Eric Margolis
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PHIL491: Seminar for Philosophy Majors

This course is intended for 4th year philosophy majors—other students require permission of the instructor.
Experimental Philosophy and Philosophical Methodology
One of the most controversial issues in contemporary philosophy is how philosophy itself should be practiced. Is philosophy an a priori discipline? Should philosophers be content to develop their theories while sitting in the proverbial armchair? Proponents of experimental philosophy argue that philosophy needs to look at concrete empirical work on how ordinary people think and reason and that this work has important implications for a wide variety of philosophical debates—everything from semantics and epistemology to metaphysics and ethics. Some experimental philosophers have even argued that recent experimental work shows that traditional philosophical methods are hopelessly misguided. In this seminar, we will examine the experimental philosophy movement and how it relates to other approaches to philosophy.

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Course Format
This course will be organized as a seminar and will emphasize class discussion. Attendance and participation are required.


Grades
There is some flexibility here—I will ask for student input regarding the nature of the graded assignments—but the default will be: 10% short paper, 10% presentation, 20% participation, 60% long paper.

Papers

The short paper will probably take the form of a brief critical commentary on one of the main texts from the first few weeks of class. For the longer paper (up to 3000 words), you will be given some options, including the opportunity to devise your own research topic, focusing on philosophical debates that are related to one of the major themes in the course.