Very good news -- the 2006 TOC Graduate Seminar

[Roger Bissell]

This year's TOC Graduate Seminar in Objectivist Philosophy and Method will be held in at George Washington University in Washington D.C. August 6-11, 2006 and will focus on the Objectivist metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of mind. Since the mind-body problem has long been one of my most intense points of interest in philosophy (see this 1973 essay: http://members.aol.com/REBissell/indexmm3.html), I am very pleased and excited to report that I will be attending this seminar.

Three years ago (June 2003), at the TOC Advanced Seminar in Waltham, Massachusetts, both Diana Hsieh and I presented papers on this subject. This was right around the time that Diana began to be disaffected with TOC (see especially paragraphs 4 and 5 of this post: http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog/2004/02/pub...-statement.html), so she has been out of the loop for the recently instituted annual graduate seminars. And what a shame, especially considering the obvious high quality of this year's seminar. It should prove to be a very well organized and high-octane reprise of our 2003 paper topics, just the kind of thing that was lacking in TOC's earlier, struggling years. It is a welcome sign that TOC's academic efforts have turned the corner and that they are going to be more of a force to be reckoned with in the scholarly and intellectual world.

Here are links to the TOC announcement and syllabus pages:

http://www.objectivistcenter.org/ct-1658-GS06.aspx

http://www.objectivistcenter.org/cth--1701...abusGS2006.aspx

Cheers, everyone!

REB

[Kat]

I hope some of you can join Roger at the TOC Graduate Seminar this summer. Here is a little more information on the program. I hope some of you can make it. It seems to be a very rigorous program. Here is an overview.

Schedule of topics and readings

There will be two 90-minute sessions each morning and afternoon, Monday-Friday, and evening sessions on Sunday and Tuesday. The schedule below describes the topics and readings for each day. One session each day has been reserved for the discussion of participants’ written work. The final schedule will depend on what particular topics participants choose to write about. Readings are given by author and title.

Sunday: Introduction

After a brief overview of the Seminar, this evening session will deal with the axioms of existence and consciousness; and the relationship between the mind-body problem and the “mind-body dichotomy” as described by Ayn Rand.

Rand, IOE, ch 6

Peikoff, OPAR, ch 1

Monday: Perception

The Objectivist theory: We will review the essential elements of the theory, focusing on perception as the awareness of entities and the distinction between form and object.

Kelley, ES, 44-51, 81-120

Perception and consciousness: Perception is a paradigm case of conscious experience, a topic of intensive debate in contemporary philosophy. We will discuss how the Objectivist view relates to the major issues in that debate, including subjectivity, “qualia,” and representationalism.

Nagel, “What Is It Like to be a Bat?”

Searle, Rediscovery of Mind, chap 6

Sosa, Philosophy of Mind, ch 8

Perceptual content: How does perceptual awareness differ from the conceptual level of cognition? What is the content of perception? Is the content conceptual?

Kelley, ES, chaps 5, 7

Huemer, Skepticism, ch 4. See also Huemer’s exchange with Armstrong in the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies: Armstrong, “A Direct Realist's Challenge to Skepticism,” 2004. 5/2, p 421; and Huemer, “How to be a Perceptual Realist,” 2005, 7/1, p 229

Tuesday: Concepts

The Objectivist theory: The abstractness and universality of concepts. Rand’s theory of concept-formation—similarity, units, “conceptual common denominator,” measurement-omission, abstraction from abstractions, definitions.

Rand, IOE, chaps 1-5; pp 137-52

Kelley, “Theory of Abstraction”

Meaning, reference, and analyticity: This session will relate Objectivism to core ideas in contemporary philosophy of language, focusing on

1) the distinctions between meaning and reference, and between analytic vs. synthetic truths;

2) the Kripke-Putnam theory of terms for natural kinds.

Peikoff, “Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy,” in IOE

Long, “Reference and Necessity”

Suggested background reading on Kripke-Putnam theory:

Schwartz (ed.), Naming, Necessity, and Natural Kinds. See “Introduction”; Saul Kripke, “Identity and Necessity”; Hilary Putnam, “Is Semantics Possible?” and “Meaning and Reference.”

Devitt & Sterelny, Language and Reality

Issues in the Objectivist theory: What does a concept designate? What is its cognitive content? How does the theory differ from realism and nominalism?

Peikoff, OPAR, 110-16

Rand, IOE, chaps 7-8; pp 163-83, 204-39

Wednesday: Knowledge

The concept of knowledge: comparing the Objectivism and other appoaches to defining knowledge; the concepts of evidence and justification; the hierarchical structure of knowledge

Rand, IOE, chap 4; pp 123-29

Peikoff, OPAR, 116-51

Kelley, “What is Knowledge?” and “Evidence and Justification”

Foundationalism vs. coherence theory in contemporary philosophy

Kelley, ES, ch 7

Kelley, “Evidence and Justification”

Recommended background reading on foundationalism debate:

Bonjour & Sosa, Epistemic Justification

DePaul, Resurrecting Old-Fashioned Foundationalism, essays by Fumerton, Bonjour, and Pollack, 3-58

Certainty: certainty and probability as degrees of evidence; the contextual nature of certainty; the lottery paradox and contemporary contextualist theories of justification.

Hawthorne , Knowledge and Lotteries, pp 1-7

Long, “Reason and Value: Aristotle versus Rand,” pp 5-33. See also commentary by Miller (65-84), and Long’s reply (101-22).

Thursday: Mind and Body

Objectivity and the primacy of existence: This will be an integrative session, showing how these concepts apply across all the specific issues; and how they cut through key dichotomies in contemporary philosophy such as consciousness vs. content, “wide” vs. “narrow” content, and internalism vs externalism.

McGinn, “Consciousness and Content”

The mind-body problem: How does Objectivism relate to the major theories such as dualism, physicalism, and functionalism?

Rand, IOE, 240-56

Suggested background reading on contemporary theories:

Kim, Philosophy of Mind ; Searle, Mind, chaps 2-3

Mental causation: How can mental states cause physical actions? What are the grounds for holding that consciousness is causally efficacious? What role does entity/agent causality play in the debate?

Suggested background reading on mental causation:

Kim, Philosophy of Mind, chap 7; Searle, Mind, chap 7

Friday

Reduction and emergence: Levels of organization in nature; emergent properties and causal powers

Searle, “Why I Am Not a Property Dualist”

Stephan, “Emergentism, Irreducibility, and Downward Causation”

Readings

As a graduate-level course, the Seminar will presuppose that you are familiar with Objectivism, and that you have access to the major works that are relevant to this year’s topic, including

Ayn Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (expanded 2nd ed., with excerpts from Epistemology Workshops) [iOE]

David Kelley, The Evidence of the Senses [ES]

Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand [OPAR]

The Seminar schedule includes a number of other works in the Objectivist literature, as required or recommended readings. Those published by The Objectivist Center will be provided free to participants on request. We expect to have copies of all other material available for distribution as well.

In the sessions that compare Objectivism with other approaches, we will be concerned with concepts, theories, and arguments that have become landmarks in contemporary philosophy. In some cases, there are landmark essays that have been included as required reading, such as Thomas Nagel’s essay “What Is It Like To Be a Bat?” In most cases, however, the syllabus provides one or more recommended readings as background for those who have not already encountered the ideas. Seminar participants who have other recommendations or requests are encouraged to contact the instructors; it may be possible to add them to the reading list.

The following sources are valuable for general background on contemporary epistemology and philosophy of mind:

Laurence Bonjour & Ernest Sosa, Epistemic Justification: Internalism vs. Externalism, Foundations vs. Virtues. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003). Each author has a long essay; between them they cover many of the major issues in epistemology.

Jaegwon Kim, Philosophy of Mind (Cambridge, MA: Westview Press, 2006). An introduction and overview of the field.

David J. Chalmers (ed.), Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). A collection of major articles.

The online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) has a number of useful articles on specific topics. David Chalmers, SEP editor for philosophy of mind, has compiled entries in that field in his Guide to the Philosophy of Mind.