Overview
Due Wednesday May 27, 2025 at mid-night. Submit papers thru TurnItIn It is very important to follow the instructions. Not doing so will affect your grade. Write a paper at least 4 pages and no more than 5 pages, double-spaced, normal fonts and margins. Maximum word limit: 1,400 words. Papers will not be accepted if they are longer than 5 pages or shorter than 4 pages or contain more than 1,400 words--–12 point type, Times Roman, normal margins. Footnote or endnote citations do not count against the page or word limits. Use no prose, other than citations, in endnotes or footnotes. The point of the assignment is, again, to work on planning of substantive material and on concise expression. All sentences are to be 16 words or less. If any sentence is longer than 16 words, your grade will be reduced. TAs can refuse to accept a paper until this requirement is met. The exercise is again meant to further clarity and conciseness in your writing. Use https://leviroth.github.io/burgeinator/ Rules of thumb: (i) Use simple words, keeping vocabulary as concrete as possible. (ii) Use examples. (iii) Use active not passive voice as much as possible. Use transitive not intransitive verbs as much as possible. (iv) If you use a technical expression, or an expression your nonphilosopher roommate would not understand, explain it clearly and concisely. If you can’t explain it, you shouldn’t use it. (v) Where there is an argument, break it down into steps, and make sure that the argument logically supports its conclusion–unless you are criticizing an argument with some logical gap in it. (vi) Keep the writing clear, simple, and direct. (vii) Read your paper outloud for yourself before handing it in. Try it out on a friend. If it is not clear to him/her, it probably isn’t clear enough to hand in. The paper is to be on one of these two topics: 1. Explain path integration. Explain why one might think that certain types of path integration are not representational, and do not depend on perceptual capacities. Use the explications of perception, from class, focusing on sensory representation and objectification, and the explication of what a perceptual constancy is, to support the explanation. Use the pages on path integration in the reader (or 78-80 from Chapter 3 of Perception: First Form of Mind). Also make use of the pages on perceptual constancy in the reader. You could also use the index of Origins of Objectivity for passages on path integration. 2. Explain efference copy. Then explain why efference copy in the case of nematode worm and in the case of at least one other lower animal does not yield the type of objectification that marks perceptual constancies and genuine, psychological representation. Obviously, explain the notions of objectification and perceptual constancy. Make use of the distinction between functional explanation, neurological causal explanation, and psychological (representational) causal explanation in your answer. Use passages in the reader on efference copy (or pp. 74-78 from Perception: First Form of Mind). Also use the pages on perceptual constancy in the reader or from Origins.
don’t use outside resources. No citations