Professor Amy Kind                                                                         Office Hours:
akind@benson.mckenna.edu                                                             Monday 4:00-5:00 p.m.
Seaman 223; x73782                                                                        Tuesday 2:30-4:00 p.m.
http://phil-rlst.mckenna.edu/akind                                                        Wednesday 10:30-11:30 a.m.
                                                                                                            or by appointment
 

COURSE DESCRIPTION

       Consider the following hypothesis:  though it seems to you that you have a body – head, arms, legs and so on – and though it seems to you that you are sitting in a chair right now with a piece of paper in front of you, in fact you are simply a brain, suspended in a vat full of liquid and connected by a complex wiring system to an enormously powerful computer.  Some extraordinarily clever but also extraordinarily malevolent scientists have programmed the computer to feed you all of your experiences, that is, to make it seem to you that you have a body, that you are sitting in a chair, and all the rest.
       Once this hypothesis is presented, a very natural question arises:  How do you know that the hypothesis is false, that is, how do you know that you are not a brain in a vat?  It is this question, and related skeptical questions, that will occupy us in this course.  Our investigation of skepticism will take place in the context of a general investigation of epistemology – the study of knowledge.  The skeptic argues that knowledge is impossible, but in order to understand this skeptcial conclusion, and the arguments for it, we will have to take up two of the most basic epistemological questions, namely, "What is knowledge?" and "What is justification?"  In the first half of this course, we will study philosophers’ attempts to answer these questions; then, in the second half of this course we will look more directly at several arguments for skepticism and several attempts to answer the skeptic.
 

COURSE TEXTS

There are two textbooks for this course, available for purchase in Huntley Bookstore:

• Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology, Jonathan Dancy
• Contemporary Readings in Epistemology, Michael Goodman and Robert Snyder (eds.)

Each of these textbooks is also available on two-hour reserve at Honnold Library.  Also available on two-hour reserve is A Companion to Epistemology, Jonathan Dancy (ed.), which may be useful to you as a reference text.

Additional readings will be made available in class.
 

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

Papers.  You will have to write four papers; each will be approximately 4-6 pages in length.  Topics will be distributed in class approximately one week before the due date.

 Paper #1 due:  Thursday 2/19 by 1 p.m. (15% of course grade)
 Paper #2 due:  Thursday 3/12 by 1 p.m. (25% of course grade)
 Paper #3 due:  Thurdsay 4/16 by 1 p.m. (25% of course grade)
 Paper #4 due:  Thursday 5/14 by 1 p.m. (25% of course grade)

Rewrite policy (for the first three papers).  Writing philosophy is difficult, and very different from writing in other disciplines.  Thus, I will allow you to rewrite any paper turned in on time which gets a B- or lower.  Rewrites are entirely optional.  If you choose to rewrite a paper, the rewrite should be submitted along with a photocopy of the original paper, and must be turned in to me no later than one week after the original papers were initially returned in class.  Your grade on the paper will then be an average of the original grade and the rewrite grade.  (Note: this rewrite policy applies to the first three papers only.  Since the fourth paper is due during finals week, it cannot be rewritten.)

Class participation.  10% of your course grade will come from class participation.  Attendance in class is required.  However, it is not enough merely to attend; you must also take an active part in our discussion.  On this front, you are expected to come to class having read and thought carefully about the assigned readings.  You should aim to contribute a thoughtful comment or question to our class discussions at least once a week or, alternatively, you should aim to post a thoughtful comment or question to our Web-discussion group at least once a week.  Further details about the Web-discussion group will be distributed in class.
 

READING SCHEDULE

All reading assignments are to be completed by the date listed.
Readings marked (GS) can be found in Goodman and Snyder; readings marked (CR) can be found in the course reader.