Online Study Guide for Philosophy 6
(Philosophy of the Person)

Online Resources

• General philosophy resources online

• MIT's online guide to writing philosophy papers.

• Review English grammar

• David Chalmers' home page: Chalmers is a famous philosopher of mind and his home page has lots of links to good sites

• Play with Braitenberg vehicles online.

• Talk to Alice or HAL (computer programs) and see if you can tell the difference

• Tell your problems to ELIZA, the computer therapist.

• Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind

The following are required reading for Dr. LaFave's sections of Philosophy 6.

If you have not taken Philosophy 1 (Introduction to Philosophy), or it's been a while since you've taken it, you may want to refer also to my Online Study Guide for Philosophy 1, especially the general background essays on free will, Hume, and Kant.

My notes

• What Is Philosophy?
• Steps in Argument Analysis -- A Critical Thinking Checklist
• What is Bad Logic?
• Necessary and Sufficient Conditions
• Open and Closed Concepts and the Continuum Fallacy
• What Is a Person?
• Plato's Philosophy as a Reply to Glaucon's Challenge
• Plato's Arguments about Souls
• Aristotle's Metaphysics and Psychology
• Buddhism and Self
• Notes on Descartes' Meditations
• Comparison of Eastern and Western Religions
• Roadmap of Philosophy of Mind
• Mary Anne Warren on Persons: the argument in "On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion"
• Notes on Leiber's Can Animals and Machines Be Persons?

  1. The First Morning
  2. The Afternoon

• Brentano and Frege

• Logical Behaviorism

• Davidson and Anomalous Monism

• Physicalism

• Notes on Jackson's "Epiphenomenal Qualia"

• Notes on Braitenberg's Vehicles
• Notes on AI (Artificial Intelligence)
• Notes on Perry's Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality

  1. The First Night
  2. The Second Night
  3. The Third Night

• Notes on Dennett's "Where Am I?"
• Marxism and Culture
• Marxist Economics
• Freud on Women
• Ethics and Feminism
• Final Exam Study Questions

ONLINE primary source readings

• Aristotle, selections from De Anima
• Aristotle, selections from Nichomachean Ethics
• Terry Bisson, Meat in Space. Also known as "They're Made of Meat"
• "The Chinese Room Argument and Replies to It"

• Patricia Churchland, "The Hornswoggle Problem"
• Daniel Dennett, "Where Am I?"
• Daniel Dennett, "Animal Consciousness: What Matters and Why"
• Hubert Dreyfus and Stuart Dreyfus, "From Socrates to Expert Systems"

• John Taylor Gatto, Against School (read with Marx and Firestone)

• Frank Jackson, "Epiphenomenal Qualia"
• Karl Marx, "Alienated Labor" ("Estranged Labor")
• Thomas Nagel, "What is it like to be a bat?"
• Plato, Phaedo Stephanos numbers 76e-84
• Plato, Republic Stephanos numbers 514-521, 427d-445
• Plato, Phaedrus Stephanos numbers 245-257
• The Questions of King Milinda (Buddhist Scripture)
• John Searle, "Is the Brain a Digital Computer?"
• John Searle, "Minds, Brains, and Programs"
• Peter Singer, "Animal Liberation"
• Sigmund Freud, Femininity from Chapter 37 of New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1933)
• Steven Goldberg, "The Inevitability of Patriarchy" (1977)
• Karen Warren "The Power and the Promise of Ecological Feminism" and "Towards an Ecofeminist Peace Politics"
• Mary Anne Warren, "On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion"