Downtown/Evening 2009/1

PHILOSOPHY 814: NATURALISM AND LOGIC

Location: HCC 3000

Time: Tuesdays 7:00-10 00 PM

Instructor: P. Hanson (SFU)

Text: Penelope Maddy, Second Philosophy: A Naturalistic Method (OUP, 2007),

and related readings to be made available.

Course Description

In the first 100 pages of her challenging new work, Penelope Maddy introduces a “post-Quinian” naturalistic methodology for philosophy, which she dubs “Second Philosophy”, and articulates it against the backdrop of epistemological methods and concerns of the modern era, beginning with Descartes. In the second 100 pages she puts her method to work in investigating the nature of truth, an important prelude to what is perhaps the centerpiece of the work, her development of an empirical “second philosophy of logic”. Maddy takes Kant’s views on logic, and on the relation between the structure of the physical world and of human cognition, as her starting point. From there, she elaborates an account of a “rudimentary core” of logic, that makes it out to be empirical, contingent, “not obviously analytic in any useful way”, and “perhaps a priori in some sense” (p.6). She then details how ‘full classical’ i.e., Fregean, logic can be seen as projected from this core via various idealizations and restrictions, which she then defends as our overall best, most effective instrument, as compared with various kinds of ‘deviant’ logic.

Having made it that far through the book, I confess that I, at any rate, found it hard to put down. The final 125 pages, “Part IV”, goes on to address just a few odds and ends: scientific method from the standpoint of Second Philosophy, the role of mathematics in science, mathematical realism (it’s ‘thin’ at best), and ontology more generally. But while we may sample bits of Part IV, we will have to resist the temptation to try to cover it more systematically, as it is unrealistic to expect to do critical justice to a work of this magnitude in a one-term course. So, our (still ambitious) aim will be to do critical justice to Maddy’s “second philosophy of logic”. This will involve looking at other recent work on the nature of logic, and of truth, including work by Hartry Field, Paul Horwich, Timothy Williamson, Roy Sorenson, David Papineau, Ken Akiba, Jeffrey Roland, David Boutillier, and Jeff Pelletier et. al..

Requirements: A term paper worth 50% of the final grade; a short paper worth 15%, a class presentation worth 25%, and 10% for class participation.