Archive 2007-2008
Nov 7th, 2007 by bronzo
FALL
- 28 Sept
Charles Travis (Kings College)
“The Place of Visual Experience in Frege’s Philosophy of Mind”
5 Oct
Kristin Boyce (Chicago)
“Philosphy and Literature Reconsidered”
19 Oct
Ben McMyler (Chicago)
“Three Models of Epistemic Dependence”
26 Oct
Ed Witherspoon (Colgate)
“Wittgensteinian Criteria and Skepticism about Other Minds”
2 Nov
Warren Goldfarb (Harvard)
“Wittgenstein Against Logicism”
9 Nov
Tom Lockhart (Chicago)
“What Kind of a Foundationalist was Frege?”
- Backgroud reading:
1) P. Benacerraf, “Frege: The Last Logicist”
2) G. Boolos: “Reading the Begriffsschrift” PDF
3) T. Burge: “Frege on Knowing Foundations” PDF
16 Nov
Vincent Descombes (EHESS, France)
“Paradigms of Necessity” (handout)
- Background reading:
1) Descombes, Paradigms of Necessity (French)
2) Wittgenstein, Lectures on the Foudations of Mathematics, 1939, lecture XXV
30 Nov
Zed Adams (Chicago)
“Ethical Objetivity”
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Background reading:
1) Wiggins, “Objectivity in Ethics”
2) Dworkin, “Objectivity and Truth: You’d better beleive it”
WINTER
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11 Jan
Nat Hansen (Chicago)
“Three Debunking Arguments”
- Background reading:
1) F. Recanati, “Contextualism: How Far Can We Go?” (in “Literal Meaning”, Ch. 9)
2) J. Searle, “Literal Meaning”
3) Ch. Travis, “Determination” (in “Thought’s Footing”, Ch. 4)
18 Jan
Thomas Land (Chicago)
“Kant’s Spontaneity Thesis”
1:30-4:30, Cobb 102 (map)
- Background reading:
1) Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Sections 15, 26, 27;
2) Kant, Letters to J.S. Beck, 20 Jan 1792, 3 July 1792, 16 Oct 1792; here is also the German text, since the translation is sometimes unreliable;
3) H. Allison, “On Naturalizing Kant’s Transcendental Psychology”
25 Jan
Matthias Haase (Basel Universitaet)
“The Representation of Language”
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Both a Long Version and a Short Version of the paper are here available.
1 Feb
Nancy Bauer (Tufts)
Bauer-”What Is To Be Done With Austin?”
- Background reading:
1) J.L. Austin’s book “How To Do Things With Words” is the general background of the talk;
2) More specifically, J. Searle, “Austin On Locutionary And Illocutionary Acts;
3) R. Langton, Speech Acts and Unspeechable Acts.
7 Feb
Michael Williams (Johns Hopkins)
“Pragmatism, Expressivism, Minimalism”
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Background reading: David Macarthur & Huw Price, “Pragmatism, Quasi-Realism and the Global Challange
15 Feb
Peter Murray (Chicago)
“Philosophical Exorcisms, Second Nature, and McDowell”
22 Feb
Piergiorgio Donatelli (University of Rome “La Sapienza”)
“Ethics, Imagination and the Concept of Human Nature”
- Another relevant paper by Donatelli: “The Problem of the Higher in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus”
29 Feb
Jonathan Ellis (Santa Cruz)
“Phenomenal Character and Philosophical Introspection”
7 March
Gary Ebbs (Indiana)
“Carnap and Quine on Truth by Convention”
- Background readings:
Carnap, “The Logical Syntax of Language”, §§ 59-61
Carnap, “Foundations of Logic and Mathematic, §12
Carnap, “W.V.Quine on Logical Truth”
Quine, “Lecture I on Carnap”, 1934
Quine, “Truth by Convention”
Quine, “Carnap on Logical Truth”
14 March
Silver Bronzo (Chicago, graduate student)
“Context, Compositionality and Nonsense in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus”
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Background reading:
Hans-Johann Glock, “All Kinds of Nonsense”, pp. 221-231.
19 March
Michael Luntley (Warwick, UK)
“Learning How To Go On”
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Background Readings:
1) Meredith Williams,“The Philosophical Significance of Learning in Later Wittgenstein”, in her Wittgenstein, Mind and Meaning: towards a social conception of mind;
2) Meredith Williams,“The Etiology of the Obvious: Wittgenstein and the Elimination of Indeterminacy” , in Wittgenstein in America.
SPRING
3 April
Alva Noe (Berkeley)
“Presence in Pictures”
4 April
Aidan Gray (Chicago, graduate student)
“The Predicate View of Names”
Please note that the version of the paper here available is only a draft; the author apologizes for the typos; please do not cite or circulate without permission.
11 April
Hans Schneider (Potsdam)
“Wittgenstein’s Conception of Ethics:
Absolute Value and the Ineffable”(Abstract)
- Background reading:
1) The text of the talk has been sent out through the WW mailing list;
2) “W. James and L. Wittgenstein: A Philosophical Approach to Spirituality”
3) You might be interested in a List of English Publications by Schneider.
18 April
Julia Tanney (University of Kent, UK)
“Conceptual Analysis, Theory Construction and Conceptual Elucidation in the Philosophy of Mind”
1:30-4:30, Stuart, Cobb 115 (map)
- Background Reading:
1) The text of the talk has been sent out through the WW mailing list
2) S. Stich, “What is a Theory of Mental Representation?
25 April
Sandra Laugier (Universite’ Picardie Jules Verne, France)
“Wittgenstein and Cavell on the Importance of Importance”
- Background Reading:
1) S. Cavell, “The Claim of Reason”, Chapter V
2) S. Cavell, “The Pursuit of Happiness”, Introduction
3) C. Diamond, “Moral Differences and Distances” Part 1/Part 2
4) List of further, optional, readings: Further Suggestions
2 May
Jocelyn Benoist (Université Paris-I Panthéon-Sorbonne, France)
“Husserl and Wittgenstein on Intention and Fulfillment”
ABSTRACT
- Background Reading:
1) Husserl, Edmund: Logical Investigations, trans. by J.N. Findlay, London, Routledge, 1970, First Part (Prolegomena to Pure Logic), ch.VIII, §§49-51 (vol.1, p. 115-122); Second Part, Vth Logical Investigation: §§10-14 (vol.2, p.95-106), and ‘Appendix to §11 and §20’ (vol.2, p.125-127); VIth Logical Investigation, §§6-10 (vol.2, p.201-211) and §16 (vol.2, p.226-228). [PDF1] [PDF2]
2) Russell, Bertrand: The Analysis of Mind, London : G. Allen & Unwin / New York : Humanities Press, 1978 : Lecture I. [PDF]
3) Wittgenstein, Ludwig: Philosophical Grammar, ed. by Rush Rhees, trans. by Anthony Kenny, Oxford, Blackwell, 1974: Part I, Chapters VII-VIII. [PDF]
4) Wittgenstein, Ludwig: Philosophical Remarks, ed. by Rush Rhees, trans. by Raymond Hargreaves and Roger White, 1975: Chapter III. [PDF]
9 May
Richard Strier (University of Chicago)
“The Struggle Against Symbolism:
Successes and Failures in Stanley Cavell’s Reading of Shakespeare” (PDF)
- Background Reading:
1) S. Cavell, “The Avoidance of Love: A Reading of King Lear”
2) Paul Alpers, “King Lears and the Theory of Sight Patterns”;
3) S. Cavell,“Coriolanus and the Interpretation of Politics”
4) Robert Heilman, “I Stumbled When I Saw: The Sight Pattern”.
16 May
Jennifer Ryan Lockhart (University of Chicago, graduate student)
“Nonsense and Common Sense:
How to Read Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Fragments”
- Background Reading:
1)Stephen Evans, “The Role of Irony in Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Fragments”
2)Stephen Mulhall, “God’s Plagiarist” The Philosophical Fragments of Johannes Climacus”
23 May
Joshua Schwartz (University of Chicago, graduate student)
“On the so-called Antinomy of the Variable”
- Background Reading:
1) Kit Fine, “The Role of Variables”
2) Quine, “Variables Explained Away”, republished in “Selected Logic Papers”, enlarged edition, Cambridge: Harvard, 1995. p. 225.
30 May
Reshef Agam-Segal (University of Chicago, Visiting Scholar from Oxford)
“Contours and Barriers: What is to Draw the Limits of Moral Language?”
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1) R.F. Holland, “Is Goodness a Mistery?”
Further, OPTIONAL background reading:
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2) Cora Diamond’s “Secondary Sense” in: The Realistic Spirit, Cambridge, Mass: MIT, 1991, pp. 225-41
3) Ludwig Wittgenstein’s “Lecture on Ethics” The Philosophical Review, Vol. 74(1), 1965, pp. 3-12
4) R. F. Holland’s “The Miraculous” in: Against Empiricism, Toowa: Barnes & Noble, 1990, pp. 169-87
5) R. F. Holland’s “For Ever?” in: Against Empiricism, Toowa: Barnes & Noble, 1990, pp. 188-209
6) Sabina Lovibond’s *Ethical Formation*, Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University press, 2002, Part 1
7) Richard Rorty’s *Contingency, Irony and Solidarity*, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, introduction and chapter 1
6 June
Arata Hamawaki (Auburn University)
“Kant, McDowell and Cavell on the Significance of Self-consciousness”
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Background Reading:
Ginsborg, “Was Kant a Non-Conceptualist?”