Epistemology

Spring 2013

Time: Tues/Thurs 2:55-4:10PM

Instructor: Associate Professor Nico Silins

Office: 219 Goldwin Smith Hall

Office Hours: Tues 3-4 or (easily) by appointment

Email: ns338@cornell.edu

Course Description

You might think that we easily learn about the world through sources such as perception, testimony, and moral reflection. This course will survey challenges from psychology and neuroscience to these sources.

Required Texts

All readings will be available on Blackboard or elsewhere online.

Evaluation

Papers: 60%

Paper One: 7-12 pages. 30%.

Paper Two: 7-12 pages. 30%.

Reading Responses: 25%

You need to write a 250-500 word reading response to at least one text in each batch of texts we read. You need to submit it to me by email by noon on each Tuesday. Please note: this grade takes into account both the quality and quantity of your responses.

Participation: 15%

The participation grade is based on your overall engagement with the course, including attendance, classroom discussion, and individual meetings. Please note: it takes into account both the quality and quantity of your participation.

Policies

Late papers and assignments will be marked down by 1/3 of a letter grade for each day the paper is late (e.g., from A- to B+, from B+ to B, and so on). Extensions can be arranged based on need, with advance notice.

You are responsible for following Cornell’s Code of Academic Integrity, available at <http://cuinfo.cornell.edu/Academic/AIC.html>. For the record: plagiarism is sufficient grounds for an F in the course.

Also, there are many online resources about the material we will cover. Many of them are terrible. I would prefer that you not use any of them. If you do use some, make sure you cite them.

I will readily accommodate religious holidays and disabilities, but please give me advance notice of any such accommodation you might need.

Readings (subject to change)

1/22: Brief Course Introduction

Perception

1/24, 1/29: Observation and Theory Dependence

Fodor, “Observation Reconsidered”

Churchland, “Perceptual Plasticity and Theoretical Neutrality: A Reply to Fodor”

1/31, 2/5: Top-down Effects

Payne, “Mental Control and Visual Illusions: Explaining Race-Based Weapon Misidentifications”

Balcetis et al., “Wishful Seeing: More Desired Objects are Seen as Closer”

MacPherson, “Cognitive Penetration of Colour Experience”

2/7: The Implications of Top-down Effects

Siegel, “Cognitive Penetrability and Perceptual Justification”

2/12, 2/14: Memory and Testimony

Michaelian, “Generative Memory”

Michaelian, “The Information Effect: Constructive Memory, Testimony, and Epistemic Luck”

Simons, The Invisible Gorilla, selection

2/19, 2/21: Change Blindness

Dretske, “Change Blindness”, “What Change Blindness Teaches about Consciousness”

Tye, Consciousness Revisited, sections 7.1-2, 7.6

Simons, “Change Blindness”

2/26, 2/28: Consciousness and Attention

Prinz, “Is Attention Necessary and Sufficient for Consciousness?”

Koch and Tsuchiya, “Attention and Consciousness: Two Different Processes”

Lamme, “Why Visual Attention and Awareness are Different”

3/5, 3/7: Experience Beyond the Limits of Judgment

Block, “Consciousness, Accessibility, and the Mesh between Psychology and Neuroscience”, focus on sections 9-15

Stazicker, “Attention, Visual Consciousness, and Indeterminacy”

Phillips, “Perception and Iconic Memory: What Sperling Doesn’t Show”

3/12, 3/14: The Implications of Experience Beyond Judgment

Sosa, “Epistemic Justification”, selection

Smithies, “Mentalism and Epistemic Transparency”

Tye, “A New Look at the Speckled Hen”

*****First Paper due at 5pm on Friday 3/15*****

SPRING BREAK: no class on 3/19, 3/21

Self-Knowledge

3/26, 3/28: Threats to Self-Knowledge

Gopnick, “The Illusion of First-Person Knowledge of Intentionality”

Carruthers, “How We Know Our Own Minds”

Moral Judgment

4/2, 4/4: Evolutionary Challenges to Moral Judgment

Street, “A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value”

Vavova, “Debunking Evolutionary Debunking”

4/9, 4/11: Neuroscientific Challenges to Moral Judgment

Berker, “The Normative Insignificance of Neuroscience”

Greene, “The Secret Joke of Kant’s Soul”, selection

4/16, 4/18: Social Psychology Challenges to Moral Judgment

Sinnot-Armstrong, “Moral Intuitionism Meets Moral Psychology”

Schnall et al, “Disgust as Embodied Moral Judgment”

Lee et al, “Wiping the Slate Clean”

Implicit Bias

4/23, 4/25: The Nature and Implications of Implicit Bias

Mandelbaum, “Attitude, Inference, Association: On The Propositional Structure of Implicit Bias”

Gendler, “On the Epistemic Cost of Implicit Bias”

4/30, 5/2: Clairvoyants, Chicken-sexers, and Savants

Bonjour, “Externalist Theories of Empirical Knowledge”

Foer, Moonwalking with Einstein, selection

*****Final Paper due at 5pm on Friday 5/10*****