SFI004 - PHILOSOPHY OF MIND AND LANGUAGE

Introduction to basic concepts of philosophy of science (with a particular focus on philosophy of mind and language): epistemological thesis, ontological thesis, physicalism and anti-physicalism, realism and anti-realism, monism, dualism, levels of description and explanation, reductionism and anti-reductionism, semantics and language games, semantics and truth conditions, identity relations and supervenience relations, multiple realizability vs. one-to-one correspondence, substantialist and anti-substantialist conceptions of the mind, intentional actions, intentional states (or propositional attitudes), personal identity and moral identity.
A brief history of the mind-body problem.
Substance dualism and the problem of mental causation.
Psychological behaviorism.
From the Cartesian substantialist tradition that links the mind to consciousness to the anti-substantialist tradition that recovers the classical thesis of the mind as a faculty or set of capacities.
From consciousness to capacity: the linguistic path to capacity, the anti-realism of Gilbert Ryle, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Wittgensteinians Elisabeth Anscombe and Anthony Kenny.
From consciousness to capacity: the anti-reductionist physicalist path to capacity, Chomsky and representational innatism in linguistics, classical intentional realism, Fodor's scientific intentional realism.
From consciousness to capacity: the reductionist physicalist path to capacity, the mind-brain identity theory.
Character and merit: theories of responsibility based on the notion of character, the non-causalist side and Anscombe's theory of action, the causalist side.
Consciousness and will: theories of responsibility based on the notion of conscious choice.
Some borderline cases: the responsibility of the sleepwalker, a dilemma that is both legal and theoretical.
Theories of the mind as a faculty of practical reasoning; the centrality of the concept of capacity for action and responsibility; rationality, mental disorders, and imputability.
Causality, “fault,” and responsibility.