Electronic devices are not permitted in the classroom, and you will be required to bring the textbooks to class; this means you need to have physical copies of these books. However, the first four on the list (and also the optional textbook) have been in print for quite a while; if you start looking early, you're likely to find inexpensive used copies.
Optional prereading: Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Part IV, sec. 6. Peter Strawson, Individuals, ch. 3 ("Persons").
Further reading: Don Garrett, "Hume's Self-Doubts about Personal Identity". Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained.
Reading: Bernard Williams, "The Self and the Future" (ch. 4 in Problems of the Self); Bernard Williams, "Imagination and the Self" (ch. 3 in Problems of the Self; online reserve); David Velleman, "Self to Self".
Optional reading: Avner Baz. "Whose Dream Is It Anyway?" International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 4.3-4 (2014): 263-287; Nichols, S. and Bruno, M. 2010. Intuitions about Personal Identity: An Empirical Study. Philosophical Psychology, 23, 293-312 (online resource available through the Marriott catalog).
Further reading: Jenann Ismael, The Situated Self.
Happy Labor Day: Take Reasons and Persons to the beach!
Reading: Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons, pp. 199-347; Williams, "Persons, Character and Morality," from the last para. on p. 6 through the first para. on p. 8 (online reserve).
Optional reading: Bernard Williams, "Personal Identity and Individuation" (ch. 1 in Problems of the Self); Jennifer Whiting, "Friends and Future Selves"; Christine M. Korsgaard, "Personal Identity and the Unity of Agency: A Kantian Response to Parfit"; Schechtman, Staying Alive, ch. 2 (but you can skip secs. 2.2 and 2.3.2).
Reading: Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons, pp. 3-4, 17-195; review Williams, "Imagination and the Self," near the top of Problems of the Self, p. 40, from "Schlick famously claimed..." to the end of the paragraph.
Optional reading: Carol Rovane, "Branching Self-Consciousness"; Tamar Gendler, "Personal Identity and Thought-Experiments".
Further reading: George Ainslie, Picoeconomics.
Reading: Thomas Nagel, The Possibility of Altruism, pp. 3-76. (I recommend you read it like so: start on p. 27, you can skim ch. 7 [pp. 46-56], and then wrap around and read pp. 3-23 last.)
Optional reading: Luca Ferrero, "Decisions, Diachronic Autonomy and the Division of Deliberative Labor"; Cei Maslen, "A Defense of Humeanism from Nagel's Persimmon".
Further reading: David Velleman, "Well-Being and Time," Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 72(1), 1991: 48-77.
Reading: Review Nagel; Peter Strawson, Individuals, Introduction, ch. 1.
Optional reading: Ross Harrison, On What There Must Be, ch. 4 (= "Time"; online reserve); Bernard Williams, "Strawson on Individuals" (ch. 7 in Problems of the Self), through sec. 3.
Further reading: Guy Rohrbaugh, "Artworks as Historical Individuals"; Barry Stroud, "Transcendental Arguments".
Reading: Peter Strawson, Individuals, chs. 2-3.
Optional reading: Strawson, Individuals, ch. 4; Bernard Williams, "Are Persons Bodies?" (ch. 5 in Problems of the Self); "Strawson on Individuals" (ch. 7 in Problems of the Self), sec. 4.
Further reading: Bernard Williams, "What Was Wrong with Minos?" (available shortly).
Have a great Fall Break!
Reading: Jonathan Lear, Love and Its Place in Nature, chs. 1-3; review Parfit, Reasons and Persons, sec. 95.
Optional reading: Model papers: Matthew Fee, "Friends, Future Selves, and Frenemies" (on reserve in the Philosophy Department reception area); Andrew Hayes, "Unmediated Access, Mediated Interest: A Response to Velleman" (on reserve in the Philosophy Department reception area).
Further reading: Jonathan Lear, Freud; Patricia Kitcher, Freud's Dream.
Reading: Jonathan Lear, Love and Its Place in Nature, chs. 4-6.
Optional reading: J. J. C. Smart, "Philosophical Problems of Cosmology"; Sherri Roush, "Copernicus, Kant, and the Anthropic Cosmological Principles"; Ian Stewart, "The Anthropomurphic Principle".
Further reading: Jonathan Lear, Open Minded; Barrow and Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (excerpt; online reserve); Daniel Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, pp. 164-181 (online reserve).
Reading: Marya Schechtman, The Constitution of Selves, ch. 5-6 (ch. 5, "The Narrative Self-Constitution View," online reserve; ch. 6, "Characterization and the Four Features," on reserve in the Philosophy Department reception area); Schechtman, Staying Alive, sec. 4.2.
Optional reading: Schechtman, Staying Alive, 39 (from the second full para., "Parfit seems to assume...") to 42; Martha Nussbaum, "Narrative Emotions" (online reserve); David Velleman, How We Get Along, ch. 7 ("Meaning," online reserve).
Further reading: Schechtman, Peter Brooks, Reading for the Plot. And on reidentification: Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre (there's also a movie version)
Reading: Williams, "The Makropulos Case" (Problems of the Self, ch. 6); Schechtman, Staying Alive, pp. 1-29 (thru the first para., "...as identity is concerned"); ch. 3; pp. 95-96 (from "One natural reading..." to "...one of the variations").
Optional reading: Schechtman, Staying Alive, pp. 29-39; 62 (from "In fact, Olson expresses...") to 63, end of first para. ("...comes to pass?"); Connie Rosati, "The Makropulos Case Revisited".
Further reading: Schechtman, Staying Alive, sec. 4.1; Capek, "The Makropulos Case".
Reading: Schechtman, Staying Alive, chs. 5-6; pp. 184-185 (from "The content and importance of this..." to "...what we are most fundamentally"); Conclusion (pp. 200-204); Michael Bratman, "Taking Plans Seriously".
Optional reading: Model paper: "An Objection to Strawson's Spatio-Temporal Grid" (on reserve in the Philosophy Department). Richard Boyd, "Realism, Approximate Truth, and Philosophical Method", sec. 2.5 ("Homeostatic Property-Cluster Definitions...", pp. 372-376); Bratman, "Planning and the Stability of Intention".
Further reading: Adam Morton, "Moments in Good Lives" (online reserve); Galen Strawson, "Against Narrativity," Ratio, n.s., 17(4) Dec 2004: 428-452 (available through the Marriott catalog).
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
Reading: Michael Bratman, Shared Agency, chs. 1-4.
Optional reading: Bratman, Faces of Intention.
Further reading: Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac.
Reading: Remainder of Bratman, Shared Agency.
Optional reading: Read or review Korsgaard, "Personal Identity and the Unity of Agency: A Kantian Response to Parfit".
Further reading: Bratman, Structures of Agency.