Notes on Truth, Beauty, and Goodness -- Phil A231
William Jamison - Instructor
Lecture 1
I begin the course by pointing out that the syllabus is on-line and includes links to materials that are important for the course. I also request each student to email me at wsjamison@uaa.alaska.edu with a note including their name and the course they are taking. Please insure that on all email messages the subject line includes the class name so I do not inadvertently delete the message thinking it might be spam.
I next explain my grading criteria for the course. Notice that there are links from each that go to pages that expanded on them. Thus:
Exams
- 50% - nine essays showing an understanding of the materials covered in class
and the assigned readings in response to questions, each with a minimum of 300
words,
25%
of the grade will be based on a term
project.
Dialogue
response
to questions posed in each lecture -25%.
The next topic concerns the readings. The four texts are very different.
I have selected the first
book
The Web of Belief by W. V. Quine
to begin our discussion of Truth. This book is a fairly normal book and we will
take several classes to go over some of the major points. The next book will be
more difficult. Take this link for a
description of the
Wittgenstein Reader (Blackwell Readers). Please read my information page on
Wittgenstein to get an explanation of how this book should be used.
Aesthetics: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art
by Anne Sheppard and
Whatever Happened to Good and Evil? by Russ Shafer-Landau are both
more difficult and read like fairly normal text book. Being familiar with the
approach Wittgenstein takes will make both much easier to discuss.
After a pause for questions, I will begin a dialogue intended to start the class off on something of the same sheet of music.
Three Kantian questions:
What can I know? (Metaphysics)
What ought I to do? (Ethics)
What may I hope for? (Religion)
(From "Outside Ethics" Raymond Geuss ed.)