Irad Kimhi, “Creation and Being” Charles Kahn, “Why Existence Does Not Emerge as a Distinct Concept in Greek Philosophy" Stephen Menn, "Metaphysics: God and Being” Frege, Letter to Wittgenstein, June 28, 1919 (in the Frege-Wittgenstein Correspondence) Fourth Meeting (Monday, June 26): Descartes and the Creation of Eternal Truths Required readings: Descartes, Correspondence, excerpts Descartes, Meditations I - IV Descartes, Second and Sixth Replies, excerpts Descartes, Principles of Philosophy, excerpt Leibniz, excerpts from Discourse on Metaphysics, Theodicy, Monadology Conant, "The Search for Logically Alien Thought”, pp. 115-123 A. W. Moore, “What Descartes Ought to Have Thought about Necessity” Background reading: Curley, “Descartes on the Creation of Eternal Truths” Frankfurt, “Descartes on the Creation of Eternal Truths” Bennett, “Descartes’s Theory of Modality" Geach, "Omnipotence" Wilson, Descartes, excerpt A. W. Moore, The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics, Ch. 1 Fifth Meeting (Monday, Feb. 2): Dan Kaufman on Descartes Required readings: Kaufman, “Descartes’s Creation Doctrine and Modality” Kaufman, “God's Immutability and the Necessity of Descartes’s Eternal Truths" Kaufman, “Infimus gradus libertatis?” Waismann, “Notes on Talks with Wittgenstein" Background readings: Alanen, “Omnipotence, Modality, and Conceivability” Richard La “Descartes on God’s Ability to Do the Logically Impossible" Della Rocca, "Judgment and Will" Schmid, "Unity of Will and Intellect" Spinoza, Ethics, excerpt Sixth Meeting (Monday, Feb. 9): Kant on Pure General vs. Transcendental Logic
Required readings: Conant, “The Search for Logically Alien Thought,” pp. 123-134 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A50/B74-A83/B115 Kant, Logic, excerpts Background readings: MacFarlane, “Kant and the Formality of Logic” Geach, “The History of Corruptions of Logic" Engstrom: “Unity of Apperception" Seventh Meeting (Monday, Feb. 16): Boyle on Kant’s Hylomorphic Conception of Logic Required readings: Boyle, “Kant on Logic and the Laws of the Understanding" Boyle, “Kant’s Hylomorphism” Kneale & Kneale, The Development of pp. 354 - 358 Background readings: MacFarlane, “Kant, Frege, and the Logic in Logicism" Rödl, “Logical Form as Relation to the Object” Rödl, Categories of the Temporal, excerpt Eighth Meeting (Monday, Feb. 23): Frege’s Conception of Logic Required readings: Conant, “The Search for Logically Alien Thought,” pp. 134-150 Frege, Begriffschrift, Preface Frege, The Foundations of Arithmetic, Introduction and Sections 1-4 Ricketts, “Objectivity and Objecthood” Background reading: van Heijenoort, “Logic as Calculus and Logic as Language” Carroll, “What the Tortoise Said to Achilles” Stroud, “Inference, Belief, and Understanding" Ricketts, “Frege, the Tractatus, and the Logocentric Predicament” Ninth Meeting (Monday, March 2): Frege on Elucidation
Required readings: Frege, “On Concept and Object” Frege, “The Thought” Frege, “Logic” (1897) “My Basic Logical Insights” Geach, “Saying and Showing in Frege and Wittgenstein” Background readings: Taschek, “Truth, Assertion, and the Horizontal: Frege on ‘The Essence of Logic’” Weiner, Frege in Perspective, ch. 6 Travis, “When Words Fail” Diamond, “What Does a Begriffsschrift Do?” Tenth Meeting (Monday, March 9): Frege on Logically Alien Thought Required readings: Frege, Basic Laws of Arithmetic, excerpt “Sources of Knowledge of Mathematics and the Mathematical Natural Sciences”, excerpt Frege, “A Brief Survey of My Logical Doctrines” Stroud, “Logical Aliens and the ‘Ground’ of Logical Necessity” Background readings: Haase, “The Laws of Thought and the Power of Thinking,” pp. 249-264 Geach, “Assertion" Nicholas Smith, “Frege's Judgment Stroke and the Conception of Logic as the Study of Inference" Kimhi, Thinking and Being, excerpt Eleventh Meeting (Monday, 16): Tractarian Coda Required readings: Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, excerpts Conant, “The Search for Logically Alien Thought,” pp. 150-161 Sullivan, “Varieties of Thought” Background readings: Irad Kimhi, Thinking and Being, excerpt Bronzo, “Symbols, Signs, and Figures in Frege and Wittgenstein” Hylton. “Functions, Operations, and Sense in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus” Conant, “The Method of the Tractatus” Conant and Diamond, “On Reading the Tractatus Resolutely”