Phil 107, Languages and Minds

Email: cbritton@ucr.edu

Meets in CHASS INTN 1006, Tuesday/Thursday, 9:30-10:50am.

Office Hours for Fall 2023: HMNSS 3218, Tuesday/Thursday, 11am-12pm.

The syllabus for the course can be found here.

The question/suggestion box can be found here.

My Zoom meeting room for office hour appointments can be found here.

Important Dates

10/27: Paper #1 due

11/17: Paper #2 due

12/08: Paper #3 and journal due.

Assignments

Paper #1 Prompt

Paper #2 Prompt

Week 1

Schedule

• Tueday, 10/03: Read “Thinking” by Antony.

• Thursday, 10/05: Start reading “Thinking With Maps” by Camp (we likely won’t get to this until next Tuesday; feel free skim pages 16-25 if you get that far and skip pages 25 onward except for the conclusion).

Lecture Slides

• Thursday, 09/28

• Tuesday, 10/03

• Thursday, 10/05

Useful Links

• Talk by Chomsky on Descartes’ argument and some of the historical background to it (most relevant part around 7:30)

• SEP Article on the language of thought hypothesis

• New Yorker article on a possible language that lacks recursion

• SEP Article on the computational theory of mind

• YouTube video explaining Turing machines

• Turing machine simulator

Week 2

Schedule

• Tuesday, 10/10: Start reading “Thinking With Maps” by Camp (feel free skim pages 16-25 if you get that far and skip pages 25 onward except for the conclusion).

• Thursday, 10/12: Read “Rational Animals” by Davidson.

Slides

• Tuesday, 10/10

• Thursday, 10/12

Useful Links

• SEP article on mental representations (highly recommend).

• Overview of some of the science on cognitive maps

• Article by the psychologist Edward Tolman, which is foundational to the cognitive map literature

• Brief interview with neuroscientist John O’Keefe on the neurology underlying cognitive maps

• Longer, more in-depth talk by O’Keefe on the same topic

• A third talk by O’Keefe.

Week 3

Readings

• Tuesday, 10/17: Finish reading “Thinking With Maps” by Camp;

• Thursday, 10/19: Read “Rational Animals” by Davidson

Slides

• Tuesday, 10/17

• Thursday, 10/19

Useful Links

• Video of place cell activation in a rat running a maze

• Video of a Boston Dynamics robot that makes use of map-like representations to navigate.

• Video of split-brain patient

Week 4

Readings

• Tuesday, 10/24: Read “Pre-Linguistic Thought” by Gallistel

• Thursday, 10/26: Read “Meaning” by Grice

Slides

• Tuesday, 10/24

• Thursday, 10/26

Useful Links

• Academic talk on dead reckoning in ants

• BBC video on the honeybee waggle dance

• IEP article on animal minds (includes a section on Davidson and some of his arguments)

• Good talk by the philosopher Fred Dretske on animal minds

• Article on philosophical writing and an objection to Grice from Millikan

Week 5

Readings

• Tuesday, 10/31: Read “Meaning” by Grice

• Thursday, 11/02: Reading “Meaning Theory and Austistic Speakers” by Glüer and Pagin

Slides

• Tuesday, 10/31

• Thursday, 11/02

Useful Links

• Video on Grice’s theory of conversational implicatures

• Grice’s paper “Logic and Conversation,” the paper where he gives his famous theory of conversational implicatures

• SEP article on theories of meaning (Grice is under section 3.1)

Week 6

Readings

• Tuesday, 11/07: Read “Meaning and Reference” by Putnam

• Thursday, 11/09: Start reading “Wide Content” by Egan (we will likely only just start this on Thursday)

Slides

• Slides, Tue 11-07

• Slides, Thurs 11-09

Useful Links

• IEP article on semantic externalism (Putnam is the first section).

• SEP article on externalism about mental content

• Talk by Putnam on semantic externalism

• Putnam’s paper “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’,” which is a longer version of “Meaning and Reference” and covers some further issues

Week 7

Readings

• Tuesday, 11/14: Read “Wide Content” by Egan.

• Tuesday, 11/16: Continue reading Egan.

Slides

• Slides, 11/14

• Slides, 11/16

Useful Links

• SEP article on externalism about mental content

Week 8

Readings

• Tuesday, 11/21: Read “Biosemantics” by Millikan

• Tuesday, 11/23: NO CLASS

Slides

Useful Links

• SEP article on teleological theories of mental content (of which Millikan's theory is an instance)

• Decent summary of some of Millikan's positions

Week 9

Readings

• Tuesday, 11/28: Finish reading “Biosemantics” by Millikan

• Thursday, 11/30: Read “Swampman Meets Swampcow” by Neander

Week 10

Readings

• Tuesday, 11/28: Read “ChatGPT is No Stochastic Parrot. But it also Claims that 1 + 1 is Greater than 2” by Arkoudos

Some Further Readings