PHIL/LING 332. Philosophy of Language

PHIL/LING 332: Philosophy of Language

Spring 2003

Do make sure to reload this page in your browser when checking if new assignments have been posted.
You might like to check out this web site: November's Great Moments in Logic, a page from the website of Greg Restall (a philosophy professor at Melbourne) introducing a logician a day (with pictures) for each day in November (2001).

Reading Assignments:

20-29 Jan 03: Frege, "On Sense and Nominatum."
29-31 Jan 03: Russell, "On Denoting," "Descriptions."
3-7 Feb 03: Russell, "On Denoting," "Descriptions," "Knowledge by Acquaintance." You can skim "Knowledge by Acquaintaince" (copies of which were handed out during lecture). Please also start reading Peter Straswon's paper "On Refering."
10-14 Feb 03: Strawson, "On Referring"; Donnellan., "Reference and Definite Descriptions"; Kripke, "Speaker's Reference and Semantic Reference".
19-21 Feb 03: Quine: "Two Dogmas of Empiricism," "Three Grades of Modal Involvement" and "Reference and Modality." (Read one, skim the other.)
24-28 Feb 03: You should start reading Lecture I of Naming and Necessity by Wednesday, and finish it for Friday's class.
Also make sure to have read the Quine: "Two Dogmas of Empiricism," and either "Three Grades of Modal Involvement" or "Reference and Modality." (Read one, preferably "Three Grades," skim the other.) (Note that for now, we're skipping the Searle article from the syllabus.)
3-14 March 03: Naming and Necessity Lectures I and II.
24-26 MArch 03: Naming and Necessity Lecture III; "Meaning and Reference," by Hilary Putnam.
31 March - 4 April: As mentioned last Wednesday and Friday in lecture, our reading for this week (a lot of it!) is Gareth Evans's paper "The Causal Theory of Names," Appendix to Chapter 5 of Michael Dummett's Frege: Philosophy of Language, and Gareth Evans's "Reference and Contingency." You should also look at the Preface to Naming and Necessity (much of which is intended as a reply to Dummett).
9-14 April: "Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes" by W.V. Quine (Martinich).
14-16 April: "Quantifying In" (1968) by David Kaplan (Martinich).
16-21 April: "A Puzzle about Belief" (1979) by Saul Kripke (Martinich).
21-25 April "The Problem of the Essential Indexical" (1979) by John Perry (Martinich).
25-30 April: "Logic and Conversation" (1975) by H.P. Grice (Martinich).
30 April - 2 May: "Pragmatics" (1972) by Robert Stalnaker (Course Packet).

Final Exam:

The final exam will be a 24-hour take-home exam. You will be allowed to consult your books and your notes but not each other. You should make an appointment with me (by email, subject heading "332 final") to pick your exam from me. You will then return it to me 24 hours later. As I've said, the best thing you can do to study is to re-read the papers we've discussed and have some kind of outline for each, and then fill in as many details in your outlines as you have time for, striving to have good coverage of the most central texts, as well as good distribution over the different topics. The latest time you may turn in your exam is: Tuesday 13 May, 2:30PM (which is when the scheduled in-class final would have ended).

If you are caught plagiarizing or cheating in anyway, you will fail the course.

Fourth Paper Assignment

Third Paper Assignment

Second Paper Assignment

First Paper Assignment

Instructor

Prof. Delia Graff
Email: d e l i a . g r a f f @ c o r n e l l . e d u
Office: 322 Goldwin Smith Hall
Office Hours: Thursday: 10:30-12:00

Course Info

Time: MWF 11:15 - 12:05
Room: Rockefeller B15

Course Description

This course is an introduction to 20th century philosophy of language. The three main topics of the course will be: (i) Reference and Descriptions, (ii) Naming, Necessity and Externalism, and (iii) Propositional Attitudes. We begin the semester with Frege's 1892 paper "On Sense and Reference." We then continue with the debate about the semantics of descriptions, reading papers from Russell, Strawson, Donnellan and Kripke. The next unit of the course begins with Quine's "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" and "Three Grades of Modal Involvement," then focuses on Kripke's Naming and Necessity and its aftermath (papers by Evans, Dummett, Putnam and Burge). For the final unit of the course, we study classic papers on propositional attitudes (and their ascriptions) by Frege, Quine, Kaplan, Kripke and Perry.

Course Syllabus: (PDF File)

This page created by Delia Graff
URL: http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/research/graff/phil332/spring03.html
Last modified: "Friday, 18 Apr 03, 16:28"