Course Objectives
Students taking this course will be expected to:
- Acquire an overview of debates on method of philosophy and epistemology.
- Critically engage with texts by some key authors in the area of theory of knowledge.
- Acquire a more detailed understanding of some particular debates within the listed areas in epistemology.
- Develop their ability to think independently about philosophical problems by critically assessing arguments in these areas.
- Acquire an overview of debates on alternative epistemologies and the possibility of justification, scientism, realism and reductionism, confirmation, and explanation.
Course Outline
This course is intended to provide the forum for the critical interrogation of issues in theories of knowledge. Issues to be discussed will include epistemological and meta-epistemological issues such as Why theory of knowledge? Theories of Knowledge. Sources, Types and Limits of Knowledge. Ways of Knowing. Scientific versus non Scientific Knowledge. Gendered Epistemologies. Naturalized Epistemology. Epistemology without a knowing Subject Phenomenology of Knowledge. Sociology of Knowledge. Knowledge and Belief. Truth and Knowledge. Sceptical Epistemology. Modernism and Postmodernism in Epistemology. Contending Epistemologies. Knowledge in the various Disciplines – Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, Humanities, etc.
Methodology
Course will be administered by a combination of Seminars and Lectures.
Contact Hours: 3 Hours weekly.
Evaluation
- One In-course essay (3,500 to 4,000 words) … … 40%
- Final two-hour Examination … … 60%