Knowledge and Reality | Spring 2011

PHIL 2610| Tues/Thurs 2:55–4:10 | Rockefeller 103

Assistant Professor Nico Silins | ns338@cornell.edu

Office Hours: Weds 3:00-4:00 or (easily) by appointment, at 219 Goldwin Smith Hall

Course Description

A survey of classic and contemporary issues about knowledge and rationality.

Required Texts

All readings will be available on Blackboard or elsewhere online.

Evaluation

Three 2-3 page writing exercises: 50%

These writing assignments will consist of short essays about the readings and lecture material. Each assignment will determine 16 2/3% of your final grade.

One 5-7 page paper: 30%

Participation: 20%

The participation grade is based on your overall engagement with the course, including attendance, classroom discussion, participation in office hours, and so on.

A key component will be a weekly email to the teacher of your section. This email should directly respond to the readings of the week, in roughly 50 to 150 words.

Policies

You must read the assigned material before class. The reading assignments will sometimes be short but will require careful study. I strongly recommend reading each assignment twice.

Attendance in lecture and section is crucial to doing well in the course. The

lectures will introduce material not covered in the readings. And having a reasoned discussion of philosophy is one of the best ways to learn how to do philosophy.

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).

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.

I am more than happy to accommodate religious holidays, but please give me advance notice of any such accommodation you might need.

1/27: Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, pages 1-4, at < http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/pdfbits/dm1.pdf>

Part One: The Ethics of Belief

2/1, 2/3: What should we believe?

Clifford, “The Ethics of Belief”, selection | James, “The Will to Believe”, selection

2/8, 2/10: Pay-offs of Belief

Pascal, Pensées, selection | Kelly, “The Rationality of Belief and Some Other Propositional Attitudes”, sections 1-2

2/15, 2/17: Is there ever anything we should believe?

Alston, “The Deontological Conception of Epistemic Justification”, sections 1-5

Feldman, “The Ethics of Belief”, sections 1-2

*****First writing exercise due at 5pm on Monday 2/21*****

Part Two: The Rationality of Belief

2/22, 2/24: The structure of rational belief 1

Bonjour, “Can Empirical Knowledge Have a Foundation?”, sections 1-3

Pryor, “There is Immediate Justification”

3/1, 3/3: The structure of rational belief 2

Bonjour, The Structure of Empirical Knowledge, selection | Goldman, “Internalism Exposed”

Part Three: Knowledge and the Limits of Knowledge

3/8, 3/10: The nature of knowledge

Gettier, “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” | Nozick, Philosophical Explanations, selection

*****Second writing exercise due at 5pm on Monday 3/14*****

3/15, 3/17: Safety from Error

Sosa, “How to Defeat Opposition to Moore” | Sosa, “Dreams and Philosophy”

3/29, 3/31: Shifting standards for ‘knowledge’

Cohen, “Contextualism, Skepticism, and the Structure of Reasons”

4/5, 4/7: Dismissing skepticism

Pryor, “The Skeptic and the Dogmatist”

*****Third writing exercise due at 5pm on Monday 4/11*****

4/12, 4/14: The value of knowledge

Kaplan, “It’s Not What You Know That Counts” | Pritchard, “The Value of Knowledge”

4/19, 4/21: Disagreement and relativism

Boghossian, Fear of Knowledge, selection

4/26, 4/28: How should we respond to disagreement?

Sher, “But I Could Be Wrong” | Kelly, “The Epistemic Significance of Disagreement”

5/3, 5/5: The limits of self-knowledge

Williamson, “Anti-Luminosity” | Schwitzgebel, “The Unreliability of Naïve Introspection”

*****Final paper due at 5pm on Wednesday 5/11*****