General provisions

The department responsible for the course is the Department of Philosophy.

Entry requirements

Students admitted to any one or two year master program in the humanities or with a bachelor's degree in the humanities.

Learning outcomes

Students will be introduced to central applications of models and related concepts in philosophy, especially in philosophical methodology, philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, and metaphysics.

After completing the course, students should:

• know the central concepts of model theory
• be able to analyse the role model theory plays in central philosophical debates about, for instance, realism, functionalism in the philosophy of mind, and the interpretation of scientific theories
• know central concepts of definition theory
• know how definition theory relates to model theory and be able to analyse the role it plays in central philosophical debates
• be able to connect simple aspects of higher order logic to model theory and central philosophical debates.

Content

​Models play a central role in philosophical methodology (the Canberra Plan), the philosophy of language (Tarski's definition of 'truth' and the analytic-synthetic distinction), metaphysics (Putnam's model theoretic argument), philosophy of mind (functionalism), and in many more debates in philosophy. In these debates, the intuitive notion of 'model' one may have is spelled out in terms of model theory. Many philosophical contributions to these debates therefore cannot be fully understood without some understanding of model theory, and many philosophical contributions to these debates go wrong because they are not grounded in an understanding of model theory.

In this course, we will go through a gentle, mostly picture-based introduction to the central concepts of model theory that will already suffice for the critical evaluation of many a contribution to the philosophical literature. Along the way, we will encounter the central ideas used when defining new concepts, and see how these ideas are expressed in model theory. Besides being of use whenever one introduces a new concept into a discourse, these ideas play an important role in the debates about reductionism and supervenience, and about the analytic-synthetic distinction. Finally, model theory will provide us with a surprisingly simple way into the beginnings of higher order logic, the theory that lies behind the Carnap sentence, the Ramsey-Lewis sentence, and the debate about structural realism.

It can be very frustrating to read a philosophical text without grasping the underlying line of reasoning. Conversely, few experiences in philosophy are as exhilarating as getting to the argumentative core of a philosophical text. Knowing model theory can make the difference between the former and the latter. Hence we will encounter in this course one crucial tool for understanding contemporary philosophical discussions; on the side, we will also see how we can ourselves translate philosophical intuitions into technical arguments.

The course will be in English and does not require a background in model theory, definition theory, or higher order logic.

Instruction

Teaching consists of lectures and seminars.

Assessment

The assessment in this course is based on a paper of 3000-5000 words on any topic of choice related to the course.