OUTLINE
This course examines some of the major metaphysical and epistemological problems that arise when attempting to understand how mind and language figure in human interactions with and within the world. It centres on attempts to conceptualise, solve, or avoid mind-body related problems in the analytic tradition and aims to contrast these with phenomenological investigations of cognate phenomena.
AIMS
Having successfully completed this course students will be able to:
1. appreciate critically how the rationalist and empiricist traditions in philosophy influence contemporary thought in the philosophy of mind;
2. understand the continuing relevance of the mind-body problem to the question of what it is to be a human being;
3. make critical conceptual connections between the analytic and European traditions in philosophy with respect to their concern with understanding language, subjectivity, and the phenomenology of experience;
4. comprehend the difficulties and importance of conceptualising the relationship between thought and language;
5. understand the importance of consciousness to some contemporary debates in philosophy, psychology and cognitive science.