Syllabus | Discord Server | First Essay | Second Essay
Thursday, January 25th | Introduction
Monday, January 29th | Language as an Internal Computational System
Required Reading
Thursday, February 1st | Semantics: Computing Meanings
Required Reading
Monday, February 5th | Reference as a conceptual capacity
Thursday, February 8th | Language as an innate structure
Monday, February 12th | No Class
Thursday, February 15th | Syntax and Semantics in Animal Communication?
Required Reading
Monday, February 19th | No Class
Thursday, February 22nd | Language as a Social Activity
Required Reading
Monday, February 26th | Language and Rule Following
Required Reading
Wednesday, February 28th | No Class
Thursday, February 29th | No Class
Monday, March 4th | Language and Performativity
Required Reading
Thursday, March 7th | Speech Acts
Required Reading
Monday, March 11th | Reference as a social activity
Required Reading
Thursday, March 14th | Meaning and use
Required Reading
- H. P. Grice: Meaning
- Thom Scott-Phillips: Speaking Our Mind (chapter
1)
(Note: Make sure to read the Grice paper, and read this one second if you have time. The chapter by Scott-Phillips will be much easier, and shows how Grice's ideas have continued to have a lot of influence today.)
Monday, March 18th | Formal system *and* social activity
Required Reading
Thursday, March 21st | Language as a game with rules
Required Reading
Monday, March 25th | Animal Pragmatics
Required Reading
Thursday, March 28th | Grice on Indirect Communication
Required Reading
Monday, April 1st | Insinuation
Thursday, April 4th | Bullshitting
Required Reading
Monday, April 8th | No Class (Solar Eclipse)
As we agreed on in class last week, I am canceling this class so that we can see the solar eclipse. Our classmate, Sherelyn Alejandro, who will start a PhD in astronomy in the Fall, is hosting a viewing event in Central Park, in Sheep's Meadow, from 12–4. The actual eclipse itself will begin at 2pm and peak at around 3pm. I (professor Harris) will be there, and I'll bring some extra glasses. You are all welcome to join as well, but attendance is not required. I have adjusted the later readings.
Thursday, April 11th | Bullshit
Required Reading
Monday, April 15th | Metaphor and Ineffability
Required Reading
Thursday, April 18th | The Limits of Effability
Required Reading
April 22–30 | Spring Break
Thursday, May 2nd | Hermeneutical Injustice
Required Reading
Monday, May 6th | Artificial Intelligence and Language Models
Required Reading
- Sign up for a free account at ChatGPT and try playing with it. Have a conversation. Ask it some philosophy questions. If you get anything particularly interesting back, tell us about it.
- Samuel Bowman: Eight things to know about large language models