BASS Social Anthropology and Data Analytics / Course details

This course concerns key topics in the theory of knowledge (or epistemology, as it is known) and in metaphysics (the study of reality at its most general).

The topics in epistemology concern such questions as: What is knowledge? What is it to perceive something? Can we know anything through the use of reason alone? What is it for our beliefs to be justified? What is the scope of our knowledge?

The topics in metaphysics concern such questions as: What is it for one event to cause another? What is it to be a person? What makes you now the same person as you were ten years ago? What is time? Does it flow? Do we have free will? What is it for something to be possible?

The course aims to:

- To introduce some of the central problems of metaphysics and epistemology
- To introduce some of the central positions, theories, and arguments in metaphysics and epistemology
- To introduce some of the central modal, epistemic and logical concepts in metaphysics and epistemology, such as: necessity, possibility, contingency, a priori knowledge, a posteriori knowledge, necessary and sufficient conditions, etc.

There will be a mixture of lectures and tutorials.

Please note the information in scheduled activity hours are only a guidance and may change.

• Subject knowledge – Explain key concepts, positions, and arguments in some key areas of metaphysics and epistemology Essays
• Wider understanding – Relate concepts, positions, and arguments in metaphysics and epistemology to each other and to other areas of philosophical enquiry, e.g., ethics

• Philosophical analysis - Identify and evaluate concepts, positions, and arguments presented both orally (in class) and in texts (in readings) Essays
• Independence – Develop and defend original stances and arguments concerning philosophical problems encountered in lectures and readings.

• Use of feedback - Engage constructively with oral/written feedback in the process of preparing essays for submission Essays
• Essay writing - Present written arguments in clear and compelling essays

• Information retrieval - Conduct effective independent online and library-based research Essays
• Clear writing – Communicate complex ideas clearly in written language

Students will complete two written assignments of 1500 words both worth 50%

The School of Social Sciences (SoSS) is committed to providing timely and appropriate feedback to students on their academic progress and achievement, thereby enabling students to reflect on their progress and plan their academic and skills development effectively. Students are reminded that feedback is necessarily responsive: only when a student has done a certain amount of work and approaches us with it at the appropriate fora is it possible for us to feed back on the student's work. The main forms of feedback on this course are written feedback responses to assessed essays and exam answers.

We also draw your attention to the variety of generic forms of feedback available to you on this as on all SoSS courses. These include: meeting the lecturer/tutor during their office hours; e-mailing questions to the lecturer/tutor; asking questions from the lecturer (before and after lecture); presenting a question on the discussion board on Blackboard; and obtaining feedback from your peers during tutorials.

The following reading list is indicative, and students are not required to read all the publications listed.

• Adina Roskies. (2006). Neuroscientific challenges to free will and responsibility. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10(9), 419–423. 
• David Braddon-Mitchell & Kristie Miller. (2004). How to Be a Conventional Person. The Monist, 87(4), 457–474.
• Charles Mills. (1998). “But What Are You Really?” The Metaphysics of Race. In Mills, Blackness Visible: Essays on Philosophy and Race. Cornell University Press 
• Christopher Bartel. (2015) The Metaphysics of Mash‐Ups. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. 73(3), 297-308 · 
• Jennifer Lackey. (2008). A Critique of Reductionism and Non‐Reductionism. In Lackey, Learning from words: testimony as a source of knowledge. Oxford University Press. 
• Laura Gow. (2014). Colour. Philosophy Compass, 9(11), 803–813. 
• Paul Oghenovo Irikefe. (2020). A fresh look at the expertise reply to the variation problem. Philosophical Psychology, 33(6), 840–867. 
• Sally Haslanger. (1999). What Knowledge Is and What It Ought to Be: Feminist Values and Normative Epistemology. Philosophical Perspectives 13, 459–480. 
• Sarah McGrath. (2005). Causation by Omission: A Dilemma. Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition 123(1/2), 125-148. 
• Shannon Brick. (2020). Epistemic Neglect. Social Epistemology, 34(5), 490–500. 
• Xiaoqiang Han. (2009). Interpreting the Butterfly Dream. Asian Philosophy, 19(1), 1–9.