Syllabus/achievement requirements

The main text for this course is my own book manuscript, entitled Action, Knowledge and the Self. The manuscript develops a full theory of intentional action, weaves this together with a novel account of practical inference, and proceeds to apply this whole theory to basic issues about the self, knowledge of our own mind, and knowledge in general. The aim is thus to provide a theory of intentional action that grounds a novel approach to basic issues in metaphysics and epistemology.

 

The manuscripts for the individual chapters and a more detailed plain are available for registered students in CANVAS. The manuscript is not for general distribution, it is work in progress.

 

 

Action and Agency

 

 G.E.M. Anscombe. Intention, Blackwell’s 1957, and later editions. About 100 pages.

 

Donald Davidson. Essays on Actions and Events, essay 1-5, pages 1 to 102.

 

Harry Frankfurt. ’The problem of Action’, first published in Am. Phil. Quarterly 1978, also in Frankfurt’s The Importance of What we care about. Ca 12 sider

 

 

 

Practical Reasoning/Inference

 

G.E.M. Anscombe. ’Practical Inference’, first printed in the Schilpp vol. for von Wright.  30 pages.

 

John Broome. Rationality Through Reasoning, Blackwell’s 2013, introduction and chapters.  14-16.  About 50 pages.

 

Jonathan Dancy. Practical Shape, OUP 2018, Introduction, chapters 1 and 2. About 40 pages.

 

The Self

 

Peter Strawson, The Bounds of Sense, Part One, pages 15-44.

 

Quassim Casssam. Self and World, OUP 1997.  Part 1. Self and World, about 30 pages.

 

Gareth Evans. The Varieties of Reference, OUP 1982, Chapter. 7. About 60 pages

 

Christopher Peacocke, The Mirror of the World, OUP 2014, chapters  5 and 6, and introduction, 50 pages.

 

Total about 720 pages. (Some of them challenging.)

 

The first meeting will present the plan for the book, and frame this plan with reference to Strawson’s approach and the Strawsonian tradition, and discuss the plan for the semester. I am open for new input into how best to proceed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Published May 15, 2019 10:57 AM - Last modified June 28, 2019 10:27 AM