Philosophy 223 - A Knower's Guide to Knowing

This class is a survey of epistemology, the subfield of philosophy concerned with the nature of knowledge, evidence, and rational belief. Students begin by investigating sources of doubt about whether one can know anything at all. Students then puzzle through how, in light of these sources, one can nevertheless know about the world. Next, students explore questions that arise when one goes about gathering knowledge. Among these are questions about how one’s social identities influence what they know, whether one’s emotions ever guide one to knowledge and how echo chambers and political polarization make knowledge-gathering fraught.