Future Offerings: To Be Announced
The Syllabus for this class is at this link. The official syllabus will be parked at this link on the first day of classes. I'll be handing out a paper copy on the first day.
What will we be doing in a course called “Theories of Knowledge?” We will be answering some very basic questions, once we can figure out which ones to ask. Nearly all academic fields are busy trying to answer nagging questions. In philosophy classes, the questions are rather simple, but still they nag. Some of the hardest of these questions include: “What is this universe thingy we are in?”, “Why are we here?”, “How should we act?”, and “How do we know stuff?” We will be concentrating on the last of these in Phil 125. Some of these questions are especially interesting to epistemologists (bet you can’t find that one in the yellow pages!): “HOW do we know something?,” “What CAN we know?,” “How do we KNOW we know something or do we only BELIEVE we know what we think?,” “Can anything BE known?,” and “What does it MEAN to know?” We will probably find that in different ages and places, people asked different questions and we should not be surprised to see that these different questions received new answers. To accomplish our goals in this course we are going to use a trick or two from history. First, we are going to learn some things about a few of the people who professional scholars think are the pioneers of epistemology. We will try to understand a little about their times, places, struggle, fears, and hopes. We will read some of their writing, and a little more of what people have written about these pioneers. Then you are going to write about the pioneers too. You will be critical of their weak and bogus arguments. Then you will explain why you appreciate their clever points.
Caution: this course is not for the timid. This is a mind blowing experience.
"Why oh why didn't I choose the blue pill?"
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