Seminar in Philosophy of Knowledge and Epistemology
Code
73203105
Academic unit
Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas
Department
Filosofia
Credits
10
Weekly hours
2
Teaching language
Portuguese
Objectives
a) Gain a deep knowledge in the domain of Philosophy of Knowledge and Epistemology.
b) Gain the capacity to relate and confront in a systematic way different stances in the history of philosophy and of current philosophical research.
c) Gain a deep knowledge of borderline and/or interdisciplinary problems.
d) Gain competences in advanced research in the field.
e) Gain competences to identify, formalize, analyze and interpret problems, hypotheses, models, solutions, from personal research initiatives.
f) Gain the capacity to subject personal perspectives to a systematic confrontation with alternative possibilities.
g) Gain the capacity to produce texts according to the academic standards, which can contribute to the development of the area of specialization.
Prerequisites
None.
Subject matter
Readings in Twentieth-Century Analytic Philosophy
This seminar offers an introduction to analytic epistemology using key texts from leading philosophers in this tradition. We start by examining Russell´s distinction between \"knowledge by acquaintance\" and \"knowledge by description\". This is followed by a discussion of Russell´s lecture \"On our Knowledge of the External World\" with the aim of providing a broader view of the Russellian \"logical-analytical method\" inspired by Frege. Two papers by Quine, \"Two Dogmas of Empiricism\" and \"Epistemology Naturalized\", serve to illustrate how the fundamental concerns of analytic philosophy in regard to theoretical epistemology parallel those of logical positivism. Finally, Putnam´s essay \"The Analytic and the Synthetic\" is approached as the beginning of an interpretation of Quine which will have a history of its own.
Bibliography
Putnam, H. (1975). The Analytic and the Synthetic. In Mind, Language and Reality: Philosophical Papers, vol. 2 (pp. 33-69). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Quine, W. V. O. (1961). Two Dogmas of Empiricism. In From a Logical Point of View: Logico-Philosophical Essays (pp. 20-46). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Quine, W. V. O. (1969). Epistemology Naturalized. In Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (pp. 69-90). New York: Columbia University Press.
Russell, B. (1993). Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy. London: Routledge. [Lição III]
Russell, B. (1994). Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description. In Mysticism and Logic (pp. 200-221). London: Routledge.
Teaching method
The method adopted for the class combines readings and commentaries of texts in seminar along with discussion of student papers.
In class teaching
Evaluation method
Each student is required to write a paper (60%) to be presented and discussed in class (40%).