Fall 2021, MW 10:10-11:25 am, Caldwell 213, 3 credits
UNC students enrolled in the course (or otherwise authorized by the instructor) can access the Sakai webpages for this course at https://sakai.unc.edu/portal/site/philmind.
Those pages include the Zoom links for the course meetings and for Professor Pryor’s office hours. (These can also be retrieved from this restricted page.)
There’s not much else there. I’m still learning how to work within and around Sakai’s constraints. Currently, most of the course’s content is published here, outside of that system, and can also be viewed by people not enrolled in the course.
This front web page won’t be updated frequently. Regular announcements, readings, and lecture notes will be posted here instead.
PHIL 340. Philosophy of Mind. 3 Credits.
The mind-body problem, the nature of thinking, the puzzles of consciousness, and the qualitative character of felt experience.
Requisites: Prerequisite, one previous PHIL course.
Gen Ed: PH.
Grading status: Letter grade.This course is a survey of central issues in contemporary philosophy of mind. We’ll be considering:
different accounts of the relation between minds and physical bodies, including questions about whether computers could ever have thoughts or consciousness
questions about the nature of thinking, including how much our thoughts and experiences depend on the nature of our environments, and how much they’re determined by our own intrinsic make-up
how can we tell whether animals, future computers, or alien lifeforms have minds, or whether they’re instead just mindless automata? how can we tell that other people have minds?
how to think about conscious experiences like pain and perception, their relation to other mental states and to the physical world
problems about how the mental causally interacts with the physical
These don’t exhaust the issues discussed in philosophy of mind, but they are a representative overview and a good introduction.
Some of these issues also belong to the philosophical fields of epistemology, metaphysics, and/or action theory. You may also come across specialty fields like moral psychology, philosophy of psychology, or cognitive science. Each of these overlaps a good deal with philosophy of mind; but they have special focuses, and draw on other disciplines too.
As stated in the catalog listing, this class requires one prior course in philosophy, or equivalent background with instructor’s approval. Familiarity with formal logic (as from Phil 155) will be useful in this course, though it is not a prerequisite.
I’ll assume students have prior experience writing philosophical papers, reading texts critically, analyzing and responding to philosophical arguments, and so on. If you’ve already taken a prior course in philosophy, that will be adequate preparation. If you’ve just “read and thought a lot” about the issues this course covers, that is in most cases not adequate preparation. It won’t have given you practice and feedback on writing philosophy papers, and it won’t have given you experience analyzing and discussing arguments in the way we’ll be doing in this class.
Goals for the course include:
Gaining familiarity with major questions, positions, and arguments in contemporary philosophy of mind. You should understand why the questions listed above are significant, and be able to explain different answers to them.
Improving your ability to closely read, interpret, and evaluate contemporary philosophical texts. This includes identifying arguments and their underlying assumptions; formulating counter-examples and other objections; and recognizing how a view can best be defended (whether you endorse it or not).
Improving your ability to clearly explain and critically respond to philosophical arguments, both in discussion and in writing.
Improving your ability to articulate your own positions, formulate your own arguments, and reply to reasoned objections.
The course is offered by Professor Jim Pryor (he/him).
Professor Pryor’s office is Caldwell 108A. He can best be reached by email, at jimpryor@unc.edu.
Professor Pryor’s office hours are right after class, on Mondays and Wednesdays 11:30-12:30. If you’re unable to meet in person, we can also meet by Zoom. The Zoom link for office hours can be found on this restricted page.
These are available in the bookstore. You can also buy or rent them online. I’ll also make sure readings from the textbooks are available to everybody at the start of term.
(Earlier editions of these books should also suffice.)
Additional readings will be provided by web links. Some of these are in a restricted section of the course website. The username and password for these will be announced in class.
It is essential that you attend the class meetings regularly. Material not in the readings will be presented there, and useful background and framing for many of the readings will also be provided. The University’s policy on class attendance can be found here. In brief, they authorize absences only for some University activities, religious observances, disabilities, significant health conditions including pregnancy, and personal or family emergencies. If these include your situation, then see the link about how to get your absence approved. If you need to miss class meetings for other kinds of reasons (like a job interview or to attend your mother’s wedding), ask me about it well in advance. In any case, you will be responsible for catching up with missed course content; and permission to miss a class doesn’t excuse you from deadlines for work due before or after the class.
Though this is an in-person class, attending a meeting doesn’t necessarily mean being bodily present in the room. As the carolinatogether website says:
Each time prior to coming to campus, all members of the Carolina community should self-assess whether you are experiencing any symptoms using the COVID-19 symptom list on the Carolina Together website. If you have any of these symptoms, you should stay home. You should not enter any campus building, attend any class or report to work.
More information about quarantining and isolation is available here.
If you need to stay home during any of our class meetings, try to attend the meeting by Zoom instead.
When you join the class meetings, you are expected to have read any material assigned for that day, and to be ready to discuss it and/or ask questions about it.
It is essential that you ask questions when things in the readings or lectures are unclear, and be ready to participate when we have class discussions. I’ll sometimes expect you to actively engage with each other in class, and encourage you to do it outside of class too. Talking about philosophy is one of the best ways of learning how to do it. Your overall participation will make up 10% of your grade for the course. See this page on participation for more details (though this class won’t have separate “discussion sections” as that page assumes; we’ll integrate discussion into the main meetings). If you don’t plan to participate earnestly, you should not take this course.
See the Policies section below about wearing masks and using laptops or other devices in class.
There will be reading assignments for most class meetings. These readings are often pretty short, but they all require close study. You should read them carefully before we discuss them in class, and you’ll need to read them more than once. For most of the readings, you won’t understand the material sufficiently with just a single reading. A good strategy would be to read the assignment once before we discuss it, and then go back and read it again after we’ve discussed it. If you don’t plan to do this, you should not take this course.
Here is a detailed explanation of how you’ll be expected to read philosophy papers.
You will have to submit three papers for the course, due on Sept 21, Oct 19, and Nov 23 Nov 28. Papers should be 4-5 pages each. We will arrange that grading of your work is done without me knowing whose work is whose.
Here is a detailed explanation of how you’ll be expected to write philosophy papers. That page includes a section “How you’ll be graded”; here is more information on how I understand different grades for written work.
There will also be a final exam, given in compliance with UNC-Chapel Hill’s final exam regulations and according to the final exam calendar. Our exam will be on Thur Dec 9 from 8-11 am.
See below about rescheduling your final or paper deadlines.
The University Honor Code applies to all course assignments, exams, and petitions for absences or rescheduling. For more information, see honor.unc.edu and The Instrument of Student Judicial Governance.
What constitutes academic “lying, cheating, or stealing” can vary between different activities.
In this class, you’re allowed (indeed encouraged!) to get feedback from your peers on your work before submitting it, and to use their ideas as starting points. But what you submit must represent your own developed thoughts and expression, and you must give appropriate credit for ways that others influenced the product.
During the exam, you won’t be allowed to collaborate, or rely on outside resources.
Papers submitted for this and another class (whether taken the same semester or not) must be substantially different.
Your grades for the different components of the course will be weighted as follows:
10% for participation
15% first paper
25% second paper
25% third paper
25% final examIf you think you have been given an incorrect grade for any part of the course, we can review together how I applied the announced standards. If this doesn’t resolve the issue, you have the right to discuss with our department’s Director of Undergraduate Studies (currently Professor Markus Kohl), or to appeal through a formal University process. You’ll be expected to make a case that the grade reflects an arithmetic/clerical error, arbitrariness, discrimination, harassment, or personal malice. To learn more, go to the Academic Advising Program website, or this summary of University policies.
Most requests that I and other professors hear for changing grades are based on how good/bad it would be for a student to get a given grade; but it would be unfair and inappropriate for justifications like that to succeed.
This lists due dates for assignments and the rough order of our topics. See this page for announcements, readings, lecture notes, and any minor tweaks to the schedule. Check that page frequently.
(Whether or not you’re on the waitlist, the procedure is the same.) Come to the first week of classes and be in touch with me asap about your interest in the class, how it fits into your larger educational plans, and what your background in other philosophy courses is.
If you know in advance you’ll have good reason for being unable to submit a paper for a deadline:
Some requests will be University-Approved Absences. See that link for instructions about how to get these approved and communicated to me.
If your reasons don’t qualify as University-Approved, but they are reasonable and you discuss them with me well in advance of the deadline (at least a week before), we may be able to make other arrangements for the deadline on our own.
What if it turns out that you can’t turn the work in, but now it’s only days or hours before (or even after 😮) the deadline?
The Office of the Dean of Students (ODOS) has staff who work with students who are dealing with medical and/or personal issues that are interfering with their classes. If you contact ODOS, they will be able to work with you to verify the cause of the disruption, connect you with campus services that may help, and notify me and other professors about the issue. They sometimes make recommendations about what would be reasonable accommodations for your situation, which I will take seriously. If you’re going to miss a deadline, or you’ve already missed it, then get in touch with them as soon as possible (in any case within five days) to tell them about your situation. I’ll expect any last-minute or after-the-fact requests for extensions or other academic accommodations to come through the ODOS.
What if you missed the deadline and don’t have an extension, or you were granted an extension but you missed that too? Then I’ll permit you to turn the paper in up to 72 hours late, for a 10% grade penalty. (For example, this takes what would have been a B- to a C-.) This permission can only be used once during the semester.
What if your paper is more than 72 hours late, or you already used up your permission to turn a paper in late earlier in the semester? In that case, it’s still best for you to complete the late paper and turn it in. I will still grade it and give you feedback on it, and if the work would have earned at least a C had it been turned in on time, then I’ll give you a grade of 50% for the assignment. That’s still an F, but as a “high F” it’s better than getting the 0% you would otherwise have gotten. Also you’ll still get the pedagogical benefits the assignment was supposed to serve in the first place.
If you have two final exams scheduled at the same time, or three scheduled within twenty-four hours:
You can apply at your dean’s office for permission to have one of the exams rescheduled. This must be done before the first day of exam period, and there are rules about which exam will be rescheduled. See here for more details.
As noted on that page, you cannot be excused from taking a final exam except in special circircumstances, which must be documented and approved by an academic dean.
This semester, while we are in the midst of a global pandemic, all enrolled students are required to wear a mask covering your mouth and nose at all times in our classroom. This requirement is to protect our educational community — your classmates and me — as we learn together. If you choose not to wear a mask, or wear it improperly, I will ask you to leave immediately, and I will submit a report to the Office of Student Conduct. At that point you will be disenrolled from this course for the protection of our educational community. Students who have an authorized accommodation from Accessibility Resources and Service have an exception. For additional information, see Carolina Together.
I won’t prohibit the use of laptops or tablets for taking notes, though I strongly discourage this. I’ll post summaries of the main outlines of our lectures, so you won’t need to write everything down during our meetings. You should be reviewing those lecture notes outside of class anyway. An effective use of your time in the classroom is to focus on following the discussion, and actively raising questions when you don’t. If you must have a device open in class, don’t browse the web, or read/send texts or other social media during our meetings. This is rude and distracting to me and your classmates.
You may not record our class meetings in any format without prior express authorization from me and the department. To request the use of assistive technology as an accommodation, contact the ARS (see below). For others, permission to record will only be granted in extraordinary circumstances. Students are never permitted to copy or distribute recordings of the class, and must delete any they possess when the class concludes.
UNC-Chapel Hill facilitates the implementation of reasonable accommodations, including resources and services, for students with disabilities, chronic medical conditions, and temporary disabilities or pregnancy complications resulting in barriers to fully accessing University courses, programs and activities. Accommodations are determined through the Office of Accessibility Resources and Service (ARS) for individuals with documented qualifying disabilities in accordance with applicable state and federal laws. See their website ars.unc.edu for information, or email ars@unc.edu.
Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) is strongly committed to addressing the mental health needs of a diverse student body through timely access to consultation and connection to clinically appropriate services, whether for short- or long-term needs. Go to their website caps.unc.edu or visit their facilities on the third floor of the Campus Health Service building for a walk-in evaluation to learn more.
In this class, as in other University programs and activities, you should expect an environment free of discrimination, harassment, and other misconduct. If this expectation isn’t respected, here are links for more information about University policies, how to obtain support, and file grievances:
University’s Policy on Non-discrimination
Prohibited Discrimination, Harassment and Related Misconduct
Students impacted by sexual discrimination, harassment, dating or relationship violence, sexual violence, sexual exploitation, or stalking are encouraged to seek resources on campus or in the community. Reports can be made online to the Equal Opportunity and Compliance Office (EOC) using this form. Please contact the University’s Title IX Coordinator (Elizabeth Hall, interim, titleixcoordinator@unc.edu), Report and Response Coordinators in the EOC (reportandresponse@unc.edu), Counseling and Psychological Services (confidential, link above), or the Gender Violence Services Coordinators (confidential, gvsc@unc.edu) to discuss your specific needs. Additional resources are available at safe.unc.edu.
If you’re experiencing other forms of harassment or discrimination contrary to University policies, you can also seek assistance through the Report and Response Coordinators in the EOC (reportandresponse@unc.edu), or file a report using the EOC form.
The instructor reserves the right to make changes to the syllabus, including paper due dates. These changes will be announced as early as possible so that students can adjust their schedules.
I welcome your input about the class at any time. You are welcome to approach me directly. I’ll also provide opportunities for anonymous evaluation and feedback during the term.