PHIL 228 - Epistemology

1 unit(s)

Epistemology is the study of knowledge, justification, and rationality. The theories we study in this course are understood as responses to increasingly radical skeptical arguments. We begin with the problem of induction, which claims that we can never justifiably infer generalizations from particular cases, infer beliefs about the future from ones about the past, and infer from observable patterns to unobservable explanations. We uncover various paradoxes about such inferences, and attempt to respond to them. We then look at skeptical arguments that we do not know anything on the basis of sense perception, and the various theories of knowledge and justification that are built in response to such arguments. Barry Lam.

Not offered in 2017/18.

Two 75-minute periods.