Kristin Andrews
andrewsk@yorku.ca
Office Location:  S420 Ross Building
Phone number:  (416) 736-2100 Ext. 77590
Office Hours:  TBA

Humans have minds, humans are animals, therefore animals have minds. But it isn’t only humans who have minds, though most philosophy of mind, psychology, sociology, psychiatry, etc. focuses attention on human minds. To learn more about mind we need to look at kinds of minds.  We will consider philosophical questions about the nature of belief, rationality, consciousness, communication, social cognition, and moral thinking.  By looking at different species, we can see that abilities we might have supposed go together are not both present. We might also find that abilities we didn’t expect to be related are always found together. In this course we will examine kinds of minds, how to study them, and how to move forward on traditional philosophical questions in the philosophy of mind.

Technical requirements for taking the course: This course will be 100% in person. There will be no virtual option at any point.

Times and locations: Tuesday 11:30-2:30 Ross S421. Attendance is required.

The Animal Mind Andrews.  Available at the University Bookstore, on Amazon.ca, at Indigo.ca, as an E-book through York Library

Articles on E-class; can also be found in the course Dropbox

- Discussion facilitator 25%

- Weekly questions 10%

- Philosophical argument 20%

- Philosophical argument revision 20%

- Pop quizzes 10%

- Animal observation 15%

-to identify key philosophical problems and how empirical evidence may illuminate them

-to develop your speaking and discussion skills

-to develop a philosophical argument on a topic of your own choosing that is grounded in the course readings, and to develop your writing skills.

-to learn how to observe animals

Course policies

Students will be required to attend class to perform assignments in class. No make ups will be permitted for missed courses, because all students will be allowed to drop the two lowest marks. If students miss more than two class meetings out of the 12 weeks, they should drop the course, as the important learning will be happening in this space. Courses will not be recorded and no remote participation is allowed.

Students should inform me if they use LLM tools such as Chat GPT when writing their assignments, and explain how they are using the tool. Turning in unaltered text generated by a LLM is not permitted.