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'''American Philosophy and Its Contemporary Relevance'''   
'''American Philosophy and Its Contemporary Relevance'''   
Topics in the History of Philosophy (PHI 556)
Topics in the History of Philosophy (PHI 556)


Fall Semester 2020, Monday 1-3:40pm
Fall Semester 2021, Monday 1-3:40pm


'''Venue:'''  
'''Venue:''' Park 141 (including on September 25-26, Park 141)


'''Registration''': Class#: [http://www.buffalo.edu/class-schedule?switch=showclass&semester=fall&division=GRAD&dept=PHI&regnum=24202 24202]
'''Registration''': Class#: [http://www.buffalo.edu/class-schedule?switch=showclass&semester=fall&division=GRAD&dept=PHI&regnum=24202 24202]


'''Instructor''': [http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/shortcv.htm Barry Smith]
'''Course Description''': This course will provide an introduction to the pragmatist tradition of American philosophy. It will focus on the philosophical ideas of the leading figures of this movement, including Peirce, James, and Dewey. At the same time it will explore the influence and contemporary relevance of pragmatist philosophy, particularly as concerns developments in psychology, and in the social sciences. The course will include a two-day intense weekend session focusing on the influence of American pragmatism on 20th-century German philosophy.
 
'''Instructors''': [http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/shortcv.htm Barry Smith] and [https://wikitia.com/wiki/Jobst_Landgrebe Jobst Landgrebe], with contributions by [https://researchdirectory.uc.edu/p/chemeray Anthony Chemero],  [https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=-1jcp58AAAAJ Harry Heft], [http://www.jfsowa.com/ John Sowa] and [https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=vvYE-kcAAAAJ Frederik Stjernfelt]


'''Prerequisites''': Open to all persons with an undergraduate degree and some knowledge of philosophy.
'''Prerequisites''': Open to all persons with an undergraduate degree and some knowledge of philosophy.
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== '''The Course''' ==
== '''The Course''' ==
''Course Description'': Progress in philosophy has been hampered by the fact that philosophers have no shared, controlled vocabulary which they can use as a common starting point when defining their terms. Even mundane terms like ‘world’, ‘fact’, and ‘harm’ have such a variety of meanings that when competing theories use such terms their defenders can often be accused of talking past one another and of engaging in merely verbal disputes. This is in contrast to what is the case in the natural sciences, where consistent terminology – as codified for example in the Periodic Table and the International Standard System of Units – is recognized as indispensable. To put it bluntly, because of the use of standards, the natural sciences are collectively more successful than philosophers at resolving divergent points-of-view in their respective fields. Of course, the idea of developing a shared system of philosophical terms and definitions has been advanced in different forms already, for example by Aristotle in the ''Categories'', by Leibniz in ''De Arte Combinatoria'', by the early Wittgenstein, and by Carnap in his ''Logical Structure of the World''. Similar methods are nowadays being successfully applied, but this is occurring primarily outside philosophy, in areas such as biomedical informatics and industrial engineering.  
''Course Description'': This course will provide an introduction to the pragmatist tradition of American philosophy. It will focus on the philosophical ideas of the leading figures of this movement, including Peirce, James, and Dewey. At the same time it will explore the influence and contemporary relevance of pragmatist philosophy, particularly as concerns developments in psychology and in the social sciences. The course will include a two-day intense weekend seminar focusing on the influence of American pragmatism on 20th-century German philosophy. 
 
This course will address three goals:


:'''First''', it will explore how to create and use a standard philosophical vocabulary. This will include exploiting modern developments in computational ontology, including the world’s first [https://www.iso.org/standard/74572.html international standard ontology].
''Course Structure'': This is a three credit hour graduate seminar.
:'''Second''', it will explore the ways in which building a restricted philosophical vocabulary can help to arbitrate philosophical disputes in areas such as time, mental content, modality, and obligation.
:'''Third''', it will provide an introduction to the methods of contemporary applied ontological that are being used both inside and outside philosophy.
:'''Fourth''', it will take students through all the steps involved in writing a paper and submitting it for publication and/or for presentation at a conference. Some of these papers will be authored by teams of up to 3 people (students can write alone, or belong to up to two teams).


''Course Structure'': This is a three credit hour graduate seminar, with a practical exercise forming part of each class.  Students will be trained in the basic tools and methods of ontology, and of how ontology can be used to help consistent formalization of philosophical and other theories.
The final session will be structured around powerpoint presentations by the students in the class. These presentations will be recorded.
In the initial weeks the practical exercise will take the form of one-to-one interactions with Dr Smith determining the topics and strategy for paper writing. In the middle weeks it will take the form of presentation of critiques of submitted drafts. In the final sessions it will be structured around preparation of powerpoint slides to support class presentations by students of their written work, presentations which will be recorded. .


''Target Audience'': The course is open to all interested students with an undergraduate degree and some knowledge of philosophy.
''Target Audience'': The course is open to all interested students with an undergraduate degree and some knowledge of philosophy.
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----
----


== Themes ==
==August 30: Pragmatism: An Overview ==


:Peirce's Ontology and the Metaphysics of Duns Scotus (Boler)
'''Introduction to this Course'''
:American Pragmatism and Its Reception in Germany: Scheler and Gehlem
:Methodology for the history of philosophy
:The New Realism
:The four phases of philosophy
:E. B. Holt and J. J. Gibson
:Peirce and ''The Monist''
:The Philosophy of Behaviorism
:Wittgenstein and Behaviorism
:Gibson's Theory of Perception
:Peirce's Theory of Dicisigns
:Weber, Mead, Parsons: The Origins of Social Science


== Background Reading ==
'''Introduction to American Philosophy'''
:Charles Sanders Peirce
:William James
:John Dewey
:George Herbert Mead
:Richard Rorty
:Susan Haack


'''Primary Sources'''
[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Pragmatism-Introduction Slides]
:Dewey, John. (1884). [https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Dewey/newpsych.htm The new psychology]. Andover Review, 2, 278-289. [Possibly the first use of the phrase "new psychology."]
:Dewey, John. (1894). [https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Dewey/ego.htm The ego as cause]. Philosophical Review, 3, 337-341.
:Dewey, John. (1896) [https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Dewey/reflex.htm The reflex arc concept in psychology. Psychological Review, 3, 357-370. [The article that defined the modern concept of the reflex.]
:Holt, Edwin Bissell (1931) [https://pure.mpg.de/rest/items/item_2347251/component/file_2359054/content Animal Drive and the Leaning Process. An Essay Toward Radical Empiricism]
:James, William. (1890). [https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/James/Principles/index.htm The principles of psychology]. [Perhaps the most important English-language psychology text in history.]
:[https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Mead/socialself.htm Mead, George H. (1913). The social self. Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, 10, 374- 380. [Major article by the "social behaviorist."]
:[https://brocku.ca/MeadProject/inventory5.html Mead Project Inventory]: see especially items by Dewey, E. B. Holt, and Mead himself
:[https://arisbe.sitehost.iu.edu/ Peirce resources]
:Watson, John B. (1913). [https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Watson/views.htm Psychology as the behaviorist views it]. Psychological Review, 20, 158-177. [The classic manifesto of behaviorism.]
::[https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Watson/intro.htm Introduction to Watson (1913)] by Christopher D. Green
::[https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Watson/commentary.htm Commentary on Watson (1913)] by Robert H. Wozniak


'''Secondary Literature'''
[https://https://buffalo.box.com/v/Lecture-1-Introduction Video (with apologies for poor quality)]
:[https://www.isko.org/cyclo/hierarchy Hierarchy from the perspective of Peirce]
:[https://fdslive.oup.com/www.oup.com/academic/pdf/openaccess/9780198868705.pdf Matthieu Queloz, The Practical Origins of Ideas: Genealogy as Conceptual Reverse-Engineering (open access)]
:Peter Hare, [https://buffalo.box.com/s/0pld22poie0tlxhzk76mbbl9euyudykb Neglected American Philosophers in the History of Symbolic Interactionism] [on Mead's precursors]
:E. P. Charles, [researchgate.net/publication/232520180_Seeing_Minds_in_Behavior_Descriptive_Mentalism Seeing Minds in Behavior: Descriptive Mentalism], August 2011, Review of General Psychology 15(3):267-276. Charles' other papers on Holt are listed [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Eric+charles+e+b+holt&hl=en here].
:J. F. Boler, ''Charles Peirce and Scholastic Realism: A Study of Peirce's Relation to John Duns Scotus''
:J. F. Boler, [https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.1019.6057&rep=rep1&type=pdf Peirce on the Medievals: Realism, Power and Form]


==August 30: Introduction: Philosophy on Rails==
Reading:
:Cornelis de Waal, ''[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Introducing-Pragmatism Introducing Pragmatism]'', Taylor & Francis, 2021
:Susan Haack, "[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321397567_Pragmatism_Old_and_New_2006 Pragmatism Old and New]" (2006).
:C. Legg, "[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pragmatism/ Pragmatism]", ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy''


Philosophy on Rails
==September 6: Labor Day Observed==
:[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Philosophy-on-Rails Slides]
:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5I8kxqDSeo Video] (28 minutes)


Driverless Philosophy
==September 13: No class==
:[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Driverless-Philosophy Slides]
:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29GE_p5GEtY Video] (73 minutes)


Example: The Emotion Ontology
==September 20: The Metaphysics of C. S. Peirce ==
:[https://buffalo.box.com/s/jli8soa96pwixvs4e4r2yyq6qumt8tar Slides]
:An introduction to truthmaking
:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYAT8vHZ8ik Video] (38 minutes)
:The metaphysical realism of Duns Scotus
:Peirce's metaphysical realism
::Peirce and chemical diagrams
::Peirce on modality
::Peirce on the continuum
::Peirce and mereology
:Peirce and Brentano on the medievals


Readings
[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Peirce-and-Scotus Slides]
:Amanda Bryant, "[https://philpapers.org/rec/BRYKTC Keep the chickens cooped: the epistemic inadequacy of free range metaphysics]", ''Synthese'' 197 (5): 1867-1887. 2020.


Precursors
[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Pragmatism-Lecture-2 Video]


:[https://books.google.com/books?id=858AHFXOt5EC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=snippet&q=smith&f=false Chisholm]
::Boler, [https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.1019.6057&rep=rep1&type=pdf Peirce and the Medievals]
:[https://philpapers.org/archive/MILICA-6.pdf Ingarden]
::Campbell, ''[https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10039485/1/Chris%20Campbell%20Final%20Thesis%20Submitted.pdf The Chemistry of Relations]''
:Armstrong, D. M. ''[https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199590612.001.0001/acprof-9780199590612 Sketch for a Systematic Metaphysics]'', Oxford University Press, 2010.
::Pihlström, "[http://www.minerva.mic.ul.ie//vol9/Truthmaking.html Truthmaking And Pragmatist Conceptions Of Truth And Reality]".
:[https://github.com/BFO-ontology/BFO/raw/master/docs/bfo2-reference/BFO2-Reference.pdf BFO 2.0]
::Rorty, [https://buffalo.box.com/s/s92c23ptgq4353eorwy7zk7yw3a194hq Review of Boler]
::Smith, "[http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/articles/charuniv.pdf Characteristica Universalis]"
::Stjernfelt, ''[https://buffalo.box.com/s/ybkrfsmmc7h95piypzq8fhl58urjulb5 Diagrammatology]''
::Stjernelt, "[https://philpapers.org/archive/STJMAS.pdf Mereology and Semiotics]"


==September 6: Labor Day Observed==
'''Peirce on the Classification of the Sciences'''
:What is science?
:What is logic?
:What is mathematics?
:The taxonomy of scientific models


==September 13 Making the Content of Philosophy Accessible Systematically==
Readings: 
:Torjus Midtgarden, [https://www.isko.org/cyclo/peirce Peirce’s classification of the sciences]
:Denis Fisette, [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/stumpf/#ClaSci Stumpf and the classification of the sciences]


Pierre Grenon and Barry Smith, “[http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/articles/Ontology_of_Philosophy.pdf Foundations of an Ontology of Philosophy]”, Synthese, 2011, 182 (2), 185-204.
==September 25-26 Weekend Course: Pragmatism and German Philosophy==


Describes an ontology of philosophy that is designed to help navigation through philosophical literature, including literature in the form of encyclopedia articles and textbooks and in both printed and digital forms. The ontology is designed also to serve integration and structuring of data pertaining to the philosophical literature, and in the long term also to support reasoning about the provenance and contents of such literature, by providing a representation of the philosophical domain that is orientated around what philosophical literature is about.
'''Venue: 280 Park Hall'''
:[http://ontology.buffalo.edu/philosophome/pdcphilontology-v1.owl OWL]
:[http://ontology.buffalo.edu/philosophome/philonto/philontologyX013.gif gif]
:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HV3M0NvyPM Video] 40 minutes


Overview
'''Saturday Morning'''
:[http://philosophome.org/ The Philosophome]


9am ''Pragmatism and Positivism''
:[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Landgrebe-Positivism Slides]
:[https://buffalo.box.com/s/cvw9cah6s8k45femw172w5u4mq8jnl5q Video]


Ontology of Philosophy
:Reading: Mulligan "[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Pragmatism-and-phenomenology How to Marry Phenomenology and Pragmatism]"
:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HV3M0NvyPM  Video] 40 minutes
:[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Philosophome-2015  Slides]  


10:30am ''Peirce, Truthmaking, and Kantianism''
:Presentation by Frederik Stjernfelt, Copenhagen
:[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Stjernfelt-Lecture-1 Slides]
:[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Stjernfelt-Truthmaking Video]


History of Philosophy
Readings:
:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkYlY2jnRxc Video] 98 minutes
:F. Stjernfelt, "[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Peirce-as-Truthmaker-Realist Peirce as Truthmaker Realist]"
:[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Future-of-History Slides]
:F. Stjernfelt, "[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Shared-dependences The Riddle of Dependences: How to connect entities, across pragmatism, phenomenology, and structuralism]"
:N. Milkov, [https://philpapers.org/rec/MILALH A Logical–Contextual History of Philosophy], ''Southwest Philosophy Review'' 27 (1):21-29 (2011)


'''Saturday Afternoon'''


Examples of philosophical categorizations
1pm ''Pragmatism and Neopositivism''
:[https://philpapers.org/browse/all List of philpapers.org Categories]
:Dimitris Gakis (2016) "[https://doi.org/10.1080/05568641.2016.1188547 Philosophy as Paradigms: An Account of a Contextual Metaphilosophical Perspective]", ''Philosophical Papers'', 45:1-2, 209-239.
:[https://publiscologne.th-koeln.de/frontdoor/deliver/index/docId/1363/file/MAT_Seidlmayer.pdf Eva Seidlmayer, ''An ontology of digital objects in philosophy'']


:Advancing beyond the [https://philpapers.org/browse/all PhilPapers Table of Categories]
2:45pm ''The History of Psychology in Germany and America''


==September 20: An Introduction to Basic Formal Ontology==
[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Pragmatism-Lecture-3 Slides]


Background: Robert Arp, Barry Smith and Andrew Spear, [https://mitpress.mit.edu/index.php?q=books/building-ontologies-basic-formal-ontology Building Ontologies with Basic Formal Ontology], Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, August 2015.
[[File:Gestalt-graph.png|400px]]


The ISO Standardization Process
From Barry Smith (ed.), ''[https://philpapers.org/archive/SMIFOG.pdf Foundations of Gestalt Theory]''


ISO/IEC 21838
:Leipzig School, Wilhelm Wundt
:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0masZPGLb0 Video] (20 minutes)
::Hugo Münsterberg
:[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Ontology-Summit-2020 Slides]
::Oswald Külpe
:::Karl Bühler
::'''E. B. Titchener'''
:::'''E. G. Boring'''
::'''George Herbert Mead'''


Basic Formal Ontology
:'''C. S. Peirce'''
:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0buEjR3t8A Video] (70 minutes)
:[https://buffalo.box.com/v/ICBO-2019-BFO-Tutorial Slides]


Basic Formal Ontology Applied to the Ontology of Language
:'''Harvard School, William James'''
:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3btP1InPZY&list=PLyngZgIl3WTjK-D7L1pdtpqzxIBhjBsb_&index=5 Video] (40 minutes)
::'''Edwin B. Holt'''
:[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Immortality-and-Turing-Test Slides]
:::'''J. J. Gibson'''


--
:'''Behaviorism
Modes of Philosophical Derailment / Why Computer Science Needs Philosophy
::'''E. Thorndike
:"... philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday.” Wittgenstein, ''Philosophical Investigations'', §38
::'''J. B. Watson
:Preliminary reading: "[http://hl7-watch.blogspot.com/2008/02/weight-of-baby.html The Weight of the Baby]"
::'''Edwin Bissell Holt
:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yfhUt1LrIo Video] (51 minutes)
::'''B. F. Skinner'''
:[https://buffalo.box.com/s/v04c0oaywzts54m2qqnmswigwmhjc6l6 Slides]


==September 27: Philosophy of Language ==
:Ernst Mach


Truth and the Ontology of Maps
:Vienna School, Franz Brentano
:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jqqq7eBnZvE&list=PLyngZgIl3WTjK-D7L1pdtpqzxIBhjBsb_ Video] (20 minutes)
::Edmund Husserl
:https://buffalo.box.com/v/Truth-and-the-Ontology-of-Maps Slides]
:::Maurice Merleau-Ponty
::::'''J. J. Gibson'''
::Carl Stumpf
:::Wolfgang Köhler
:::Max Wertheimer
:::Kurt Koffka
:::Kurt Lewin
::::'''Roger Barker'''
:::::'''Fritz Heider'''
::Prague School, Christian von Ehrenfels


Ontology of Language, Ontology of Terrorism, Ontology of Obligations
'''Sunday Morning'''
:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4lg1_-XpiE&list=PLyngZgIl3WTjK-D7L1pdtpqzxIBhjBsb_&index=4 Video] (88 minutes)
:[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Ontology-of-Language Slides]


Command and Control
9am ''Peirce's Semiotics''
:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8LTHhpF4Wk Video] (60 minutes)
:Presentation by Frederik Stjernfelt, Copenhagen
:[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Command-and-Control Slides]
:[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Stjernfelt-Lecture-2 Slides]
:[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Peirce-Semiotics-Stjernfelt Video]


:Karl Bühler on logical vs. material derailment (''Entgleisung''). See Mulligan [https://www.unige.ch/lettres/philo/files/6614/2644/2862/mulligan_EssenceLanguageWBBB4.pdf here].
Reading: F. Stjernfelt: "[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Stjernfelt-Co-localization Co-localization as the Syntax of Multimodal Propositions: An Amazing Peircean Idea and Some Implications for the Semiotics of Truth]"


:Nosology of Continental Philosophy. See Mulligan [https://www.unige.ch/lettres/philo/files/8614/2644/2135/mulligan_PostContinentalPhilosophy1.pdf here].
11:00am ''Pragmatist Theories of Truth''
:Truth as Successful Action (Mead: When somebody has a problem and the solution of the problem is the truth)
:Truth as Successful Group Action and the Developing of the Self through Communication (Royce, Mead and Habermas)
:Habermas: Truth Emerges When People Speak Long Enough to Achieve a Consensus


==October 4: Philosophy of Science ==
'''Sunday Afternoon'''


The Replication Crisis in Pharmaceutical Science
1:00pm ''American Philosophy in Germany''
:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QPpUhVOiPE Video] (70 minutes)
:Pragmatism from Scheler to Habermas. Part 1
:[https://buffalo.box.com/s/gonk4yplf5niimpwi429ii89d4r1dzmn Slides]
:[https://buffalo.box.com/shared/static/g6qee6c61oexnfccjyjloveg1xgl8is2.pdf Slides]


Quantities as Fiat Universals
2:00pm ''Ontology of Niches, Affordances, Settings, Places, Habitats: From Aristotle to Gibson and Barker and the Hutchinsonian Niche''
:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVVUH00cMNY&list=PLyngZgIl3WTj8kH_CMlBPVhaJT45rbPWw&index=17&t=0s Video] (78 minutes)
:[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Quantities-as-fiat-universals Slides]


Functions, Dispositions and Capabilities
:[https://buffalo.box.com/s/6wmxnd9vvuhd9ubrldeptaerydqzkbct Slides]
:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJxfZ3cq5jE Video] (47 minutes)
:[https://buffalo.box.com/s/u0yz6ddfaa6k34gwfw48su4q19y78z0o Video]
:[https://buffalo.box.com/s/2zgx6emfas2t9ocik7n0c5ldkafymopc Slides]


:[https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0154556 A. Bandrowski, et al., "The Ontology for Biomedical Investigations", ''PLoS ONE'', 2016]
3:00pm Codas on Dewey, Mead and Leibniz


==October 11: Ontology of Documents ==
==September 27: Pragmatism and German philosophy (continued)==
:Pragmatism from Scheler to Habermas. Part 2
:[https://buffalo.box.com/shared/static/g6qee6c61oexnfccjyjloveg1xgl8is2.pdf Slides]
:[https://buffalo.box.com/s/p3mzcr3ninsh0ibhqpg327bo4kx3hv6i Video]


The Ontology of Document Acts (2005)
==October 4: No class==
:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvwHy2-3Lss&feature=youtu.be&t=2143 Video] (50 minutes)
:[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Bozzi-Prize-Lecture Slides]


Documents and Massive Social Agency (2013)
==October 11: No class==
:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2vvVM7ff28 Video] (21 minutes)


From Speech Acts to Document Acts (2018)
==October 18: No class==
:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5chInYVVypI Video] (24 minutes)
:[https://buffalo.box.com/s/4v54yvkduv2r5qrdjo1racc355ywmj03 Slides]


Searle on the Ontology of Money
==October 25: Ecological Psychology in Context==
:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHo-Tn_v8xM Video] (39 minutes)
Harry Heft, author of ''Ecological Psychology in Context: James Gibson, Roger Barker, and the Legacy of William James's Radical Empiricism'':
:[https://buffalo.box.com/s/ipuxsaapkdne29g2lhqsg70kahnssra1 Slides]


The Documentome
'''1: Radical empiricism and the ontology of affordances'''
:[https://buffalo.app.box.com/s/swb8dupnopuox0o9ihl8j8gv0sxxp8ay Slides]


==October 18: Introduction to Protégé ==
'''2. Behavior settings as emergent relational structures in everyday life'''


Includes introduction to the ontology authoring and editing software at [https://protege.stanford.edu/]
:[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Heft-On-Affordances Slides]
:[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Heft-Affordances Video]


==October 25: Metaphysics ==
Readings:
:Heft, "[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316116847_Perceptual_Information_of_An_Entirely_Different_Order_The_Cultural_Environment_in_The_Senses_Considered_as_Perceptual_Systems Perceptual Information of 'An Entirely Different Order']"
:Heft, "[https://buffalo.box.com/v/heft-perception Places: Widening the Scope of an Ecological Approach to Perception]"
:Heft, ''[https://buffalo.box.com/s/39nnbjmw3jadkwbvetjiz5c5pjrnyocy Ecological Psychology in Context]''


:Mind, Language and Emotions: From Austrian Philosophy to Contemporary Realist Ontology
:Smith, "[http://ontology.buffalo.edu/eco/Ecological_Psychology.pdf Toward a Realistic Science of Environments]"
:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Vw3R5UCcDI Video] (67 minutes)
:Smith, "[https://philpapers.org/archive/SMIOAT.pdf Objects and Their Environments: From Aristotle to Ecological Psychology]"
:[http://ontology.buffalo.edu/14/Rijeka/Ontology-of-Documents-May-2014-Rijeka.ppt Slides]


:What are capabilities?
==November 1: From Pragmatism to Radical Embodiment ==
:[https://buffalo.box.com/s/kvvq8qjb22rc80k8j7g4w7odi1hkhztz Slides] (60 minutes)
:[https://youtu.be/gHxDOFXu6CA Video]


:The Great Debate: John Sowa vs. Barry Smith
Anthony Chemero (University of Cincinatti)
:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDJk9xTvdqY Video of BS contribution] (30 minutes)
'''Enactivism, Embodiment, Ecological Psychology'''
:[http://bit.ly/2row7xT Slides of BS contribution]
:[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Chemero-Lecture Slides]
:[http://bit.ly/2robKkp First 2 hours of whole debate]
:[http://bit.ly/2rnIdHE Final part of whole debate]


==November 1: Social Ontology, Norms and Values ==
Readings:
:A. Chemero, ''[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Chemero-ROCS Radical Embodied Cognitive Science]'', MIT Press, 2009
:A. Chemero, "[https://www.academia.edu/attachments/66619419/download_file?st=MTYyODc4NjIwMCw2OC4xMzMuMTQuNjgsOTAzMTE%3D&s=profile&ct=MTYyODc4NjIwNSwxNjI4Nzg2NTk0LDkwMzEx An Outline of a Theory of Affordances]", ''Ecological Psychology'', 15(2), 181–195
:Rob Withagen and Anthony Chemero, "[https://buffalo.box.com/s/u5pdxvmxoafl0heomoh84xgl7h1psnzm Affordances and classification: On the significance of a sidebar in James Gibson’s last book]", ''Philosophical Psychology'', Vol. 25, No. 4, August 2012, 521–537


Deontic Entities
==November 8: Peirce on Habits==


:Deontology Ontology: Towards an Ontology of Deontic Entities
[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Peirce-on-Habit Slides]
::[http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/ppt/documents/Deontic-Entities-Geneva-July-2016.pdf Slides]  
::[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIJJlnLLWGU Video] (36 minutes)


:Document Acts and the Ontology of Social Reality
Reading
::[http://ontology.buffalo.edu/14/Rijeka/Ontology-of-Documents-May-2014-Rijeka.ppt Slides]
::[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lg4z2up6HI Video] (103 minutes)


:The Ontology of the Organigram
:Fausto Caruana and Italo Testa (eds.) [https://www.google.com/books/edition/Habits/VPwAEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Habits+Caruana Habits: Pragmatist Approaches from Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, and Social Theory]
::[http://ontology.buffalo.edu/16/Organigram.pdf Slides]
::[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp3B2GkgaB8 Video] (58 minutes)


Background
==November 15: Peirce on Diagrams / Rorty on Pragmatism==
:[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Deontic-Entities-in-BFO Slides]
:[https://search.proquest.com/openview/4ddf6056e26862d1573f674fe123b20b/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y Social Ontology and Social Normativity]


==November 8: Artificial Intelligence==
'''John Sowa: Natural logic is diagrammatic reasoning about mental models'''


:"[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1901.02918.pdf Making Artificial Intelligence Meaningful Again]", ''Synthese'', [https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-019-02192-y online first]
:[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Sowa-Peirce-Diagrams Slides]


:"[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1906.05833.pdf There is no General Artificial Intelligence"], https://arxiv.org/pdf/1906.05833.pdf
Reading:
:John Sowa, "[http://jfsowa.com/talks/ppe.pdf Peirce, Polya, and Euclid: Integrating logic, heuristics, and geometry]"
:John Sowa,"[http://www.collegepublications.co.uk/downloads/ifcolog00025.pdf Reasoning with diagrams and images]", 2018
:John Sowa, "[http://jfsowa.com/pubs/natlog.pdf Natural logic is diagrammatic reasoning about mental models]", 2020


==November 15: Capabilities ==
'''Peirce on Logic and the Theory of Signs'''
:Peirce on logic
:Peirce and the theory of signs
:Peirce and mereology
:Peirce and chemical diagrams


:Capabilities
Reading:
:Campbell, ''[https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10039485/1/Chris%20Campbell%20Final%20Thesis%20Submitted.pdf The Chemistry of Relations]''
:Smith, "[http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/articles/charuniv.pdf Characteristica Universalis]"
:Stjernfelt, ''[https://buffalo.box.com/s/ybkrfsmmc7h95piypzq8fhl58urjulb5 Diagrammatology]''
:Stjernfelt, "[https://philpapers.org/archive/STJMAS.pdf Mereology and Semiotics]"
:Sowa [http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/csp21st.pdf Peirce's Contributions to the 21st Century]


:[https://buffalo.box.com/v/capabilities-summary-Nov11 Slides]
'''Richard Rorty: The Last Pragmatist'''
:[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Rorty-Scepticism Slides]
:[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Landgrebe-on-Rorty Video]


:''Reading''
Reading: Munz, [https://buffalo.box.com/s/p5eqe7orynzykw55cweyjqvxr2y3tm4p Philosophy and the Mirror of Rorty]
:[https://philarchive.org/archive/MERMC Eric Merrell, et al., "Mental Capabilities", ICBO, 2019]


==November 22: Philosophy of Information ==
==November 22: Student Projects ==


:The Information Ontology
:1:00pm Noah Kim: [https://buffalo.box.com/s/ffr657w12tbkpanm1tmrzpo585e7e4r5 Pragmatism and Metaethics: A Peircean Approach to Moral Cognitivism]
:1:15pm Alec Sculley: [https://buffalo.box.com/s/65lnmfpy10llojptt4jvxjbk5zn2k3k9 Philosophy Actually]
:1:30pm Ali Hasanzadeh: [https://buffalo.box.com/s/gpw1m9v9rcxppvnq3y5y2u4cks7nu7a3 The Role of Peirce’s Pragmatism in Modern Physics]
:1:45pm Famous Clark: [https://buffalo.box.com/s/dp23y3uhshrzxy3ftzl4la8tzsky84v0 Feminist Reparative Readings of Pragmatism]
:2:00pm Peihong (Karl) Xie: [https://buffalo.box.com/s/523juo8mt9mmpq7037xnjn8i9e7tmrcw Does A Pragmatist Demystification of Truthmaking Succeed?]
:2:15pm Tiankui Zeng: [https://buffalo.box.com/s/r9s04uduurtde0n8ftmng4djh541ckg1 Rorty escaping the game]
:2:30pm Robert Krieter: [https://buffalo.box.com/s/9jinwsn1yc98rtgz66p3rw9u5bp4r1tb Counterfactual Intuitions and Actuality]
:2:45pm Hyemi Jun: [https://buffalo.box.com/s/l84qreo2gfum2izmfh9dr4o19knbf08m Comparing Peirce and Descartes on Approaches to Justify Knowledge]
:3:00pm Finn Wilson: [https://buffalo.box.com/s/9amefom1rpsfs0g8w9ejiviu7zgjep87 Peirce, Belief and Reference]


:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBKsupBquok&list=PLyngZgIl3WTi9ez4OjbXDlYtLb-vSxLHc Video]
==November 29: No class ==


:Werner Ceusters and Barry Smith, "[https://philpapers.org/archive/CEUATF.pdf Aboutness: Towards Foundations for the Information Artifact Ontology]", ''Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Biomedical Ontology'' (ICBO). CEUR vol. 1515. pp. 1-5 (2015).
==December 6: No class ==


==November 29: Philosophy of Action ==
== '''Background Reading: Primary Literature''' ==


==December 6: Student Projects==
:Barker, Roger "[https://www.spssi.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=document.viewdocument&ID=3F28EB86AE4CA3BB2EE025BE0093BF040DF534F490344D630568A7B6A4F9D6BE8A419D9A5BFC2C3737450814D3839CB6 On the Nature of the Environment]", ''Journal of Social Issues'', October 1963.
:Brock, Jarrett, "[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Brock-on-Peirce-on-speech-acts An Introduction to Peirce's Theory of Speech Acts]", ''Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society'', 17 (4), 1981, 319-326.
:Dewey, John. (1884). "[https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Dewey/newpsych.htm The new psychology]". ''Andover Review'', 2, 278-289. [Possibly the first use of the phrase "new psychology."]
:Dewey, John. (1894). "[https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Dewey/ego.htm The ego as cause]". ''Philosophical Review'', 3, 337-341.
:Dewey, John. (1896) "[https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Dewey/reflex.htm The reflex arc concept in psychology]". ''Psychological Review'', 3, 357-370. [The article that defined the modern concept of the reflex.]
:Dewey, John. (1938) ''[https://academiaanalitica.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/john-dewey-logic-the-theory-of-inquiry.pdf Logic. The Theory of Inquiry]''
:Gibson, James J. (1966) [https://buffalo.box.com/s/v3u96qrw6i2vd2uwn3e6x0i7i0i9v0xe ''The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems'']
:Gibson, James J.  (1979) [https://buffalo.box.com/s/8ouroqc5475w09rtuowozqy5xdr0dxp0 ''The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception'']
:Holt, Edwin Bissell (1931) [https://pure.mpg.de/rest/items/item_2347251/component/file_2359054/content ''Animal Drive and the Leaning Process. An Essay Toward Radical Empiricism'']
:Holt, E. B. et al. (1912) [https://buffalo.box.com/s/f24brpm4zbmxsmk1004sa2z1h5q0471j ''The New Realism'']
:James, William (1890). [https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/James/Principles/index.htm ''The Principles of Psychology''].
:James, William, "[https://oconnell.fas.harvard.edu/files/jameskloppenberg/files/pragmatism_old_name_for_new_wayas_of_thinking.pdf Pragmatism, a New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking]", in: ''Popular Lectures on Philosophy'', Longmans, Green, and Co (1907)
:Langfeld, Herbert (1931) [https://buffalo.box.com/s/nzbag11jh11ru9a5hdg282xp3cdb79z4 "A Response Interpretation of Consciousness"], ''The Psychological Review'', 38(2), 1931, 87-107.
:Mead, George H. (1913). "[https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Mead/socialself.htm The social self]". ''Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods'', 10, 374-380. [Major article by the "social behaviorist"]
:Mead, George H. (1934) [https://buffalo.box.com/s/g1wuu7573k97vnm2l6r1y31wab239357 Mind, Self and Society]
:Parsons, Talcott (1951) [https://buffalo.box.com/s/ngcv5zzaaoa1gvemc7pysbvbtnkf4d8y ''The Social System'']
:Peirce, C. S. "[https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_12/January_1878/Illustrations_of_the_Logic_of_Science_II How to Make our Ideas Clear]"
:Schiller, F. C. S. ''[https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015011412510&view=1up&seq=35 Humanism: Philosophical Essays]''
:Schiller, F. C. S. ''[https://www.bookyards.com/en/book/details/14254/Studies-In-Humanism# Studies in Humanism]'',
:Skinner, B. F. (1935). "[https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Skinner/Twotypes/twotypes.htm Two types of conditioned reflex and a pseudo type]". ''Journal of General Psychology'', 12, 66-77. [Major statement of operant behaviorism.]
:Skinner, B. F. (1937). "[https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Skinner/ReplytoK/reply.htm Two types of conditioned reflex: A reply to Konorski and Miller]". ''Journal of General Psychology'', 16, 272-279. [Reply to major critique of Skinner (1935).]
:Skinner, B. F. (1950). "[https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Skinner/Theories/ Are theories of learning necessary?]", ''Psychological Review'', 57, 193-216.
:Thorndike, Edward ''[https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015010306069&view=1up&seq=10 Human Learning]'', 1931
:Watson, John B. (1913). "[https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Watson/views.htm Psychology as the behaviorist views it]". ''Psychological Review'', 20, 158-177. [The classic manifesto of behaviorism.]


==December 7: Student Projects (Remote Session) ==
=='''Background Reading: Secondary Literature'''==
:Michael K. Bergman, [https://www.isko.org/cyclo/hierarchy Hierarchy from the perspective of Peirce], ''Encyclopedia of Knowledge Organization''
:M. E. Bitterman [https://buffalo.box.com/s/nzpd5xrpq6dks4yyxk5k3j8xw4gxm5c4 Classical Conditioning Since Pavlov], ''Review of General Psychology'', 2006, 10 (4), 365–376
:J. F. Boler, ''[https://archive.org/search.php?query=%28John%20Boler%29 Charles Peirce and Scholastic Realism: A Study of Peirce's Relation to John Duns Scotus]'',  University of Washington Press, I963
:J. F. Boler, [https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.1019.6057&rep=rep1&type=pdf Peirce on the Medievals: Realism, Power and Form]
:Maria Brinker, "[https://philpapers.org/rec/BRITBO-16 The Backside of Habit: Notes on Embodied Agency and the Functional Opacity of the Medium]", in: Fausto Caruana & Italo Testa (eds.), ''Habits'', 2020
:Chris Campbell, [https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10039485/1/Chris%20Campbell%20Final%20Thesis%20Submitted.pdf The Chemistry of Relations. The periodic table examined through the lens of C.S. Peirce’s philosophy], University College London, 2017
:Fausto Caruana and Italo Testa (eds.) [https://www.google.com/books/edition/Habits/VPwAEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Habits+Caruana Habits: Pragmatist Approaches from Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, and Social Theory], Cambridge University Press, 2020.
:Jorge Castro and Enrique Lafuente, [https://buffalo.box.com/s/ur6unuxwa3al6ek017qg76a83rc6iz3j “All You Need is Holt”—Is the Socio-cultural Phenomenon a Problem for a Neorealist Ecological Psychology?]
:E. P. Charles, [http://researchgate.net/publication/232520180_Seeing_Minds_in_Behavior_Descriptive_Mentalism Seeing Minds in Behavior: Descriptive Mentalism], August 2011, ''Review of General Psychology'' 15(3):267-276.
:A. Chemero, ''[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Chemero-ROCS Radical Embodied Cognitive Science]'', MIT Press, 2009
:A. Chemero, "[https://www.academia.edu/attachments/66619419/download_file?st=MTYyODc4NjIwMCw2OC4xMzMuMTQuNjgsOTAzMTE%3D&s=profile&ct=MTYyODc4NjIwNSwxNjI4Nzg2NTk0LDkwMzEx] An Outline of a Theory of Affordances]", ''Ecological Psychology'', 15(2), 181–195
:Willard F. Day, [https://buffalo.box.com/s/37psbprxsucac1xp86nrzq83894rpsxj On certain similarities between the Philosophical investigations of Ludwig Wittgenstein and the operationism of B. F. Skinner], ''Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior'', 1969 May; 12(3): 489–506.
:Christopher D. Green, "[https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Watson/intro.htm Introduction to Watson (1913)]"
:Bernard Guerin, [https://buffalo.box.com/s/n997m4rdoscc8h47s6v0akkn5g62pqbf Gibson, Skinner and Perceptual Responses], ''Behavior and Philosophy'', Spring/Summer 1990, Vol. 18, Number 1
:Susan Haack, "[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321397567_Pragmatism_Old_and_New_2006 Pragmatism Old and New]" (2006).
:Henry Jackman, "James' Pragmatic Account of Intentionality and Truth", ''Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society'', Vol. 34, No. 1, 1998, 155-181
:Peter Hare, [https://buffalo.box.com/v/Hare-Dissertation-on-Mead G. H. Mead's Metaphysics of Sociality], Dissertation, Columbia University, 1965
:Peter Hare, [https://buffalo.box.com/s/0pld22poie0tlxhzk76mbbl9euyudykb Neglected American Philosophers in the History of Symbolic Interactionism] [on Mead's precursors Chauncey Wright and Josiah Royce]
:Harry Heft, [https://buffalo.box.com/s/39nnbjmw3jadkwbvetjiz5c5pjrnyocy ''Ecological Psychology in Context : James Gibson, Roger Barker, and the Legacy of William James's Radical Empiricism'']
:Harry Heft, "[https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Harry-Heft/publication/316116847_Perceptual_Information_of_An_Entirely_Different_Order_The_Cultural_Environment_in_The_Senses_Considered_as_Perceptual_Systems Perceptual Information of 'An Entirely Different Order': The 'Cultural Environment' in The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems]", ''Ecological Psychology'', 29 (2), 2017, 122-145
:Heft, Harry, "[https://buffalo.box.com/v/heft-perception Places: Widening the Scope of an Ecological Approach to Perception–Action With an Emphasis on Child Development]", ''Ecological Psychology'', 30, 2018, 99-123
:Hongwei Jia [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331469588_Foundations_of_the_Theory_of_Signs_1938 Foundations of the Theory of Signs (1938)], ''Chinese Semiotic Studies'' 15(1): 1–14.
:Catherine Legg and Joshua Black “[https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10670-020-00301-9.pdf What is Intelligence For? A Peircean Pragmatist Response to the Knowing‑How, Knowing‑That Debate]”, ''Erkenntnis'', 2020.
:Willem J. M. Levelt, [https://buffalo.box.com/s/eq216axomi49jigmtuil9n1odkjd9axr Speech Acts and Functions], ch. 9 of Levelt, ''A History of Psycholinguistics: The Pre-Chomskyan Era'', Oxford University Press, 2013 [on Bühler and speech act theory]
:Peter T. Manicas, "John Dewey and American Psychology", ''Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 32:30021–8308
:Edward C. Moore, "The Scholastic Realism of C. S. Peirce", ''Philosophy and Phenomenological Research'', March 1952, 12 (3), 406-417
:Kevin Mulligan, "[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Pragmatism-and-phenomenology How to Marry Phenomenology and Pragmatism - Scheler's Proposal]", ''Pragmatism and the European Traditions: Encounters with Analytic Philosophy and Phenomenology Before the Great Divide'', Edited by Maria Baghramian and Sarin Marchetti, Routledge, 2018, 37-64
:Peter Munz, [https://buffalo.box.com/s/p5eqe7orynzykw55cweyjqvxr2y3tm4p Philosophy and the Mirror of Rorty], ''Philosophy of the Social Sciences'' 14 (2):195-238 (1984)
:Thomas Natsoulas [https://buffalo.box.com/s/y7txgbmk9va735ltaz44z11ozif0jeg9 Gibson's Environment, Husserl's "''Lebenswelt''," the World of Physics, and the Rejection of Phenomenal Objects], ''The American Journal of Psychology'', Autumn, 1994, Vol. 107, No. 3 (Autumn, 1994), pp. 327-358
:Sami Pihlström, "[http://www.minerva.mic.ul.ie//vol9/Truthmaking.html Truthmaking And Pragmatist Conceptions Of Truth And Reality]". ''Minerva'' (2005) 9:105-133.
:Matthieu Queloz, [https://fdslive.oup.com/www.oup.com/academic/pdf/openaccess/9780198868705.pdf ''The Practical Origins of Ideas: Genealogy as Conceptual Reverse-Engineering''] (open access) [On Peirce]
:Richard Rorty, [https://buffalo.box.com/v/Rorty-review-of-Boler Review of Boler on Scholastic Realism]
:John Sowa, "[http://jfsowa.com/talks/ppe.pdf Peirce, Polya, and Euclid: Integrating logic, heuristics, and geometry]"
:John Sowa,"[http://www.collegepublications.co.uk/downloads/ifcolog00025.pdf Reasoning with diagrams and images]", 2018
:John Sowa, "[http://jfsowa.com/pubs/natlog.pdf Natural logic is diagrammatic reasoning about mental models]", 2020
:John Sowa "[http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/csp21st.pdf Peirce's Contributions to the 21st Century]".
:Barry Smith (ed.), ''[https://philpapers.org/archive/SMIFOG.pdf Foundations of Gestalt Theory], Munich, 1988.
:Barry Smith, "[http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/articles/charuniv.pdf Characteristica Universalis]", in K. Mulligan (ed.), ''Language, Truth and Ontology'', Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer, 1992, 48–77.
:Barry Smith, "[http://ontology.buffalo.edu/eco/Ecological_Psychology.pdf Toward a Realistic Science of Environments]", ''Ecological Pschology'' 21 (2), April-June 2009, 121-130
:Barry Smith [https://philpapers.org/archive/SMIOAT.pdf “Objects and Their Environments: From Aristotle to Ecological Psychology”], in Andrew Frank, Jonathan Raper and Jean-Paul Cheylan (eds.), ''The Life and Motion of Socio-Economic Units'' (GISDATA 8), London: Taylor and Francis, 2001, 79–97. [On Roger Barker on behavior settings]
:Frederik Stjernfelt, "[https://philpapers.org/archive/STJMAS.pdf Mereology and Semiotics]", ''Sign Systems Studies'' 28:73-97 (2000)
:Frederik Stjernfelt, ''[https://buffalo.box.com/s/ybkrfsmmc7h95piypzq8fhl58urjulb5 Diagrammatology]'', Springer, 2007
:Frederik Stjernfelt, "[https://buffalo.app.box.com/v/Peirce-as-Truthmaker-Realist Peirce as Truthmaker Realist]"[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324954426_Signs_Conveying_Information_On_the_Range_of_Peirce's_Notion_of_Propositions_-_Dicisigns Signs Conveying Information: On the Range of Peirce's Notion of Propositions – Dicisigns]", in: ''Empirical Research on Semiotics and Visual Rhetoric'', 2018 (pp.177-192)
:Frederik Stjernfelt,"[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Shared-dependencesThe Riddle of Dependences. How to connect entities, across pragmatism, phenomenology, and structuralism]"
:Frederik Stjernfelt: "[https://buffalo.box.com/v/Stjernfelt-Co-localization Co-localization as the Syntax of Multimodal Propositions: An Amazing Peircean Idea and Some Implications for the Semiotics of Truth]"
:Fumiaki Toyoshima and Adrien Barton "[http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2347/paper9.pdf A Formal Representation of Affordances as Reciprocal Dispositions]", ''TriCoLore'' (C3GI/ISD/SCORE), 2018
:Rob Withagen and Anthony Chemero [https://buffalo.box.com/s/u5pdxvmxoafl0heomoh84xgl7h1psnzm Affordances and classification: On the significance of a sidebar in James Gibson’s last book], ''Philosophical Psychology'', Vol. 25, No. 4, August 2012, 521–537
:Robert H. Wozniak, [https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Watson/commentary.htm "Commentary on Watson (1913)"]


1:00
=='''Background Reading: Repositories'''==
 
:[https://brocku.ca/MeadProject/ Mead Project Inventory]: see especially items by Dewey, E. B. Holt, and G. H. Mead
=='''Reading'''==  
:[https://arisbe.sitehost.iu.edu/ Peirce resources]
 
:[https://denison.edu/people/harry-heft Harry Heft: Works]
----
:[http://strangebeautiful.com/lmu/lectures-lmu-peirce.pdf Munich Schedule of Lectures on Peirce]
:[https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22frederik+stjernfelt%22+Peirce&hl=en Frederik Stjernfelt on Peirce]
:[https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Eric+charles+e+b+holt&hl=en E. P. Charles' papers on Holt]
:[https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/author.htm Classics in the History of Psychology]


== '''Student Learning Outcomes''' ==
== '''Student Learning Outcomes''' ==
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! Assessment Method(s)
! Assessment Method(s)
|-
|-
| The student will acquire a knowledge of the principles and procedures of ontology, and an insight into the philosophical methods and theories relevant thereto. The student will also acquire a familiarity with research in formal philosophy and analytic metaphysics.  
| The student will acquire a knowledge of the history of American philosophy, of its influence on the development of psychology and the social sciences, and of its contemporary relevance.  
| Lectures and class discussions
| Lectures and class discussions
| Review of reading matter and associated online content and participation in class discussions
| Review of reading matter and associated online content and participation in class discussions
|-
|-
| The student will acquire experience in using the methods employed in applied ontology, especially as applied to philosophical theories and systems
| The student will acquire experience in using the methods employed in intellectual history, especially as applied to philosophical theories and systems


| Participation in practical experiments
| Participation in practical experiments
| Review of results  
| Review of results  
|-
|-
| The student will acquire experience in communicating the results of work using ontologies and in the potential of modern applied ontology as a tool to aid philosophical understanding
| The student will acquire experience in communicating the results of work in the history of philosophy in such a way as to demonstrate their contemporary relevance.
| Creation of youtube presentation and of associated documentation
| Creation of youtube presentation and of associated documentation
| Review of results
| Review of results
Line 301: Line 386:


=='''How to Write an Essay'''==
=='''How to Write an Essay'''==
[https://web.archive.org/web/20191209181112/https://jordanbpeterson.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Essay_Writing_Guide.docx Jordan Peterson's Essay Writing Guide]
:[https://web.archive.org/web/20191209181112/https://jordanbpeterson.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Essay_Writing_Guide.docx Jordan Peterson's Essay Writing Guide]
:Steven Pinker, ''The Sense of Style'', Penguin Books, 2014
:Strunk and White, ''[http://www.jlakes.org/ch/web/The-elements-of-style.pdf The Elements of Style]''
:[https://philosophy.fas.harvard.edu/files/phildept/files/brief_guide_to_writing_philosophy_paper.pdf Harvard's guide to writing philosophy]
:[http://www.jimpryor.net/teaching/guidelines/writing.html Jim Pryor's guide to writing philosophy]


=='''Important Dates'''==
=='''Important Dates'''==
{|
{|
|  Sep 1 || - about now start to discuss by email the content of your essay or essays with Dr Smith
|  Sep 7 || - about now start to discuss by email the content of your essay or essays with Dr Smith
|-
|-
|  Sep 14 || - submit proposed title and abstract
|  Sep 25 || - submit proposed title and abstract
|-
|-
|  Sep 28 || - submit a table of contents and 300 word summary plus draft of associated ppt slides
|  Oct 10 || - submit a table of contents and 300 word summary plus draft of associated ppt slides
|-
|-
|  Oct 15 || - submit first draft of essay (~1000 words) and associated powerpoint (~10 slides)
|  Oct 20 || - submit first draft of essay (~1000 words) and associated powerpoint (~10 slides)
|-
|-
|  Nov 15 || - submit second draft of essay (~2000 words) and associated powerpoint (~10 slides)
|  Nov 15 || - submit second draft of essay (~2000 words) and associated powerpoint (~10 slides)
|-
|-
|  Dec7 || - class presentation
|  Nov 22 || - class presentation
|-
|-
|  Dec 11 || - submit final version of essay and powerpoint and upload final version of video to youtube
|  Dec 11 || - submit final version of essay and powerpoint and upload final version of video to youtube
Line 330: Line 419:
II: preparation of an essay, and associated powerpoint slides and recorded presentation.  
II: preparation of an essay, and associated powerpoint slides and recorded presentation.  


Content and structure of the essay should be discussed with Dr Smith. Where the essay takes the form of the documentation of a specific ontology developed by the student it should include:
Content and structure of the essay should be discussed with Dr Smith.  
:Statement of scope of the ontology
:Summary of existing ontologies in the relevant domain
:Explanation of how your ontology differs from (or incorporates) these ontologies
:Screenshots of parts of the ontology with some examples of important terms and definitions
:Summaries of potential applications of the ontology


'''Grading Policy:''' Grading follows standard [http://grad.buffalo.edu/Academics/Policies-Procedures/Grading-Procedures.html Graduate School policies]. Grades will be weighted according to the following breakdown:
'''Grading Policy:''' Grading follows standard [http://grad.buffalo.edu/Academics/Policies-Procedures/Grading-Procedures.html Graduate School policies]. Grades will be weighted according to the following breakdown:

Latest revision as of 20:12, 9 October 2022

American Philosophy and Its Contemporary Relevance

Topics in the History of Philosophy (PHI 556)

Fall Semester 2021, Monday 1-3:40pm

Venue: Park 141 (including on September 25-26, Park 141)

Registration: Class#: 24202

Course Description: This course will provide an introduction to the pragmatist tradition of American philosophy. It will focus on the philosophical ideas of the leading figures of this movement, including Peirce, James, and Dewey. At the same time it will explore the influence and contemporary relevance of pragmatist philosophy, particularly as concerns developments in psychology, and in the social sciences. The course will include a two-day intense weekend session focusing on the influence of American pragmatism on 20th-century German philosophy.

Instructors: Barry Smith and Jobst Landgrebe, with contributions by Anthony Chemero, Harry Heft, John Sowa and Frederik Stjernfelt

Prerequisites: Open to all persons with an undergraduate degree and some knowledge of philosophy.

Office hours: By appointment via email at phismith@buffalo.edu

The Course

Course Description: This course will provide an introduction to the pragmatist tradition of American philosophy. It will focus on the philosophical ideas of the leading figures of this movement, including Peirce, James, and Dewey. At the same time it will explore the influence and contemporary relevance of pragmatist philosophy, particularly as concerns developments in psychology and in the social sciences. The course will include a two-day intense weekend seminar focusing on the influence of American pragmatism on 20th-century German philosophy.

Course Structure: This is a three credit hour graduate seminar.

The final session will be structured around powerpoint presentations by the students in the class. These presentations will be recorded.

Target Audience: The course is open to all interested students with an undergraduate degree and some knowledge of philosophy.

August 30: Pragmatism: An Overview

Introduction to this Course

Methodology for the history of philosophy
The four phases of philosophy
Peirce and The Monist

Introduction to American Philosophy

Charles Sanders Peirce
William James
John Dewey
George Herbert Mead
Richard Rorty
Susan Haack

Slides

Video (with apologies for poor quality)

Reading:

Cornelis de Waal, Introducing Pragmatism, Taylor & Francis, 2021
Susan Haack, "Pragmatism Old and New" (2006).
C. Legg, "Pragmatism", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

September 6: Labor Day Observed

September 13: No class

September 20: The Metaphysics of C. S. Peirce

An introduction to truthmaking
The metaphysical realism of Duns Scotus
Peirce's metaphysical realism
Peirce and chemical diagrams
Peirce on modality
Peirce on the continuum
Peirce and mereology
Peirce and Brentano on the medievals

Slides

Video

Boler, Peirce and the Medievals
Campbell, The Chemistry of Relations
Pihlström, "Truthmaking And Pragmatist Conceptions Of Truth And Reality".
Rorty, Review of Boler
Smith, "Characteristica Universalis"
Stjernfelt, Diagrammatology
Stjernelt, "Mereology and Semiotics"

Peirce on the Classification of the Sciences

What is science?
What is logic?
What is mathematics?
The taxonomy of scientific models

Readings:

Torjus Midtgarden, Peirce’s classification of the sciences
Denis Fisette, Stumpf and the classification of the sciences

September 25-26 Weekend Course: Pragmatism and German Philosophy

Venue: 280 Park Hall

Saturday Morning

9am Pragmatism and Positivism

Slides
Video
Reading: Mulligan "How to Marry Phenomenology and Pragmatism"

10:30am Peirce, Truthmaking, and Kantianism

Presentation by Frederik Stjernfelt, Copenhagen
Slides
Video

Readings:

F. Stjernfelt, "Peirce as Truthmaker Realist"
F. Stjernfelt, "The Riddle of Dependences: How to connect entities, across pragmatism, phenomenology, and structuralism"

Saturday Afternoon

1pm Pragmatism and Neopositivism

2:45pm The History of Psychology in Germany and America

Slides

Gestalt-graph.png

From Barry Smith (ed.), Foundations of Gestalt Theory

Leipzig School, Wilhelm Wundt
Hugo Münsterberg
Oswald Külpe
Karl Bühler
E. B. Titchener
E. G. Boring
George Herbert Mead
C. S. Peirce
Harvard School, William James
Edwin B. Holt
J. J. Gibson
Behaviorism
E. Thorndike
J. B. Watson
Edwin Bissell Holt
B. F. Skinner
Ernst Mach
Vienna School, Franz Brentano
Edmund Husserl
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
J. J. Gibson
Carl Stumpf
Wolfgang Köhler
Max Wertheimer
Kurt Koffka
Kurt Lewin
Roger Barker
Fritz Heider
Prague School, Christian von Ehrenfels

Sunday Morning

9am Peirce's Semiotics

Presentation by Frederik Stjernfelt, Copenhagen
Slides
Video

Reading: F. Stjernfelt: "Co-localization as the Syntax of Multimodal Propositions: An Amazing Peircean Idea and Some Implications for the Semiotics of Truth"

11:00am Pragmatist Theories of Truth

Truth as Successful Action (Mead: When somebody has a problem and the solution of the problem is the truth)
Truth as Successful Group Action and the Developing of the Self through Communication (Royce, Mead and Habermas)
Habermas: Truth Emerges When People Speak Long Enough to Achieve a Consensus

Sunday Afternoon

1:00pm American Philosophy in Germany

Pragmatism from Scheler to Habermas. Part 1
Slides

2:00pm Ontology of Niches, Affordances, Settings, Places, Habitats: From Aristotle to Gibson and Barker and the Hutchinsonian Niche

Slides
Video

3:00pm Codas on Dewey, Mead and Leibniz

September 27: Pragmatism and German philosophy (continued)

Pragmatism from Scheler to Habermas. Part 2
Slides
Video

October 4: No class

October 11: No class

October 18: No class

October 25: Ecological Psychology in Context

Harry Heft, author of Ecological Psychology in Context: James Gibson, Roger Barker, and the Legacy of William James's Radical Empiricism:

1: Radical empiricism and the ontology of affordances

2. Behavior settings as emergent relational structures in everyday life

Slides
Video

Readings:

Heft, "Perceptual Information of 'An Entirely Different Order'"
Heft, "Places: Widening the Scope of an Ecological Approach to Perception"
Heft, Ecological Psychology in Context
Smith, "Toward a Realistic Science of Environments"
Smith, "Objects and Their Environments: From Aristotle to Ecological Psychology"

November 1: From Pragmatism to Radical Embodiment

Anthony Chemero (University of Cincinatti) Enactivism, Embodiment, Ecological Psychology

Slides

Readings:

A. Chemero, Radical Embodied Cognitive Science, MIT Press, 2009
A. Chemero, "An Outline of a Theory of Affordances", Ecological Psychology, 15(2), 181–195
Rob Withagen and Anthony Chemero, "Affordances and classification: On the significance of a sidebar in James Gibson’s last book", Philosophical Psychology, Vol. 25, No. 4, August 2012, 521–537

November 8: Peirce on Habits

Slides

Reading

Fausto Caruana and Italo Testa (eds.) Habits: Pragmatist Approaches from Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, and Social Theory

November 15: Peirce on Diagrams / Rorty on Pragmatism

John Sowa: Natural logic is diagrammatic reasoning about mental models

Slides

Reading:

John Sowa, "Peirce, Polya, and Euclid: Integrating logic, heuristics, and geometry"
John Sowa,"Reasoning with diagrams and images", 2018
John Sowa, "Natural logic is diagrammatic reasoning about mental models", 2020

Peirce on Logic and the Theory of Signs

Peirce on logic
Peirce and the theory of signs
Peirce and mereology
Peirce and chemical diagrams

Reading:

Campbell, The Chemistry of Relations
Smith, "Characteristica Universalis"
Stjernfelt, Diagrammatology
Stjernfelt, "Mereology and Semiotics"
Sowa Peirce's Contributions to the 21st Century

Richard Rorty: The Last Pragmatist

Slides
Video

Reading: Munz, Philosophy and the Mirror of Rorty

November 22: Student Projects

1:00pm Noah Kim: Pragmatism and Metaethics: A Peircean Approach to Moral Cognitivism
1:15pm Alec Sculley: Philosophy Actually
1:30pm Ali Hasanzadeh: The Role of Peirce’s Pragmatism in Modern Physics
1:45pm Famous Clark: Feminist Reparative Readings of Pragmatism
2:00pm Peihong (Karl) Xie: Does A Pragmatist Demystification of Truthmaking Succeed?
2:15pm Tiankui Zeng: Rorty escaping the game
2:30pm Robert Krieter: Counterfactual Intuitions and Actuality
2:45pm Hyemi Jun: Comparing Peirce and Descartes on Approaches to Justify Knowledge
3:00pm Finn Wilson: Peirce, Belief and Reference

November 29: No class

December 6: No class

Background Reading: Primary Literature

Barker, Roger "On the Nature of the Environment", Journal of Social Issues, October 1963.
Brock, Jarrett, "An Introduction to Peirce's Theory of Speech Acts", Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 17 (4), 1981, 319-326.
Dewey, John. (1884). "The new psychology". Andover Review, 2, 278-289. [Possibly the first use of the phrase "new psychology."]
Dewey, John. (1894). "The ego as cause". Philosophical Review, 3, 337-341.
Dewey, John. (1896) "The reflex arc concept in psychology". Psychological Review, 3, 357-370. [The article that defined the modern concept of the reflex.]
Dewey, John. (1938) Logic. The Theory of Inquiry
Gibson, James J. (1966) The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems
Gibson, James J. (1979) The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception
Holt, Edwin Bissell (1931) Animal Drive and the Leaning Process. An Essay Toward Radical Empiricism
Holt, E. B. et al. (1912) The New Realism
James, William (1890). The Principles of Psychology.
James, William, "Pragmatism, a New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking", in: Popular Lectures on Philosophy, Longmans, Green, and Co (1907)
Langfeld, Herbert (1931) "A Response Interpretation of Consciousness", The Psychological Review, 38(2), 1931, 87-107.
Mead, George H. (1913). "The social self". Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, 10, 374-380. [Major article by the "social behaviorist"]
Mead, George H. (1934) Mind, Self and Society
Parsons, Talcott (1951) The Social System
Peirce, C. S. "How to Make our Ideas Clear"
Schiller, F. C. S. Humanism: Philosophical Essays
Schiller, F. C. S. Studies in Humanism,
Skinner, B. F. (1935). "Two types of conditioned reflex and a pseudo type". Journal of General Psychology, 12, 66-77. [Major statement of operant behaviorism.]
Skinner, B. F. (1937). "Two types of conditioned reflex: A reply to Konorski and Miller". Journal of General Psychology, 16, 272-279. [Reply to major critique of Skinner (1935).]
Skinner, B. F. (1950). "Are theories of learning necessary?", Psychological Review, 57, 193-216.
Thorndike, Edward Human Learning, 1931
Watson, John B. (1913). "Psychology as the behaviorist views it". Psychological Review, 20, 158-177. [The classic manifesto of behaviorism.]

Background Reading: Secondary Literature

Michael K. Bergman, Hierarchy from the perspective of Peirce, Encyclopedia of Knowledge Organization
M. E. Bitterman Classical Conditioning Since Pavlov, Review of General Psychology, 2006, 10 (4), 365–376
J. F. Boler, Charles Peirce and Scholastic Realism: A Study of Peirce's Relation to John Duns Scotus, University of Washington Press, I963
J. F. Boler, Peirce on the Medievals: Realism, Power and Form
Maria Brinker, "The Backside of Habit: Notes on Embodied Agency and the Functional Opacity of the Medium", in: Fausto Caruana & Italo Testa (eds.), Habits, 2020
Chris Campbell, The Chemistry of Relations. The periodic table examined through the lens of C.S. Peirce’s philosophy, University College London, 2017
Fausto Caruana and Italo Testa (eds.) Habits: Pragmatist Approaches from Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, and Social Theory, Cambridge University Press, 2020.
Jorge Castro and Enrique Lafuente, “All You Need is Holt”—Is the Socio-cultural Phenomenon a Problem for a Neorealist Ecological Psychology?
E. P. Charles, Seeing Minds in Behavior: Descriptive Mentalism, August 2011, Review of General Psychology 15(3):267-276.
A. Chemero, Radical Embodied Cognitive Science, MIT Press, 2009
A. Chemero, "[1] An Outline of a Theory of Affordances]", Ecological Psychology, 15(2), 181–195
Willard F. Day, On certain similarities between the Philosophical investigations of Ludwig Wittgenstein and the operationism of B. F. Skinner, Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1969 May; 12(3): 489–506.
Christopher D. Green, "Introduction to Watson (1913)"
Bernard Guerin, Gibson, Skinner and Perceptual Responses, Behavior and Philosophy, Spring/Summer 1990, Vol. 18, Number 1
Susan Haack, "Pragmatism Old and New" (2006).
Henry Jackman, "James' Pragmatic Account of Intentionality and Truth", Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, Vol. 34, No. 1, 1998, 155-181
Peter Hare, G. H. Mead's Metaphysics of Sociality, Dissertation, Columbia University, 1965
Peter Hare, Neglected American Philosophers in the History of Symbolic Interactionism [on Mead's precursors Chauncey Wright and Josiah Royce]
Harry Heft, Ecological Psychology in Context : James Gibson, Roger Barker, and the Legacy of William James's Radical Empiricism
Harry Heft, "Perceptual Information of 'An Entirely Different Order': The 'Cultural Environment' in The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems", Ecological Psychology, 29 (2), 2017, 122-145
Heft, Harry, "Places: Widening the Scope of an Ecological Approach to Perception–Action With an Emphasis on Child Development", Ecological Psychology, 30, 2018, 99-123
Hongwei Jia Foundations of the Theory of Signs (1938), Chinese Semiotic Studies 15(1): 1–14.
Catherine Legg and Joshua Black “What is Intelligence For? A Peircean Pragmatist Response to the Knowing‑How, Knowing‑That Debate”, Erkenntnis, 2020.
Willem J. M. Levelt, Speech Acts and Functions, ch. 9 of Levelt, A History of Psycholinguistics: The Pre-Chomskyan Era, Oxford University Press, 2013 [on Bühler and speech act theory]
Peter T. Manicas, "John Dewey and American Psychology", Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 32:30021–8308
Edward C. Moore, "The Scholastic Realism of C. S. Peirce", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, March 1952, 12 (3), 406-417
Kevin Mulligan, "How to Marry Phenomenology and Pragmatism - Scheler's Proposal", Pragmatism and the European Traditions: Encounters with Analytic Philosophy and Phenomenology Before the Great Divide, Edited by Maria Baghramian and Sarin Marchetti, Routledge, 2018, 37-64
Peter Munz, Philosophy and the Mirror of Rorty, Philosophy of the Social Sciences 14 (2):195-238 (1984)
Thomas Natsoulas Gibson's Environment, Husserl's "Lebenswelt," the World of Physics, and the Rejection of Phenomenal Objects, The American Journal of Psychology, Autumn, 1994, Vol. 107, No. 3 (Autumn, 1994), pp. 327-358
Sami Pihlström, "Truthmaking And Pragmatist Conceptions Of Truth And Reality". Minerva (2005) 9:105-133.
Matthieu Queloz, The Practical Origins of Ideas: Genealogy as Conceptual Reverse-Engineering (open access) [On Peirce]
Richard Rorty, Review of Boler on Scholastic Realism
John Sowa, "Peirce, Polya, and Euclid: Integrating logic, heuristics, and geometry"
John Sowa,"Reasoning with diagrams and images", 2018
John Sowa, "Natural logic is diagrammatic reasoning about mental models", 2020
John Sowa "Peirce's Contributions to the 21st Century".
Barry Smith (ed.), Foundations of Gestalt Theory, Munich, 1988.
Barry Smith, "Characteristica Universalis", in K. Mulligan (ed.), Language, Truth and Ontology, Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer, 1992, 48–77.
Barry Smith, "Toward a Realistic Science of Environments", Ecological Pschology 21 (2), April-June 2009, 121-130
Barry Smith “Objects and Their Environments: From Aristotle to Ecological Psychology”, in Andrew Frank, Jonathan Raper and Jean-Paul Cheylan (eds.), The Life and Motion of Socio-Economic Units (GISDATA 8), London: Taylor and Francis, 2001, 79–97. [On Roger Barker on behavior settings]
Frederik Stjernfelt, "Mereology and Semiotics", Sign Systems Studies 28:73-97 (2000)
Frederik Stjernfelt, Diagrammatology, Springer, 2007
Frederik Stjernfelt, "Peirce as Truthmaker Realist"Signs Conveying Information: On the Range of Peirce's Notion of Propositions – Dicisigns", in: Empirical Research on Semiotics and Visual Rhetoric, 2018 (pp.177-192)
Frederik Stjernfelt,"Riddle of Dependences. How to connect entities, across pragmatism, phenomenology, and structuralism"
Frederik Stjernfelt: "Co-localization as the Syntax of Multimodal Propositions: An Amazing Peircean Idea and Some Implications for the Semiotics of Truth"
Fumiaki Toyoshima and Adrien Barton "A Formal Representation of Affordances as Reciprocal Dispositions", TriCoLore (C3GI/ISD/SCORE), 2018
Rob Withagen and Anthony Chemero Affordances and classification: On the significance of a sidebar in James Gibson’s last book, Philosophical Psychology, Vol. 25, No. 4, August 2012, 521–537
Robert H. Wozniak, "Commentary on Watson (1913)"

Background Reading: Repositories

Mead Project Inventory: see especially items by Dewey, E. B. Holt, and G. H. Mead
Peirce resources
Harry Heft: Works
Munich Schedule of Lectures on Peirce
Frederik Stjernfelt on Peirce
E. P. Charles' papers on Holt
Classics in the History of Psychology

Student Learning Outcomes

Program Outcomes/Competencies Instructional Method(s) Assessment Method(s)
The student will acquire a knowledge of the history of American philosophy, of its influence on the development of psychology and the social sciences, and of its contemporary relevance. Lectures and class discussions Review of reading matter and associated online content and participation in class discussions
The student will acquire experience in using the methods employed in intellectual history, especially as applied to philosophical theories and systems Participation in practical experiments Review of results
The student will acquire experience in communicating the results of work in the history of philosophy in such a way as to demonstrate their contemporary relevance. Creation of youtube presentation and of associated documentation Review of results

How to Write an Essay

Jordan Peterson's Essay Writing Guide
Steven Pinker, The Sense of Style, Penguin Books, 2014
Strunk and White, The Elements of Style
Harvard's guide to writing philosophy
Jim Pryor's guide to writing philosophy

Important Dates

Sep 7 - about now start to discuss by email the content of your essay or essays with Dr Smith
Sep 25 - submit proposed title and abstract
Oct 10 - submit a table of contents and 300 word summary plus draft of associated ppt slides
Oct 20 - submit first draft of essay (~1000 words) and associated powerpoint (~10 slides)
Nov 15 - submit second draft of essay (~2000 words) and associated powerpoint (~10 slides)
Nov 22 - class presentation
Dec 11 - submit final version of essay and powerpoint and upload final version of video to youtube

Grading

Grading will be based on two factors:

I: understanding and criticism of the material presented in classes 1-13

All students are required to take an active part in class (and where relevant on-line) discussions throughout the semester.

II: preparation of an essay, and associated powerpoint slides and recorded presentation.

Content and structure of the essay should be discussed with Dr Smith.

Grading Policy: Grading follows standard Graduate School policies. Grades will be weighted according to the following breakdown:

Weighting Assignment

20% - class discussions
15% - youtube video presentation
15% - powerpoint slides
50% - essay

Final Grades

Percentages refer to sum of assignment grades as listed above

Grade Quality Percentage

A 4.0 90.0% -100.00%
A- 3.67 87.0% - 89.9%
B+ 3.33 84.0% - 86.9%
B 3.00 80.0% - 83.9%
B- 2.67 77.0% - 79.9%
C+ 2.33 74.0% - 76.9%
C 2.00 71.0% - 73.9%
C- 1.67 68.0% - 70.9%
D+ 1.33 65.0% - 67.9%
D 1.00 62.0% - 64.9%
F 0 61.9% or below

An interim grade of Incomplete (I) may be assigned if the student has not completed all requirements for the course. An interim grade of 'I' shall not be assigned to a student who did not attend the course. The default grade accompanying an interim grade of 'I' shall be 'U' and will be displayed on the UB record as 'IU.' The default Unsatisfactory (U) grade shall become the permanent course grade of record if the 'IU' is not changed through formal notice by the instructor upon the student's completion of the course.

Assignment of an interim 'IU' is at the discretion of the instructor. A grade of 'IU' can be assigned only if successful completion of unfulfilled course requirements can result in a final grade better than the default 'U' grade. The student should have a passing average in the requirements already completed. The instructor shall provide the student specification, in writing, of the requirements to be fulfilled.

The university’s Graduate Incomplete Policy can be found here.

Related Policies and Services

Academic integrity is a fundamental university value. Through the honest completion of academic work, students sustain the integrity of the university while facilitating the university's imperative for the transmission of knowledge and culture based upon the generation of new and innovative ideas. See http://grad.buffalo.edu/Academics/Policies-Procedures/Academic-Integrity.html.

Accessibility resources: If you have any disability which requires reasonable accommodations to enable you to participate in this course, please contact the Office of Accessibility Resources in 60 Capen Hall, 645-2608 and also the instructor of this course during the first week of class. The office will provide you with information and review appropriate arrangements for reasonable accommodations, which can be found on the web here.

University suppert services: Students are often unaware of university support services. For example, the Center for Excellence in Writing provides support for written work, and several tutoring centers on campus provide academic success support and resources.

Available resources on sexual assault: UB is committed to providing an environment free of all forms of discrimination and sexual harassment, including sexual assault, domestic and dating violence and stalking. If you have experienced gender-based violence (intimate partner violence, attempted or completed sexual assault, harassment, coercion, stalking, etc.), UB has resources to help. This includes academic accommodations, health and counseling services, housing accommodations, helping with legal protective orders, and assistance with reporting the incident to police or other UB officials if you so choose. Please contact UB’s Title IX Coordinator at 716-645-2266 for more information. For confidential assistance, you may also contact a Crisis Services Campus Advocate at 716-796-4399.

Counseiling services: As a student you may experience a range of issues that can cause barriers to learning or reduce your ability to participate in daily activities. These might include strained relationships, anxiety, high levels of stress, alcohol/drug problems, feeling down, health concerns, or unwanted sexual experiences. Counseling, Health Services, and Health Promotion are here to help with these or other concerns. You learn can more about these programs and services by contacting:

Counseling Services: 120 Richmond Quad (North Campus), phone 716-645-2720
Health Services: Michael Hall (South Campus), phone: 716-829-3316
Health Promotion: 114 Student Union (North Campus), phone: 716- 645-2837
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