Philosophy 122

By any reasonable account, human beings have more knowledge today than ever before due to the progress of science, but there is still philosophical disagreement about what knowledge and justified belief are, how we should respond to radical skepticism, and how much science itself can tell us about knowledge. In this problem-oriented course we will study contemporary classics of epistemology on the topics of skepticism, justification, foundationalism, epistemic intuitions, tracking, closure, reliabilism, internalism, and externalism, among others. We will take epistemology to be responsible for understanding scientific cases of knowledge, and also consider the implications for epistemology of results in experimental psychology suggesting human beings’ lack of awareness of the true reasons for their beliefs.