Course
Description
Philosophy 302—Mind and
Knowledge: Descartes to Kant
St. Mary’s
College of Maryland
Spring 2019
One hundred and forty years is not a long time in human history. It is about two consecutive human lifespans,
two whirls of Halley’s comet. Yet we will spend this semester studying
philosophical writings produced within the boundaries of such a span, from a
but a slice of the world: western Europe. So
philosophically fruitful a time was this, in fact, that we will be able to read
but a portion of the material from there and then. The time from the publication of Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy in 1641
to the publication of Kant’s Critique of
Pure Reason in 1781 is such an extraordinarily rich period in the history
of philosophy that we could spend years studying the works and themes of that
era’s dozen most influential thinkers.
On a scale of about one week per decade, we will do our best to
understand some of the very creative and penetrating claims, arguments, and
theories proposed by men and women of that day.
I do not know why you are
interested in understanding and discussing these thinkers, but instead of
reading them as ends in themselves, I
am interested in studying them as a way of addressing some very important and fundamental
issues. For example, how and of what can
humans have knowledge? Is there good
reason to think that a god exists? Or to
think that we have minds? Are there
fundamental bits of matter, or are things divisible “all the way down”? Are we ever justified in believing that A causes B, when all we ever see is the
occurrence of A followed by
the occurrence of B? If “5+7=12” is true only because of some
linguistic conventions, and so is not about anything in the world (about what
anyway? Fivehood?),
then how is it that learning mathematics can help us build better bridges?
Matters such as these are as important to think about as they are difficult. So we need all the help we can get. First, we will need each other’s help in
class and in continuing discussions outside of class. Second, it would be foolhardy of us to ignore
the ideas of some bright people who addressed these matters, even if (perhaps especially if) these bright people lived
long ago and far away. Hence, we will be
mining the riches of that century and a half in
The learning objectives for this course are that at the completion, students:
1.
will be able to situate 17th- and 18th-century Western
philosophers' arguments as responses to other thinkers, as demonstrated by explaining
their similarities and divergences from other thinkers;
2.
will be able to apply views of 17th- and 18th-century Western
philosophers to issues of continuing relevance, as demonstrated by applying
them to metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, or political issues of today;
3.
will be able to construct critiques of the reasoning used for
various arguments in 17th- and 18th-century Western philosophy, as demonstrated
by being able to object to thinkers' reasoning in support of their positions;
4.
will be able to ground claims about 17th- and 18th-century Western
philosophical positions in primary sources, as demonstrated by anchoring their
attributions to thinkers by citing relevant texts;
5.
will be able to demonstrate effective oral communication of ideas
in 17th- and 18th-century Western philosophy, as demonstrated by contributing
to class discussion or giving class presentations;
6.
will be able
to demonstrate effective written communication of ideas in 17th- and 18th-century
Western philosophy, as demonstrated by writing well-organized essays.
Go
to the home page for this
course.
Send me comments: mstaber at smcm dot edu
Go to Michael Taber's
home page.
Go to SMCM's home page.