Study Guide

Review Week

Materials Assigned for the Week
The Central Point of This Week's Material
Other Concepts and Points you are Expected To Master This Week
Miscellaneous Comments and Clarifications

I. Materials Assigned for the Week

Reading:

There are no new Lectures or Readings. But this is the time designed to go back and read the ones you haven't already. I recommend especially Descartes' Meditations 1-4 & 6, Hume's Induction Cannot Be Justified and Turing's Computing Machinery and Intelligence.

Exercises:

There are no new Exercises or Problems for Further Thought. But, again, this is the week to go back and do the ones you've skipped; going back at the end of the term you will have much to say which you would never have dreamed of saying the first time around. Trust me.

II. The Central Point of This Week's Material

This is not a week off. It is a week for reviewing the four units into which the course has been divided.

The nature of philosophical argument in general and three sorts of argument in particular - deduction, induction and abduction
The problem of properly defining the concept of knowledge and the problem of acquiring such knowledge of the world outside of one's private consciousness
The problem of minds and bodies - or more accurately, the problem of minds, mental expressions and mental states
The problem of free will and causality

At the end of the term you should have a better idea in retrospect of what these problems really are and what makes them philosophical ones as opposed to, say, puzzles in science or history or psychology.

III. Other Concepts And Arguments You Are Expected To Master This Week

There are no new points to master. But here is a check-list of concepts that are ripe for review:

The difference between deduction, induction and abduction - what are some of the tests for validity in deductive arguments, just how good or bad a justification of some generalisation or prediction can given by induction, what improves and what reduces the strength of an abductive argument for something
The differences between the three competing definitions of knowledge: Justified True Belief, True Belief Immune From the Logical Possibility of Error and True Belief Reliable in the Present Circumstances - why do we need three, what are the advantages and disadvantages of each.
Descartes' proof that we can indeed reach knowledge of the objective world - what his method for finding "foundational" truths is, what some of those foundational truths are and whether they live up to their press, how conclusions about the objective world are supposed to be drawn from data about our own subjective world, whether his proof is a good one or not
Descartes' distinction between minds and bodies - what Descartes' two arguments were for splitting the universe into these fundamentally different kinds of things, how to use Leibniz' Law to state them succinctly, how good each of Descartes' arguments are, what the so-called "intensional fallacy" is
What behaviourism is - how it tries to treat what Descartes explained in terms of inner minds solely in terms of public physical behaviour, whether it can pull off this tightrope
What Mind-Brain Identity theory is - how it differs from behaviourism in not being shy about inner causes, how it differs from dualism in insisting these inner causes aren't indubitable and non-physical but are just the perfectly ordinary physical brains we carry between our ears, whether identity theory satisfies the "principle of parsimony" which it claims is a test of all good science
What functionalism is - in particular what concepts it introduces which makes it different from and, allegedly, superior to mind-brain identity theory, what the difference between mental tokens and mental types is, what a definition in terms of a function as opposed to a structure amounts to, what sort of argument functionalism provides for materialism in the philosophy of mind, how well it works as a theory about minds other than our own human ones
What the problem of freedom and causality is - what some of the arguments that human beings can't possibly be free agents are (in particular, the so-called argument from "distant causation") and whether such arguments are good ones, what the thesis of causality is and what the thesis of free will is, why they supposedly conflict with each other, whether they actually do or don't
What compatibilism is - what the constraints are on any definition of "free" and "could have done otherwise" which a compatibilist theory must satisfy, what three of these definitions are (Hume's, Dworkin's, Sober's), whether such definitions manage to be thoroughly causal but also allow enough elbow room to comfortably apply the word "free" to human actions, which of the three is to be preferred and why

IV. Miscellaneous Comments and Clarifications

I hope you have enjoyed the course. I'd like you to enjoy the exam too.
Honest.

VERY BEST WISHES!!!

Contents
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