PHL471: Philosophy of Mind
Professor: Craig DeLancey
Office: CC212C
Email: delancey@oswego.edu



Current Assignments
I do not accept homeworks by email!

9 December
Free will.
Read Wegner's "The Mind's Best Trick."
Lead: Alessandro Trimarchi.


Tentative assignments (these will change substantially)
12 December
Exam and papers due.

Papers: before 5:00 p.m. at my office in hard copy.

Final exam: 10:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. in Campus Center 142. Questions could include (but not be limited to):
  • What are: interactive substance dualism; physicalistic reduction; eliminativism; functionalism; behaviorism; interpretationism; epiphenomenalism?
  • What is William James's view of the nature of emotion?
  • What is a cognitivist theory of emotion, such as the belief-desire theory, a judgment theory, or the new pure cognitive theory of Nash?
  • What problems might there be with a cognitivist theory of emotions (other than emoting for fictions)? How might the cognitivist answer those concerns?
  • Why might emoting for fiction pose a problem for the cognitivist theory of emotion?
  • What is the Knowledge Argument? What is it meant to show? Describe Jackson's thought experiment.
  • What are the modal arguments? What are they meant to show?
  • Why is there a problem of personal identity? That is, why isn't it just obvious that you are you, now and before?
  • What is a person for Locke? What makes a person the same person during a period of conscious awareness? What links this person over periods when consciousness ends or is interrupted?
  • What is Hume's criticism of personal identity claims like Locke's?
  • What kind of problems do split brain patients raise for our thinking about the self? Why might they lead one to worry about whether there are several selves?
  • What two examples for externalism do Clark and Chalmers offer. What four criteria do they propose for something external to count as part of the cognitive system?
  • Why does the Soon et al result, and other results like it, cast doubt on our common sense view of free action? Explain that common sense view, explain their results, and show the apparent inconsistency between the two.