Handbook

Subject Area: Philosophy

At a time when distinguishing between knowledge and, for instance, media/political/social/corporate ‘spin’ is particularly important, it is important to be clear on what is involved in one's knowing something, in being accurate in what one says or thinks, indeed in one's saying or thinking something at all. Is there such a thing as knowledge? What would it be? Is objectivity impossible? Is reality an illusion? Could people’s views be objectively true? Does that make sense? What is it to even have a view? What is (literally) meaningful speech or thought? These are the sorts of questions explored in this course. The course does will help you to understand some important philosophical ideas and ways of thinking about knowledge, and/or mind, and/or reality, and/or language. The course can take different forms in different years. In a given year, its focus will be on key questions from epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge and conceptually related phenomena), and/or metaphysics (the philosophical study of reality), and/or philosophy of language (since language is, after all, the medium of most forms of meaning).