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CS92PROD
Mind, Body, and World
PHIL 383
Spring 2016
Section: 01  

Social-pragmatist conceptions of language and mind have sought to accommodate the normativity of meaning and justification within a broadly scientific, naturalistic understanding of ourselves and the world by treating mental life as grounded in public practices and norms of communication in partially shared causal circumstances. Such accounts have sometimes been criticized for neglecting the experiential, affective, and first-personal aspects of mind and, at other times, for disconnecting linguistic communication from accountability to the world. This advanced seminar critically assesses some influential recent efforts to account for objective accountability, perceptual experience, first-person perspectives, and affectivity as constructive components of broadly social-pragmatist approaches to mindedness. With a brief introduction to Quine's and Davidson's criticisms of semantic empiricism as background, we will examine John McDowell's attempt to develop a post-Davidsonian empiricism, Hubert Dreyfus's phenomenological dualism of bodily coping and linguistic articulation, Alva Noe's treatment of perception as bodily activity, John Haugeland on embodied "existential commitment," and Rebecca Kukla and Mark Lance on the pragmatic normativity of the space of reasons.
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: HA PHIL
Course Format: SeminarGrading Mode: Student Option
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Major Requirement for: (PHIL)(PHIL-Philosophy)(PHIL-Social Jus)(SISP)(SISP-ScieDblMjr)
Past Enrollment Probability: 50% - 74%

Last Updated on MAR-19-2024
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