Epistemology

Catalog description

This course will be an advanced introduction to some contemporary debates in epistemology. We will start by considering skeptical arguments that we cannot really know whether the world is the way it appears to us. We will look at different strategies to respond to such skeptical arguments, in particular contextualism, and explore questions concerning the nature of knowledge and the relation between knowledge and other epistemologically significant concepts, such as certainty, justification, and evidence. We will also look at Bayesian epistemology and its theoretical underpinnings, at knowledge-first approaches to epistemology, at the relation between knowledge and action, and at the compatibility of traditional epistemology with formal epistemology. Also will explore the notion of common knowledge, and issues in social epistemology.