Syllabus

Philosophy 391, Attacks Against Philosophy

Fall 2005, CRN 42656, J. W. Powell

Tuesdays 4-5:30 in UANX 150

This is a continuation of a series of one-credit reading groups/seminars on issues of philosophical methods. In this semester we will look at a series of readings claiming philosophy is fundamentally flawed. Assessing these claims will require intelligence and hard work.

             Here they are: Logicians misunderstand arguments to such a degree that they fault others (e.g., illiterates) for having a better approach. The discipline has enthusiastically bought into Socrates’ quest of definitions which will fix our understandings of essences, and ignored the crucial arguments Socrates and Wittgenstein supply for why that cannot work. Ethics is a self-righteous house of cards, a fragile construction of enthusiastic abstractions and oversimplifications built within a framework of insistent blindness to examples. The sub-discipline of epistemology rests on a contextless distinction between appearances and reality, though that distinction is supportable only by a circular argument (or a Cartesian picture of human beings). There are political flaws too. Logic, science, and philosophical concepts of knowledge are sexist. Philosophers insist on wearing their watchmaker’s lenses and tweezing splinters while the oppressed world needs liberators and a bomb squad.

             At the end, we’ll articulate our overall assessments, and any changes in our conception of philosophy. I’m hoping these can be put in terms of remarks about methods. Further, I’m doing this reading group for myself as well as for the group of students enrolled, and hereby promise to write on these issues and to share with the group.

This semester is complicated by the fact that after I put the course onto the schedule I got elected to the Academic Senate, which meets every other week at the same time as this course. I have asked about a dozen of the first people to register if they could switch to Thursdays or some other times, and for each alternative some cannot. I propose we meet every other week and work hard. The reading load, if we read six or seven articles, and the writing load, if we each write six or seven pages (say, roughly a couple thousand words) will easily justify a credit. I am taking this proposal to the department meeting, with the understanding that this is not to serve as a precedent for future offerings. The department may also remove this course from the list of graded 391's three of which may be used by majors for an elective.

Levi, “Why do Illiterates Do Badly at Logic?”

Nye, “Form, Context, and Evaluating Arguments,” from Words of Power.

jwp, “The Mortality of Socrates,” “What is the Standard of a Good Argument?”

Plato, from Theatetus, the argument in favor of definitions (check against other dialogues for their wording);

Plato, from Meno, “Meno’s Paradox;”

jwp, “What’s Wrong with Definitions?,” “Selfish.”

jwp, “Progress in Philosophy”

Plato on the authority of the gods, from the Euthyphro

J.L. Austin, “A Plea for Excuses;” jwp, “Theories as Gods and the Basis of Ethics”

Rorty, “Trotsky and the Wild Orchids” from Philosophy and Social Hope

jwp, “Wittgenstein’s Most Important Achievement Is about Method”

jwp, “On the Nonexistence of Perceptions” and “The Very Idea of Language”

Title: Biting the Hand