Module Directory

This module will enable students to better understand how individual, social and political factors interact in the human pursuit of knowledge.

The module will encourage students to reflect on what kind of knowers they want to be and what kind of knowledge community they want to belong to. It will also explore the nature of agency, selfhood and identity.

The aims of this module are:

• To explain some of the major approaches to virtue and vice epistemology, social epistemology, and political epistemology,as well as to questions about selfhood and identity, and to theorising about such challenges;


• To analyse critically the debates surrounding them.

By the end of this module, students will be expected to be able to:

1. Articulate certain philosophical problems in the areas studied;


2. Expound and critically evaluate some responses to these problems;


3. Employ their powers of philosophical argument and analysis in written work.

Students taking this module will follow the topics described below.

Autumn Term
This part of the module encourages students to reflect on what kind of knowers they want to be and what kind of knowledge community they want to belong to. We will begin by considering why we possess the concept of knowledge at all. What good is it? What does it do for us? We will then explore some recent work in social epistemology, focusing on echo chambers, epistemic injustice, and the role of trust in our knowledge practices. Next, we turn to work in political epistemology, looking at how politics shapes knowledge production and vice versa; we will focus in particular here on propaganda and belief polarisation. Finally, we turn our attention to virtue and vice epistemology, which study the so-called virtues and vices of the mind. We will discuss important epistemic virtues that can help us flourish as knowers, e.g., self-reflection and intellectual perseverance; and we will also read about epistemic vices that undermine our capacity to acquire knowledge, e.g., closed-mindedness and dogmatism. By the end of the module, students will better understand how individual, social, and political factors interact in the human pursuit of knowledge.
 
Spring Term
In this part of the module, students will explore the nature of agency, selfhood, and identity. How do our modes of practical interaction with the world and each other shape our ability to know different kinds of object, including ourselves? Is there even a self at all? Is being a self different than having an identity? How should we address such questions about selfhood and identity? Students will read both classical and contemporary texts from a variety of philosophical traditions to think through these core philosophical questions.

This module will be delivered via:

• One lecture per week.
• One 1-hour discussion class per week at which issues covered in the lecture will be discussed in smaller class groups.
• Additional skills sessions throughout the year.
• Two revision sessions in the summer.

There will also be a Reading Week in each term when no teaching will take place, exact week to be confirmed.