Gateway Seminar: Reading Schedule


Our readings divide into two broad streams, with assignments for Tuesdays dealing with relatively abstract concerns and those for Thursdays assaying applied issues on which those concerns bear, sometimes directly and sometimes rather more obliquely. Accordingly, on Tuesdays we will read and discuss sections of The View from Nowhere Mortal Questions (VN); on Thursdays we will consider a motley of issues spanning many areas of philosophy from Mortal Questions (MQ).


Week One:

  • Thursday: MQ 14: Subjective and Objective 


Week Two:

  • Tuesday: VN I: Introduction 
  • Thursday:  MQ 2: The Absurd 


Week Three:

  • Tuesday: VN II: Mind
  • Thursday: MQ 12: What is it like to be a bat? 


Week Four:

  • Tuesday: VN III: Mind and Body 
  • Thursday: MQ 13: Panpsychism 


Week Five:

  • Tuesday: No Class
  • Thursday: MQ 4: Sexual Perversion


Week Six:

  • Tuesday: VN IV: The Objective Self
  • Thursday: MQ 11: Brain Bisection and the Unity of Consciousness


Week Seven:

  • Tuesday: VN V: Knowledge 
  • Thursday: MQ 3: Moral Luck


Week Eight:

  • Tuesday: VN VI: Thought and Reality  
  • Thursday: MQ 7: The Policy of Preference 


Week  Nine:

  • Tuesday: VN VII: Freedom
  • Thursday: MQ 8: Equality


Week Ten:

  • Tuesday: VN VIII: Value
  • Thursday:MQ 9: The Fragmentation of Value


Week Eleven:

  • Tuesday: VN IX: Ethics
  • Thursday: MQ 10: Ethics without Biology 


Week Twelve:

  • Tuesday: VN X: Living Right and Well
  • Thursday: MQ 6: Ruthlessness in Public Life


Week Thirteen:

  • Tuesday: VN X: Birth, Death, and the Meaning of Life
  • Thursday: MQ 1: Death


Week Fourteen:

  • Tuesday: Kinds: Given and Constructed (No reading) 
  • Thursday: MQ 5: War and Massacre 


Week Fifteen:

  • Tuesday: Quodlibetal
© Christopher Shields 2014