PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
cod. 1006345

Academic year 2015/16
1° year of course - Second semester
Professor
Academic discipline
Filosofia e teoria dei linguaggi (M-FIL/05)
Field
Istituzioni di filosofia
Type of training activity
Characterising
36 hours
of face-to-face activities
6 credits
hub: -
course unit
in - - -

Integrated course unit module: LANGUAGE AND MIND (INTEGRATED)

Learning objectives

1-Knowledge and understanding
The course presents a survey of the major positions of the contemporary debate on the philosophy of perception and of the main theoretical options there are for future research.

2-Applying Knowledge and understanding
Students will be trained to recognize, reformulate, and criticize arguments with the goal to acquire the skills necessary for doing philosophical research.

3-4-5 Making judgments, communication and learning skills
Students are invited to prepare the texts autonomously so as to be able to present the main arguments in short presentations in class. Guidance during their preparing and writing the term paper will allow them to develop the skills necessary to participate autonomously in the philosophical debate and to learn and enlarge their knowledge in an autonomous way.

Prerequisites

- - -

Course unit content

In the course we will focus on the actual debate on the structure of the content of perceptual experience, its epistemological role (how can perception contribute to knowledge?) and its phenomenological aspects (the role of the qualitative aspect of perceptual experience).
In particular, we will analyze the debate concerning non-conceptual content of perception, the relation between perception and language, the question of whether perception experience has content and the role perception plays in our mental life.

Full programme

The extended program can be found at the course web-site on http://elly.alef.unipr.it

Bibliography

The bibliography will be indicated at the beginning of the course.

Recommended reading (as preparation): Calabi, C.: Filosofia della percezione, Roma/Bari: Laterza, 2009.

Teaching methods

During the meetings we will analyse a series of texts. There will be ample room for discussing the various aspects that emerge from the texts. The success of the course will depend essentially on the students’ active participation in discussion and they are encouraged to share their interests, doubts, and perplexities with the others. Students who are not able to assist the meetings in class will be able to follow the course via internet (the specifics of the online-platform will be announced).

Assessment methods and criteria

The exam consists in writing a short term-paper (10-12 pages ca.) in which the student shows their competences in formulating and discussing in an argumentative way a specific philosophical problem (in the field of the philosophy of perception), to reconstruct and contrast relevant arguments that have bee proposed by the philosophers discussed in class with the goal to draft a text that is informative for a non-expert reader. Students are invited to pay attention to the own expressive tools, to the coherent use of technical terminology, the cogency of the argument and a concise style.
The oral part of the exam consists in a discussion of the term p

Other information

- - -