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On successful completion of the module, students should be able to:
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Distinguish epistemology as a philosophical discipline from kindred approaches to knowledge (e.g. from sociology, psychology, anthropology).
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Identify the meaning of basic terms used in epistemology, such as, ‘knowledge’, ‘opinion’, ‘belief’, ‘true belief’, ‘false belief’, ‘conjecture’, ‘certitude’, ‘certainty’, ‘apodictic certainty’.
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Recognise the significance of the epistemic distinction between ‘a posteriori’ and ‘a priori’ knowledge-claims.
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Discriminate between historical formulations of the problem of knowledge and responses to that problem attempted in ancient Greek, modern and contemporary philosophy (e.g. by Plato, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant, Husserl, Chisholm, Gettier, Bonjour, Lehrer, Goldman) and evaluate their accounts.
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Recognise the significance of the difference between the question of the psychological origins of ideas and the epistemological justification of knowledge-claims, and the inadequacy of the former to found the later (e.g., Hume, Brentano, Husserl, ‘the Gettier Problem’).
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6. Evaluate central tenets and themes in contemporary foundationalist and coherentist accounts of knowledge.
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