Epistemology

Catalog description

This is a course about knowledge and skepticism: what, if anything, do we know? It is well known that we can’t know certain things. This ignorance ranges from the mundane to the profound. We will be concerned with whether this igorance metastasizes, and if so, how do we live with it, beyond pretending that everything is fine. Some research questions are: Do we have to know that we know, in order to know? How do we know that we don’t know, when we don’t? The current mood in western philosophy has metaphysics ascendant; but isn’t it epistemology that holds the key to all future philosophy?