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PHIL 5400/6400
Weekly Assignments

    • The default is to outline the passage I assign.
    • If you choose a different passage:
      • make sure it contains an argument.
      • you have to tell me what it is. (I'm not a mind reader.)
      • please make it terse -- a paragraph or two, not a chapter, or anything like a chapter.

        (I have to read the passage side by side with your outline, to check that the latter correctly represents the argument in the former.)

        My experience is that attempts to outline longer stretches of text don't generally work out well.

  1. Aug. 23 (for those of you who have already taken a class from me, who know what these outline assignments -- not the same as microcommentary assignments! -- are supposed to look like, and who want to get an early start): Either Laches 189e-190c (those are the line numbers in the margins, which are uniform across editions; in the Sprague translation, that's from "However..." to "...we can do this, Socrates") or Strawson, Individuals, p. 20, para. starting "But now consider the cases..."
  2. Aug. 30: Goodman, Fact, Fiction, and Forecast, either the first full para. on p. 9 ("It might seem natural...") or the para. bridging pp. 16-17 ("Returning now to the proposed rule...").
  3. Sept. 6: Armstrong, Nominalism and Realism, either the second full para. on p. 23 ("This link between...") or the last para. on p. 36 ("One way of bringing out...").
  4. Sept. 13: Either Loux, "Exercise in Constituent Ontology," on p. 17, the first para. of sec. 3 ("Let's begin with (1)") or, in the reserve mss, p. 18, from "For a large number..." to "...which make up the species".
  5. Sept. 20: Plato, Republic, 351b-352c (these are the Stephanus numbers in the margin): from "'I understand,' I said...", to "...not as you set them down at first." (Your outline should be much shorter than the passage.)
  6. Sept. 27: Christine Korsgaard, "Self-Constitution in the Ethics of Plato and Kant," pp. 22f, para. starting "And yet at the same time..." (if you have the article in a different edition, this is the penultimate para. of sec. VI).
  7. Oct. 4: Plato, Republic, either 476e (from "but tell us this") to the end of the Book, or 505a--e. (Both of these are longish passages, but your argument should be no longer than usual; your job is to distill out the argument.)
  8. Oct. 11: Bonus Fall Break Outline Assignment! Williams, "The Analogy of City and Soul in Plato's Republic," p. 109, one of the two arguments in the first full para., starting "But for such terms..." (This is your last one-part assignment.)

    9. After this point, it's two-part weekly assignments, as described on the syllabus.

  9. Oct. 18: Lear, "Inside and Outside the Republic," para. starting "It might at first seem paradoxical..." (in Open Minded, this is on p. 233; in the original journal publication, on p. 200). (You will want to draw on both the previous paragraph and, a page or so back, the para. starting "Plato believes this requires...", for orientation and missing premises.)
  10. Oct. 25: Either Timaeus 50d-e, from "We also must understand..." to "...devoid of any characteristics" (in the Hackett edition, this is on p. 40, but you'll need to draw on the discussion starting at 48e for background [pp. 37-39]); or Strawson, Individuals, p. 32, para. starting "Why are criteria..."
  11. Nov. 1: Strawson, Individuals, para. bridging pp. 72f ("This first point leads directly on to the second...").
  12. Nov. 8: Thompson, "The Representation of Life", one of: Para. bridging 265f ("Elizabeth Anscombe has attacked..."; if you're reading the Life and Action version, this is the para. bridging 46f, starting "I am not certain what to make of..."; you'll have to follow the train of thought through the previous para. to reconstruct this passage). or pp. 278f, from "A species or life-form of course..." to "... tempted to ascribe to him" (in Life and Action, this is pp. 60f); or p. 282, two paras. starting "Natural-historical judgements tend..." (in Life and Action, this is on pp. 65f).
  13. Nov. 15: Either Nietzsche, Gay Science sec. 111 (choose one of the two conclusions suggested in the first two paragraphs of Kaufmann's translation) or Nozick, Invariances, p. 122, para. starting "Such debates would be avoided..."
  14. Nov. 22: Either Holyoak and Paul Thagard, Mental Leaps (available online via the Marriott catalog), in ch. 6, for context, look at pp. 152 (from "Even though precedent..." to 154 ("...for which the analogy is used"), and then outline, on p. 154, in the last full para., from "But general principles are hard..." through "...the best that we can do"; or Mental Leaps, para. bridging pp. 123f, starting "Figure 5.7 provides..." (For both passages, you'll have to do more work than usual to elicit a clearly-structured argument.)
  15. Nov. 29: Either Sorensen, Vagueness and Contradiction p. 59, from "Wait! Recall that Madame Inquisitor..." through "...some a priori statements are analytic falsehoods," or Williamson, "Vagueness as Ignorance" (this is the journal article, not the book chapter), pp. 157f, para. starting "It may be replied that..."
  16. Dec. 6: Rawls, "Two Concepts of Rules," p. 26, para. starting "The practice view leads to..." (You'll need to import some premises from outside the para., in sec. III.)