PHIL UN3685

The workload was fair, readings for each class (which we quickly fell behind on), 4 essays per semester, and the occasional in class activity.

A few articles to read each week, presentation, mid-term paper, final paper. About dead-average.

22% Paper; 39% Topic Exercises; 39% Final Exam

Three or Four Short Assignments, and a final paper that requires a lot if individual research (read: TIME), since it is not based on the articles in the Reader.

I was very hopeful upon entering this class as I had been recommended this class by friends, however, this class turned out to be one of the most boring classes I have taken at Columbia. And as my first philosophy course it left me with a distaste of the discipline. The style of lecture was often so boring that I often fought sleep off. While the content itself might be interesting, I often struggled to know follow along in class as we often were sidetracked by Professor Lewis' tangents and when answering questions she would rarely repeat the question, answering without context leaving me confused.

Daniel is great at explaining rather complicated concepts. Additionally, he's honest and careful not to make claims about things he isn't sure of. He's approachable, makes an effort to work with students outside of office hours, and knows his subject (philosophy of language) very well. I've heard, more than once, that students have a hard time understanding him when he speaks too quickly. He does sometimes speak quickly, but it's never been a problem for me. Also, he's anti-possible-worlds. I recommend his classes.

I didn’t have any expectations going into this class. However, I was surprised by and happy with Professor Fusco. I think Professor Fusco’s teaching style is challenging. She reviews what she wants you to take away from the assigned readings in class, so I think it’s important to attend her class. Though she is soft-spoken and at times, lectures too fast, she always takes the time to welcome and answer any student questions. At times, her lectures can be convoluted. However, I think if you are willing to spend even a bit of time either talking to her or performing a quick Google search about concepts you’re unfamiliar with, then you will be benefit greatly in your understanding of the material. Other people might not like this, but I think she’s right for being a *bit* more challenging than other philosophy classes you might have taken. It’s a 3000-level course, so one should expect to actually study and be familiar with the content. In return, she gives you lots of personalized feedback on your essays and topic exercises. The final exam was tricky, but she gave out a generous square root curve. (And I believe another curve on the final grade, but don’t quote me on that). TL;DR: Really elegant lecturer. Medium/ High effort but high reward.

Professor Gaifman is one of the most attentive professors I have ever had at Columbia who will take interest and become personally invested in your success in the class with one (easily avoidable) catch--it is up to the student to initiate the dialogue, and to do so early on in the course. The course is challenging and invovles lots of (very confusing) readings that go quite in depth on certain issues (what on Earth is Wittgenstein REALLY trying to say...ever?), as the subject is quite abstract and requires at least a basic understanding of elementary logic. His lectures are well-organized and his presentation of the material is thorough and clear. He is a tough grader, but like I said, he is not at all unfair. Be sure to go to office hours whenever possible, to attend most of the lectures, and to go to office hours. He has been one of my favorite professors at Columbia, and even though this has been one of the most challenging classes I have taken, I really enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone interested in the subject.

10% - Attendance and in-class exercise participation 15% - 10 reading responses over the course of the semester 75% - 3 papers, 2000 words each

This course is not one for the faint of heart, but if you care about the subject matter it will be very rewarding in the end. If your interest is in language in general and not analytic philosophy, then a critical theory or linguistics course might be more enjoyable. If you're a philosophy major, this course moves quickly enough that it may well be one of the more difficult ways to satisfy your analytic requirement. That said, if you are interested in learning a variety of analytic frameworks with which to model the workings of human language, then this is the course for you! The first unit is on pragmatics, and is definitely the easiest of the three units to understand. We started with speech act theory, then looked at some of its applications in feminist philosophy, and ended with conversational implicature and context sets. It's best to get a bunch of the reading responses out of the way in this unit since the material gets harder later on. The next unit is on semantics, with a focus on reference and the way names work. This unit has the fewest readings but they are all very dense. We read Frege's model of sense and reference, Russell's theory of descriptions, Kripke's critique of cluster descriptivism, and Graff Fara's defense of predicativism. The final unit is on meaning and truth, and some of the readings here are very difficult to understand without a background in log…