Philosophy 4

This course will be concerned with the problem of philosophical skepticism. The course will begin and end with a reading of Descartes’s Meditations, and it will be built around the skeptical arguments of the First Meditation. We will study several responses to those arguments, and we will consider how those responses shape our understanding of what knowledge is. Finally, we will consider how Descartes himself understood the import of those skeptical arguments. Readings will be from Descartes, Stroud, Austin, Moore, Broughton, and others. We will also consider the role of skeptical scenarios in contemporary movies such as The Matrix, Fight Club, and The Truman Show.