Term:  

Spring Quarter

Dept Course No and Title Instructor
PHILOS (S18)242  ETHICS NATURALIZEDSTANFORD, P.
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PHILOS (S18)241  PHILOS OF COSMOLOGYWEATHERALL, J.
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PHILOS (S18)241  QUANTUM MECHANICSBARRETT, J.
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PHILOS (S18)230  TOPICS IN ETHICSHELMREICH, J.
Truth and Trust
The ethics of telling, promising and trusting, with readings from Hume, Kant, Scanlon, Gilbert, Shiffrin, Moran, and others.
PHILOS (S18)222  PHILOSOPHY OF MINDSMITH, D.
Theme: the structure of consciousness in inner awareness and perception.
We’ll explore Brentanian approaches in today’s philosophy of consciousness and of perception, with Husserlian models on the horizon along with my own “modal” model of inner awareness (featuring a conception of intentional modalities).

Course Description:
Franz Brentano launched “descriptive psychology” in his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874), on the heels of which Edmund Husserl then developed the discipline of phenomenology as the study of consciousness from the first-person perspective.
Brentano proposed that every act of consciousness includes both a presentation of an “intentional” object and an accompanying “inner consciousness” of that primary presentation. Both of these views are being explored in contemporary philosophy of mind, in particular, in analyses of phenomenological content and awareness-of-awareness.

We shall study two recent texts that develop theories of content and of inner awareness of experience, drawing on Brentano’s ideas in today’s context:
  Mark Textor, Brentano’s Mind (2017),
  Michelle Montague, The Given (2016).\r\nrn
After Brentano the notion of phenomenological content underwent important development: where, on Husserl’s analysis, an experience is directed toward an external object by virtue of an internal content or meaning. Beyond this basic structure of intentionality, however, lies the form of “inner consciousness” that Brentano sought to analyze. In effect, Husserl compressed inner awareness into “inner time-consciousness”. But we shall explore recent views of what makes an experience conscious, seeking the form of (self-) consciousness in light of several competing models of inner awareness.
PHILOS (S18)205C  INCOMPLETENESSSTANFORD, P.
Visit the Logic and Philosophy of Science website for more information.