The people have spoken. The first make up session of the semester is scheduled for Thursday, March 7 2013, at 4:30pm. More details (location, etc.) to follow.

You should have all received two different emails asking you to fill out two Doodle polls. One is for scheduling in-class presentations. The other one is for scheduling make up sessions. Please contact me as soon as possible if you did not receive either of those two emails.

Next week, we will be open for business as usual. I will get in touch with all of you soon to start thinking about make up sessions.

For now, let us pick up where we left. I want to use the first third of the meeting (or so) to wrap up our discussion of Lewis on Desire as Belief. Please take a moment to look at the sequel, especially if you haven’t yet.

But the bulk of our discussion will revolve around Chapter 6 of Reasons and Persons.

(Note: There is a typo in the syllabus, I will fix it when I’m back in LA. The reading is not chapter 1, but chapter 6.)

I strongly encourage you to look at the sequel to ‘Desire as Belief’. I will go over both formulations of the argument, but the one in the later paper is probably easier to follow.

Next week we will start by discussing Smith’s ‘Humean Rationality’ (which was assigned for last week – please remember to bring your copy of the handout!). We will then move on to talk about Lewis’ ‘Desire as Belief’. (You can also take a look at the sequel if you’re so inclined.)

Remember: you can use the USC library bookmarklet to access the readings if you are off- campus.

In class yesterday I alluded to an argument due to Michael Smith. The argument, recall, was meant to show that no mental state could have both world to mind and mind to world directions of fit. For those of you who are curious, this is the paper I had in mind.

Here is a representative passage (p. 56):

For, as we have understood the concept of direction of fit, the direction of fit of a state with the content that p is determined, inter alia, by its counterfactual dependence on a perception with the content that not p. A state with both directions of fit would therefore have to be such that both, in the presence of such a perception it tends to go out of existence, and, in the presence of such a perception, it tends to endure, disposing the subject that has it to bring it about that p. Taken quite literally, then, the idea that there may be a state with both directions of fit is just plain incoherent.

UPDATE: In answer to Matt’s question: the passage is repeated verbatim on Ch. 4 of The Moral Problem (p. 118).

A follow-up to the previous post: Here is a link to Chapter 4 of Michael Smith’s The Moral Problem.

A draft of the course syllabus is now online. For the first day of class, you should read:

• Michael Smith’s handbook article on Humean Rationality.
• Lloyd Humberstone’s ‘Direction of fit’.

If you haven’t yet, I recommend you also take a look at Section iii of Part III of Book II of Hume’s Treatise.

I will upload a pdf version of chapter 4 of Smith’s The Moral Problem in the next few days. This is not required reading, but is worth taking a look.

I’m still working on the syllabus for the course. But I thought it would be good to give an idea of what the seminar will be about. So here is a blurb of sorts.

Beliefs seem to have, as part of their job description, the carrying of information about the world around us. Perhaps this can help explain why beliefs can be rational or irrational: rationality gets its purchase on beliefs because it is a reasonable guide to the facts that beliefs are meant to track. It makes sense to talk of a rational change in belief, say, because we are confronted with evidence that pulls in one direction or another. But there are many other attitudes, in particular conative and affective attitudes (non-cognitive attitudes, for short), whose role seems to have little to do with tracking features of the environment. Does this mean that there can be no substantive rationality constraints on non-cognitive attitudes? If there are, what is their source? Is there such a thing as a rational change in non-cognitive attitudes?

The first and second parts of the seminar will revolve around the question of whether and how rationality constraints conative and affective attitudes. The final part of the seminar will be focused on the question of whether and how non-cognitivists views in meta-ethics can account for the ways in which moral thought is rationally constrained.

This is the website for PHIL 540 (Spring 2013). Announcements, readings, and other relevant information will be posted here. If you are enrolled in this class, you should be checking this website regularly. You can follow the Twitter feed, if you are on Twitter. Otherwise, you can either subscribe to the RSS feed or simply come here regularly to stay up to date.

UPDATE: It is now possible to subscribe to the RSS feed via email.