Paper Topics #1
Write a clear, well-argued essay on one of the following topics. Your paper should be about 5 pages, double-spaced, 12-point type. It is due Tuesday, March 20. Give papers to your GSI in class, or make other arrangements ahead of time.
You must turn in both an electronic copy and a paper copy. The paper copy should be given to your GSI. The electronic copy should be uploaded directly to http://turnitin.com (see below). Do not e-mail it to your GSI. It may be in any of the following formats: Microsoft Word, Word Perfect, RTF, HTML, PDF, postscript, or plain text.
Turnitin.com is a website that checks papers for originality. It will detect most forms of plagiarism. It will also allow you to read other students’ papers and comment on them. (This feature will be activated after the due date and used for the Peer Review assignment.)
To use Turnitin.com, you will need to create a user profile (unless you already have one from a previous class). Follow the instructions at http://turnitin.com/static/videos/student_ppm.html (for a movie version) or http://turnitin.com/static/pdf/tii_student_qs.pdf.
Our class ID is 1841462. The enrollment password is ________. Once you have created a user profile, you will be able to log in on the main page using your e-mail address and a password of your choosing. I strongly suggest that you create your user account now, rather than risking problems on the day the paper is due. The links above should tell you everything you need to know in order to create an account and upload your paper.
General Hints: On the course website, you’ll find a link to James Pryor’s Guidelines on Writing a Philosophy Paper. This will be especially useful for those of you with less philosophy experience, but it may be helpful even for those with more. Please take the time to review the Guidelines on Plagiarism and Academic Integrity. Remember, you are writing a philosophical essay, not a “research paper.” You aren’t expected to look at any texts outside of the required readings. If you do look at outside sources, be very careful to attribute ideas you have taken from them, even if you are only paraphrasing, and not quoting.
The material conditional ‘A⊃B’ (which you can read ‘if A then B’) is false if A is true and B is false, and true otherwise. It is often thought that the material conditional is a bad representation of the ordinary indicative conditional in English. For example, ‘If snakes are mammals then cockroaches are smarter than humans’ does not intuitively seem to express a truth, but the material conditional ‘Snakes are mammals ⊃ cockroaches are smarter than humans’ is true, because its antecedent is false. Use Grice’s theory of conversational implicature to make the best case you can for the idea that the English indicative conditional is, in fact, the material conditional. If you do not think that Grice’s theory can fully vindicate the claim that indicative conditionals are material conditionals, explain why.
What would Dennett say about a computer that can pass the Turing Test by running the dumb string-lookup program described by Block in “Behaviorism and Psychologism”? Would Dennett say that it has intentionality? If not, how can he deny this, consistently with his theory? If so, how might he deflect the force of Block’s objection? Base your answer on what is said in Dennett’s article “True Believers.”
Dennett claims that having intentional states is not like having style in the following way: there are “perfectly objective … patterns in human behavior that are describable from the intentional stance, and only from that stance” (“True Believers,” p. 69). Given his picture of intentionality, can Dennett really justify his claim that there is this difference between having style and having intentionality? (Assume for the purposes of your answer that having style is an observer-relative property.)
Putnam says: “[W]hat goes for physical pictures goes also for mental images, and for mental representation in general; mental representations no more have a necessary connection with what they represent than physical representations do. The contrary supposition is a survival of magical thinking” (“Brains in a Vat,” p. 3). Searle says: “The brain is all we have for the purpose of representing the world to ourselves and everything we can use must be inside the brain. Each of our beliefs must be possible for a brain in a vat because each of us is precisely a brain in a vat; the vat is a skull and the ‘messages’ are coming in by way of impacts on the nervous system” (“Are Meanings in the Head,” p. 230). Are these two observations compatible with one another? If so, how so? If not, which should we reject and why?
How do Searle and Grice disagree about the speaker’s intended effect on the audience in communication? What considerations motivate Searle’s approach? Why might Grice resist Searle’s approach?
Putnam says (in “Meaning and Reference”, p. 702): “My concept of an elm tree is exactly the same as my concept of a beech tree…” What point is he trying to make with this observation? Explain and critically assess Searle’s argument (in “Are Meanings in the Head?”, p. 201) that Putnam’s claim can be reduced to inconsistency.
Everyone would agree that Bertrand, the protagonist in Burge’s thought experiment, is getting something wrong. Burge thinks his mistake concerns arthritis: Bertrand believes (falsely) that he has arthritis in his thigh. An alternative interpretation is that Bertrand’s mistake concerns language: Bertrand does not believe that he has arthritis in his thigh, but rather that ‘arthritis’ in English is the name for the kind of inflammation he has in his thigh. What can be said for and against each of these interpretations of the thought experiment? Which interpretation do you think is correct, and why? (Be sure to take into account what Burge says in section III of “Individualism and the Mental.”)
In the movie The Matrix, Neo is brought out of his virtual reality and shown his “real” body, encased in a sticky cocoon. Suppose he goes back to the virtual world and says, “We’re all encased in sticky cocoons, and none of these trees, tables, and so on that we see really exist.” Has he said something true? In giving your answer, be sure to take account of Putnam’s arguments in “Brains in a Vat.”