Handbook

Nothing is more human than to think that reality gives us knowledge. Nothing is more human than to wonder what, if anything, is real. When philosophy seeks to understand these fundamental and vital aspects of people and the world, we gain both an epistemology and a metaphysics. Some metaphysical topics that the course might explore include these: what it is to be a person; what it is to have a free will (if indeed anyone ever does); whether there is, or even could be, a supremely good and knowing and powerful god; whether there is any meaning to human life; whether there is any harm in death as such; and what makes two different individual things able to be examples of one kind of thing. Some epistemological issues that the course might explore include these: what it is for a thought or claim to be true; what it is for a thought or claim to be rationally well supported; what it is for a thought or claim to be knowledge; what it is to have knowledge via the senses; what it is to have knowledge purely via reason; and whether it might be impossible for us ever to have any knowledge or rational support at all.