PHL 255 Homepage

SYLLABUS

IMPORTANT DATES

• First Draft of Paper 1: Oct. 9
• Final Draft of Paper 1: Oct. 29
• First Draft of Paper 2: Nov. 14
• Final Draft of Paper 2: Dec. 5

PAPER ASSIGNMENTS

• First Paper Assignment
• Second Paper Assignment
• How Not to Plagiarize
• Some useful links on writing philosophy papers:
  • Peter Horban's "Writing a Philosophy Paper"
  • Jim Pryor's "Guidelines on Writing a Philosophy Paper"
• UTM Submit Website and Instructions for Using UTM Submit

STUDY QUESTIONS

• List of study questions for the final exam

READINGS

• Science and Pseudoscience
  • Week 1: Basic Epistemology
    • Rene Descartes, First Meditation of Meditations on First Philosophy
    • David Hume, excerpt from Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
    • Bertrand Russell, Chapters 1,4, and 6 of The Problems of Philosophy
  • Week 2: Positivism
    • A.J. Ayer, excerpts from Language, Truth, and Logic
  • Week 3: Falsificationism
  • Karl Popper, excerpt from The Logic of Scientific Discovery
• Science as Social Practice
• Week 4: Revolutions and Paradigms
• Thomas Kuhn, chapters 1-3 of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
• Example of the theory-ladenness of observation: an excerpt from a New Yorker profile on Patricia and Paul Churchland
• Week 5: More on Revolutions and Paradigms
  • Thomas Kuhn, chapters 3-6 of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
• Week 6: Still More on Revolutions and Paradigms
  • Thomas Kuhn, chapters 7-10 of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
• Science and Religion
• Week 7: Creationism & The Design Argument
  • Michael Ruse, "Creation Science is not Science"
  • Larry Laudan, "Science at the Bar—Causes for Concern"
• Elliott Sober, "The Design Argument"
  • Fonts for fixing the Sober file: WPMathA and WPGreek
• Science and Reality
• Week 8: Scientific Realism -- Constructive Empiricism
• Bas van Fraassen, "Arguments Concerning Scientific Realism"
• Week 9: Scientific Realism -- Convergent Realism
  • Larry Laudan, "A Confutation of Convergent Realism"
  • Marc Lange, "Baseball, Pessimistic Inductions, and the Turnover Fallacy"
• Week 10: More on Scientific Realism
  • John Worrall, "How to Remain (Reasonably) Optimistic"
  • James Brown, "Explaining the Success of Science"
• Week 11: Scientific Realism -- Experimental Realism
  • Ian Hacking, "Experimentation and Scientific Realism"
• Science and Feminism
• Week 12: Feminist Epistemology
  • Janet Radcliffe Richards, "Why Feminist Epistemology Isn't"
  • Kathleen Okruhlik, "Gender and the Biological Sciences"

NOTES

• Descartes and Hume
• Idealism
• Logical Positivism
• Falsificationism