Albion College Course Webs

This is a course focusing on topics in modern deductive logic.  Our focus will be on propositional logic, predicate logic, and, as time allows, the logic of necessity and possibility.  We will develop an artificial language for representing the logical features of natural language sentences, and we will develop rigorous techniques for demonstrating the validity and invalidity of arguments.  Successful students will be able to use these techniques to model and analyze texts in every discipline.

This course is an introduction to the philosophy of mind focusing on the mind-body problem.  Accordingly, our central question will be: what is the relation of the mind to the physical world?  As we explore this topic, we will carefully evaluate the following historically prominent theories about the nature of the mind: the identity theory, dualism, behaviorism, functionalism, and eliminative materialism.  Additional topics include the problem of phenomenal consciousness, theories of mental content, and the extended mind thesis.