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DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2017/2018

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DRPS : Course Catalogue : School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences : Philosophy

Postgraduate Course: Conditionals MSc (PHIL11149)

Course Outline
SchoolSchool of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences CollegeCollege of Humanities and Social Science
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) AvailabilityNot available to visiting students
SCQF Credits20 ECTS Credits10
SummaryThis course is a general introduction to the meaning and logic of conditionals.

Shared with undergraduate course Conditionals PHIL10154

For courses co-taught with undergraduate students and with no remaining undergraduate spaces left, a maximum of 8 MSc students can join the course. Priority will be given to MSc students who wish to take the course for credit on a first come first served basis after matriculation.
Course description The aim is provide a thorough understanding of the complexities involved in explicating the meaning and logic of various types of conditional constructions.

Syllabus:
Class 1: Conditionals and Logic: Material Implication and Strict Implication
Class 2: Variably Strict Conditionals (Lewis, Stalnaker)
Class 3: The No-Truth-Value View (Edgington, Gibbard)
Class 4: The Restrictor View (Lewis, Kratzer)
Class 5: Conditionals as Definite Descriptions (Schlenker)
Class 6: Dynamic Strict Implication (von Fintel, Gillies)
Class 7: Anankastic Conditionals (Sæbø, von Fintel and Iatridou)
Class 8: Biscuit Conditionals (DeRose and Grandy)
Class 9: Conditional Conjunctions and Disjunctions
Class 10: Conditionals and Modals (Kolodny and MacFarlane)
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Course Delivery Information
Not being delivered
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
  1. develop core skills in philosophy, including interpreting and critically engaging with philosophical texts, evaluating arguments and theories, and developing one's own ideas in response to the issues discussed.
  2. have a thorough understanding of standard analyses of conditionals and an ability to identify and distinguish different types of conditional constructions and explicate their differences.
  3. have the capability to engage with philosophical analyses using conditionals.
  4. be sufficient in writing a precise and critical essay on state of the art research on conditionals and in presenting the contents of a research article.
Reading List
Textbook:
Bennett, Jonathan 2003. A Philosophical Guide to Conditionals. Oxford University Press.
Research Articles:
Edgington, Dorothy 1991. 'Do conditionals have truth-conditions?' In Conditionals, Oxford Readings in Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 176-201.
Gibbard., Allan 1981. 'Two recent theories of conditionals'. In Harper, W. L., Stalnaker, R. and Pearce, G. (eds.) Ifs: Conditionals, Belief, Decision, Chance, and Time. Dordrecht: Dordrecht: Reidel.
von Fintel, Kai and Iatridou, Sabine, 2005. 'What to do if you want to get to Harlem: Anankastic Conditionals and Related Matters' (Rutgers Semantic Workshop, unpublished ms.)
Gillies, Thony 2007. 'Counterfactual Scorekeeping'. Linguistics and Philosophy, 30, 3: 329-360. 2012. Indicative Conditionals. Routledge.
Glanzberg, Michael 2006. 'Quantifiers'. In Lepore, Ernest and Smith, Barry C. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language, chap. 31. Oxford: Oxford, University Press, pp. 794-822.
Heim, Irene and Kratzer, Angelika 1998. Semantics in Generative Grammar. Blackwell Publishing.
Kolodny and MacFarlane, 2010. 'Ifs and Oughts', Journal of Philosophy, 107 (3) 115-143.
Kratzer, 1991. 'Conditionals' in Semantik: ein internationale Handbuch der zeitgenössichen Forschung, ed. Arnim von Stechow and Dieter Wunderlich. Walter de Gruyter.
Lewis, David 1973. Counterfactuals. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Moss, Sarah 2012. 'On the pragmatics of counterfactuals'. Nous, 46, 3: 561'586.
Stalnaker, Robert C. 1968. 'A Theory of Conditionals'. In Rescher, Nicholas (ed.) Studies in Logical Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Additional Information
Course URL Please see Learn
Graduate Attributes and Skills Writing skills, interpreting texts, evaluating arguments and theories
Additional Class Delivery Information The course will be taught by Dr Anders Schoubye.
KeywordsPhilosophy of Language,Logic,Indicative and Subjunctive Conditionals
Contacts
Course organiserDr Anders Schoubye
Tel:
Email: Jackie.Allan@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMiss Lynsey Buchanan
Tel: (0131 6)51 5002
Email:
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