Issues in Philosophy: I and You

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Writing Assignment:

The idea is to write a 10-12 page essay criticizing or defending one of the authors we have discussed, or to expound a thesis on one of these themes. The papers will be due at the end of exam week in my mailbox in 1001CL

Ultra-optional Readings on the ‘wider context’:

• Thompson“The representation of life”

• Thompson “Naive action theory”

• Thompson dubious methodological introduction

Readings on the first and second person:

“Doxastic Pancakes”

• H P Grice “Meaning”

• T M Scanlon “Promises and Practices”

• Michael Bratman “Shared Cooperative Activity”
  What is especially interesting about this essay, for our purposes is that it is systematically stated in the first and second person (and the second person plural.)

Is there such a thing as ‘second personal’ thought, belief,

knowledge, etc.?

• R Heck “Do Demonstratives have Senses?”
  The remarkable claim about the second person can be found around pp. 12 - 14. The original paper is here

Readings on the first person:

• Gottlob Frege “The Thought”
  We are especially interested in the discussion of the “I” on pages 7 - 9.

• Elizabeth Anscombe “The First Person”

• David Lewis “Attitudes De Dicto and De Se”

Other things you might look at:

• Gottlob Frege “On Sense and Reference”

• Peter Geach “Beliefs about Oneself”

• Hector-Neri Castaneda “The Logic of Attributions of Self Knowledge to Others”

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Descartes readings:

Descartes, Meditations especially Meditation 2.

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Preliminary ethical readings:

The first readings will be ethical in character, as I said, focussing on the idea of ‘wronging’ someone, and its peculiar character.

From that topic we will move to the general idea of ‘mutual recognition’, “I and You”, by way first of discussing some great works, traditional and contemporary, on the “I”.

Elizabeth Anscombe, Mr Truman’s Degree
Philippa Foot, The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect

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Dubious orienting screeds:

I mentioned some little screeds and essays by myself you might take a look at for a bit of orientation:

• What is It to Wrong Someone?
• What we think of each other (unruly slides)
• A few frivolous attempts at a revealing symbolism