BASS Philosophy and Criminology / Course details

Either second-year Formal Logic or second-year History of Analytic Philosophy

Must have taken PHIL20042 OR PHIL20242

The course unit aims to: introduce students to some of the foundational debates of early and mid analytic philosophy concerning the relationship of language to the world: logical and linguistic analysis, ontology, and modal language. Students will closely read and interpret some classic texts on language, analysis, and language-world relations, as well as some lesser-known but worth-while texts by marginalised female figures of the period. Students will also dissect and assess the arguments of those texts, compare them to contemporary accounts, and form and defend their own views on the course themes in language and analysis.

Student should be able to

 

Knowledge and Understanding:  Students should acquire knowledge of some of the central debates on language, ontology, philosophy of logic, and analysis of facts and language of the history of analytic philosophy, and to understand how they have influenced and informed contemporary philosophical arguments and debates.

 

Intellectual skills:  Skills in analysing and constructing arguments, and in explaining and assessing central debates in the history of analytic philosophy.

 

Practical skills:  skills in time-management, in independent working, and formulating and finding evidence for own views, writing skills, presentation skills.

 

Transferable skills and personal qualities:  skills in reading, understanding, and critically interrogating demanding texts, interpreting and assessing historical texts, writing skills, argumentation analysis, skills in formulating and presenting independent arguments.

Lectures, seminars, Blackboard material.

Please note the information in scheduled activity hours are only a guidance and may change.

Assessment task	Length required	Weighting within unit	Feedback
Essay 1	1,200 words	30%	Yes, written
Essay 2	2,200 words	45%	Yes, written
Presentation Tutorial performance	10 min. n/a	15% 10%	Yes, written Yes, verbal

 

Susan Stebbing, A Modern Introduction to Logic, Methuen 1933. Appendix on Logical Constructions.

 

Alfred Tarski, 1944, “The semantic conception of truth”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 4 (3): 341–376.

 

W.V Quine, From a Logical Point of View, Harvard UP 1953. Essays 1, 4, and 8.

 

Alice Ambrose, Essays in Analysis, George Allen and Unwin, 1966. Essays 8 and 9.

 

Donald Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, Clarendon 1984. Essays 2, 3, 9, 13, and 14

 

Ruth Barcan Marcus, Modalities, Oxford UP 1990. Essays 1, 7, 8, and 13.