Meaning, Reason, and Possibility

David Chalmers

E-mail: [email protected]
Web: http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/
Office hours (Spring 2002): Wednesday 1:30-3pm (Social Sciences 226A)
Class meetings: Monday/Wednesday 3:30-5pm, Social Sciences 311.

Overview

This seminar is nominally listed as metaphysics, but it will address issues in the philosophy of language, metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of mind. The seminar will explore the constitutive connections among reason, meaning, and possibility.

Frege's notion of sense tied meaning to reason. Carnap's notion of intension tied meaning to possibility. In conjunction with a Kantian view connecting reason and possibility, this yielded a golden triangle of connections among the three notions. Kripke's work broke the triangle by severing meaning and possibility from reason. One might see the central focus of this seminar as the project of once again articulating an approach to meaning and possibility on which they are constitutively tied to reason, thus restoring the golden triangle.

We will be discussing a fair amount of my own recent work on these topics, as well as work by others. Topics to be discussed include:

• Fregean theories of meaning
• two-dimensional semantics
• epistemic possibility and epistemic space
• conceptual analysis and its role in metaphysics
• narrow content and the semantics of thought
• conceivability and possibility
• the mind-body problem

Readings

There is no textbook. Many readings will be available on the web, and other will be made available for photocopying in a folder in the department office.

Web page

The web page for the class is at

  http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/phil596b.html

Mailing list

I will set up a mailing list, [email protected], for class discussion.  Everyone enrolled in the class is expected to make reasonably regular contributions to this list: at least one reasonably substantial posting every week (you can miss three weeks without penalty), discussing issues arising from the readings, from class discussion, and from the mailing list itself.  Of course people are welcome and encouraged to post more often. These postings substitute for biweekly short papers of 1-2 pages each.

Assessment

Assessment will be based most heavily on a final paper, and will also be based on in-class presentations, mailing list contributions, and class participation.

Schedule

Here is a very approximate plan for the course, with associated readings.  This is very likely to be revised as things develop. 

Note that I will be out of town on quite a few meeting dates: Wed 1/23 (Cornell), Wed 2/6 (Rutgers), Wed 2/20 (ANU), Mon 2/25 (ANU), Wed 3/21 (North Carolina), Mon-Wed 4/8-10 (consciousness conference). These dates will be made up either by having double meetings on neighboring dates, or by rescheduling. I hope to have a more precise schedule of meetings soon.

Meeting 1 (Wed 1/9): Introduction

PART I: SENSE AND INTENSION

Meeting 2 (Mon 1/14): Frege on sense

• Frege, On sense and reference
• Chalmers, On sense and intension, sections 1-3

Meeting 3 (Mon 1/14): Carnap on intension

• Carnap, Meaning and Necessity, pp. 1-32
• Chalmers, The foundations of two-dimensional semantics, section 1.1

Meeting 4 (Wed 1/16): Epistemic intensions

• Chalmers, On sense and intension, section 4
• Chalmers, The foundations of two-dimensional semantics, sections 3.1-3.2

Meeting 5 (Tue 1/22, 6:30pm): Indexicality and centering

• Perry, Frege on demonstratives
• Chalmers, On sense and intension, section 5

Meeting 6 (Mon 1/28): Kripke's modal argument

• Kripke, Naming and Necessity, Lecture 1 (esp. pp. 39-63)

Meeting 7 (Wed 1/30): Two-dimensional intensions

• Chalmers, On sense and intension, section 6

Meeting 8 (Mon 2/4): Kripke's epistemic argument

• Kripke, Naming and Necessity, Lecture 2 (esp. pp. 79-97)
• Chalmers, On sense and intension, section 7

Meeting 9 (Mon 2/4): Variability

• Burge, Sinning against Frege
• Chalmers, On sense and intension, section 8

PART II: CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS AND THE SCRUTABILITY OF TRUTH

Meeting 10 (Mon 2/11): Conceptual analysis and scrutability

• Chalmers and Jackson, Conceptual analysis and reductive explanation, sections 1-4
• Chalmers, Does conceivability entail possibility, section on "Inscrutabilities"

Meeting 11 (Wed 2/13): Block and Stalnaker against scrutability

• Block and Stalnaker, Conceptual analysis, dualism, and the explanatory gap, sections 1-9
• Chalmers and Jackson, Conceptual analysis and reductive explanation, sections 5-6

Meeting 12 (Mon 2/18): Yablo against scrutability

• Stephen Yablo, Coulda, woulda, shoulda, especially section 20
• Chalmers, Does conceivability entail possibility, section on "modal rationalism and logical empiricism"

Meeting 13 (Mon 2/18): Hard cases

• Chalmers, Does conceivability entail possibility, second half of section on "inscrutabilities"

PART III: APRIORITY AND EPISTEMIC SPACE

Meeting 14 (Wed 2/27): Apriority

• Bonjour, In Defense of Pure Reason, Chapter 1

Meeting 15 (Wed 2/27): Quine against apriority Quine, Two dogmas of empiricism

Meeting 16 (Mon 3/4): Epistemic possibility and epistemic space

• Chalmers, The nature of epistemic space, sections 1-3

Meeting 17 (Wed 3/6): Scenarios as possible worlds

• Chalmers, The nature of epistemic space, section 4 Meeting 18 (Mon 3/18): Constructing possible worlds
• Lewis, Possible worlds
• Lewis, On the Plurality of Worlds, Chapter 3