Objectives
The course teaches students to write a paper in English or in Hungarian eligible for later publication and also provides an introduction to the main questions of recent epistemological disputes relevant to the traditional problems of philosophy of mind, cognition and science.
Topics
- Science and the nature of knowledge – How to understand and represent knowledge?
- Justification – Internalism – Supporting your own claims
- Justification – Externalism – Critically assessing your own claims
- Sources of Knowledge I. – Intuition, Introspection and Perception – Drafting a paper
- Sources of Knowledge II. – Memory – Writing literature review
- Sources of Knowledge III. – Testimony – Discussing a draft
- Sources of Knowledge IV. – Inference – Rewriting a draft
- Epistemology and Neuroscience – Narrowing your research topic
- Knowledge-First epistemology – Fixing your assumptions, writing disclaimers
- Social and group epistemology – Determining the context of your research
- Formal epistemology and dynamic epistemic systems – Writing the materials and methods section
- Metaepistemology and Epistemic rationality – Writing background and significance
Methodology of teaching
Oral and written communication, interactive reading seminar, moodle online teaching, home assignments.
Materials supporting learning
- Audi, Robert (2011). Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge. Routledge.
- Bjerring, Jens Christian & Pedersen, Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding (2014). All the things we know: Extended knowledge. Philosophical Issues 24 (1):24-38.
- Churchland, Patricia Smith (2002). Brain Wise. MIT Press.
- Dougherty, Trent & Rysiew, Patrick (2013). What Is Knowledge-first Epistemology? In Matthias Steup & John Turri (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Epistemology. Blackwell.
- Hartmann, Stephan & Sprenger, Jan (2010). Bayesian Epistemology. In Duncan Pritchard & Sven Bernecker (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Epistemology. London: Routledge. pp. 609-620.
- Pettigrew, Richard (2016). Accuracy and the Laws of Credence. Oxford University Press UK.
- Pritchard, Duncan (2013). What is This Thing Called Knowledge?. Routledge.
- Pritchard, Duncan (2012). On Meta-Epistemology. The Harvard Review of Philosophy 18 (1):91-108.
- Sosa, Ernest & Kim, Jaegwon (eds.) (2000). Epistemology: An Anthology. Wiley-Blackwell.
- Williamson, Timothy (2011). Knowledge First Epistemology. In Sven Bernecker & Duncan Pritchard (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Epistemology. Routledge. pp. 208-218.
- Schimmel, Joshua (2011). Writing Science: How to Write Papers That Get Cited and Proposals That Get Funded, Oxford University Press
The slides and notes, as well as the current dates are always avaialble in moodle: edu.gtk.bme.hu