102. Knowledge and Reality

The purpose of this topic is to enable you to examine some central questions about the nature of the world and our knowledge of it. In considering knowledge you will examine the connections between knowledge, justification and luck; arguments for scepticism about the unobserved, the existence of other minds, or the external world; the nature of evidence and rationality; the role of perception, memory, testimony, and the imagination in generating knowledge; and the importance of knowledge in the social realm. In considering reality you will consider how objects and people persist through change; the nature of possibility, time, causation; the various ways in which some things depend on other things; the nature of properties and kinds, including social kinds; and the metaphysics of race and gender.