7 terms in metaphysics or epistemology from a list of definitions provided in advance. These terms will be used in the tests at the end of each unit.

PAPERS: Since the overall aim of the course is to help you refine your own position on various issues, you will be required to write some papers in which you do that on certain issues. I will give you the paper topics at the beginning of the unit, so you can be thinking about your own position as you do the reading and as you engage in class discussion. I encourage you to use class sessions to test your arguments for your own position and against others. If you are not sure what your position is (and many of you will not be, at least at first), then test all the positions. Try to find their strong and weak points. Gradually, one should begin to appear to you to be the best candidate.

ALTERNATE FINAL: Instead of a final exam of the sort described above, you may write a paper of at least 10 pages on a topic of your choice within the fields of metaphysics and epistemology. As you will discover, there is a vast range of potential topics. Do not let this vastness dismay you or paralyze you. I do not intend that you write a paper that is a comprehensive study of any topic. Instead, I want to see what you can do in conducting an analysis of some very limited amount of literature in metaphysics or epistemology. A number of formats would be acceptable for the paper, but probably the most easily managed would be either a critical review of a book or a critical discussion of two or three articles on one topic. To get started, you should choose some topic that interests you; you should be on the lookout for possible topics throughout the course. Once you have a topic or two in mind, you should see me for bibliographical help. This form of a final exam will require more work on your part than the in-class test, so students who take this form of the final will receive a bonus added to their final average in the course. The bonus will be 6 points for an A, 4 points for a B, and 2 points for a C (with interpolated points for intermediate grades). This bonus is in addition to the contribution that the paper itself will make to your final grade.

CLASS PARTICIPATION: Philosophy is a process of proposing and refining ideas through intellectual give-and-take. For students class discussion is a primary locus for this give-and-take. So I value greatly your participation in class discussion, and I will reward good participation with an appropriate upward adjustment of your final average in the course. On the other hand, I will be unlikely to make any modifications of the averages of students who say nothing in class. The study questions for each assignment should help you know at least some of the issues that will be discussed in class.

EXTRA CREDIT: I want to encourage you to think about the metaphysical and epistemological ideas we will be studying and to discuss them among yourselves, so I will offer you the opportunity to gain extra credit by posting comments in the Discussion Folder for this course. The comments may be (1) questions, agreements, or disagreements with what we have read and discussed in class or (2) comments on other comments. I will regularly check the class folder, and I may occasionally contribute comments of my own, but basically this is your chance to express yourself in conversation with your classmates. The amount of extra credit you earn will depend on the quantity, quality, and timeliness of your comments. (By timeliness I mean how soon after an issue was raised in class or in an earlier comment, you write your own comment. I want to encourage you to check the Discussion Folder frequently.)

CHEATING AND PLAGIARISM: Cases of suspected cheating or plagiarism will be turned over to the Judicial System. All written work submitted in this course should be pledged to be your own, in accordance with the provisions of the Wofford Honor Code, which can be found at http://www.wofford.edu/studentlife/honor_code.pdf

ASSIGNMENT SHEET FOR PHILOSOPHY 345, Fall 2008

The following assignment sheet indicates what we shall read and the rate at which I hope to cover the material. But I am not sure that we will be able to keep up this schedule, though I do not know which assignments may take more time than I have allotted. If we cannot keep to this schedule, I will make adjustments in the assignments for Pojman. You are expected to have completed reading the assignment before you come to class on the day for which it is assigned. This expectation holds even for those few reading assignments for which two class periods are scheduled; i.e., you should finish the entire reading assignment by the first of the two periods.

I have distributed study questions for each assignment. The purpose of these questions is to help you focus on material that I think is especially important and/or interesting. You should be sure you are able to answer these questions when you come to class, or be prepared to ask me about them. However, you are not restricted to the issues in these questions. Please feel free to raise for discussion any issues that the readings raise for you.

DATE ASSIGNMENT

First Unit: Metaphysics

What is Metaphysics?

2/6 Taylor, Introduction & Ch. 1 & 2. Focus especially on Ch. 2.

Persons, Minds and Bodies

2/8 Taylor, Chs. 3 & 4

2/11 Handout (dualism)

2/13 Handout (materialism–the identity theory)

2/15 Handout (emergentism)

Persons and Personal Identity

2/18 Handout (panexperientialism)

2/20 Perry, First Night (Ch. 1)

2/22 No class

2/25 Perry, Second Night (Ch. 2)

2/27 Perry, Third Night (Ch. 3)

2/29 Handout

3/3 Handout

Personal Identity, Responsibility, and Polarity

3/5 Taylor, Ch. 12 and Handout (Carter)

Causality, Determinism, and Fate

3/7 Taylor, Ch. 10

3/10 Taylor, Ch. 5

3/12 Handout (Hartshorne on Indeterminism and Free Will)

God and the Principle of Sufficient Reason; Meaning in Life

3/14 Taylor, Chs. 11 & 13

3/17 Catch-up and review

3/19 FIRST TEST

Second Unit: Epistemology

NOTE: I am not distributing study questions on Pojman’s book because he includes study questions at the end of each chapter. I think that generally they are all worthwhile, but I have indicated in parentheses after each reading assignment the questions on which I particularly wish to focus.

3/21 Read “Word to the Student” on pp. xv-xvi and Pojman, Chp. 1 ( 2, 6, 7, 8, 10).

3/24 Pojman, Chp. 3 (2, 3, 5, 8, 9); you may omit the sections on pp. 51-55.

3/26 Pojman, Chp. 4 (2, 3, 4, 6)

3/28 Pojman, Chp. 5 (1, 3, 6, 7, 8)

4/7 Pojman, Chp. 6 (1, 2, 3, 4)

4/9 Pojman, Chp. 7 (1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10)

4/11 Pojman, Chp. 7 (cont.)

4/14 Pojman, Chp. 8 (1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9)

4/16 Pojman, Chp. 8 (cont.)

4/18 Pojman, Chp. 9 (1, 3, 4, 5)

4/21 Pojman, Chp. 10 (1, 4, 5, 6)

4/23 Pojman, Chp. 12 (1, 4, 5, 6, 7)

4/25 Pojman, Chp. 15 (1, 2, 5, 6)

4/28 Pojman, Chp. 16 (1, 2, 3, 4)

4/30 Pojman, Chp. 17 (2, 4, 5, 6)

5/2 Pojman, Chp. 19 (1, 2, 3, 4)

5/5 Review and Catch-up

5/7 SECOND TEST

5/9 SECOND PAPER DUE