Before you take this course, you should know what it is about, why it matters, and what you are pledging to do if you register for the class.

What are the questions that this course addresses?

• What kind of discipline is psychology?
• How can it best be done?
• What methods are required? What methods are best? What methods are not successful?
• Is psychology a science like physics? Is it a special kind of science? Is it not a science?
• Are there questions that psychology cannot answer? What kind of questions can it answer?

These questions matter because:

• This stuff is interesting.
• If you want to either understand psychology (as opposed to having just memorized some claims that psychologists have made), you should have grappled with these questions.
• If you ever want to do something creative with psychology, you must know what is really assumed in its history and methods.
• If you ever want to do something creative with any discipline with which you become involved, you should have the experience of considering deeply the foundations of a discipline.
• You have a mind, and should be interested in how it works, what keeps it healthy, what "healthy" means for a mind.

What is expected of the student?

• Commitment to our readings, and to reading them closely and with an eye to questioning their deepest presuppositions.
• Commitment to reasoning in a profound way about the foundations of a discipline. This is not a course for superficial memorization.
• Commitment to bringing a critical eye to the texts and theories, but also to the criticisms that are often made of these texts and theories.