Current Debates in Language & Mind (PHIL*4120)
Code and section: PHIL*4120*01
Term: Winter 2020
Instructor: Mark McCullagh
Details
This course is crosslisted with PHIL*6120
The course is a graduate-level introduction to Philosophy of Language, with a focus on 2 or 3 particular special topics, the choice of which will depend on students' interests. Possibitilies include: discourse about fictional entities; vagueness; context-dependence; apriority and analyticity. We'll read some orienting essays from a recent "Companion" volume, and perhaps some stuff from Irene Heim and Angelika Kratzer's standard semantics textbook, or David Kaplan's essay "Demonstratives," but our main materials will be articles that I will make available online.
Students will produce one term essay, an initial draft of which will be due several weeks into the course. They will also produce a small number of the mini-presentations that will open each class meeting.