Logic / Philosophy

Course summary

What is real? How should we live? What can we know? Questions as broad and deep as these have fascinated people for centuries. As a philosophy student, you will start thinking about them and explore ideas and thinkers from across the ages. In one lesson, you might be walking with Socrates in ancient Athens as he argues that we are born with knowledge; in another, you might be back in the modern day wondering whether computers could ever experience love or sadness. You will meditate with Descartes on what sort of thing you are and you will address in detail what philosophers have said about the perennial puzzle of whether God exists. Philosophy attracts those who like journeys, not destinations. This does not mean that philosophical questions have no answers. Whether they do or do not is itself a philosophical question! The questions are fascinatingly simple yet profound and they invite us to explore what they mean and what the ‘philosophical landscape’ looks like in which we would hope to find the right path. In the first year, you will study two units. In Unit 1 (Epistemology) you will look at whether, when we perceive the world, we see it as it is or just how our mind makes it appear. You will consider a question first raised by Plato about how knowledge differs from belief. You will then consider where our ideas and knowledge come from: are they gained from experience or are we born with them? In Unit 2 (Moral Philosophy), the central issue is how to decide what the right thing to do is. Three theories will be considered and how they relate to some interesting real-life issues, such as telling lies, crime and punishment and violence in computer games. We will then ask what it means to say that something is wrong or right. In the second year, you will study topics in two other areas of philosophy. In Unit 3 (Metaphysics of God), you will start by examining the concept of God. You will then consider famous arguments for God. You will finish by considering whether it is even possible to talk meaningfully about God. In Unit 4 (Metaphysics of Mind) we will try to explain how the subjective conscious mind fits into the objective physical world. Is the mind nothing more than the brain? Could there be ‘zombies’ who are physically identical to us but lack consciousness?