Philosophy

This course provides an introduction to epistemology and metaphysics. Topics to be discussed include the nature of knowledge, scepticism, the existence of God, whether theism is rational, why the universe exists, free will, personal identity, and the metaphysics of race.

This course introduces and explains a range of concepts from set theory, philosophy of language and metaphysics, probability theory, and decision theory. These include the notions of set, cardinality, infinity, analyticity, necessity, possible worlds, reference, scope, probability, conditionals, utility, decision rules, dominance, backward induction. The emphasis is on basic ideas rather than on technical elaboration. The concepts are sketched, illustrated by examples, and made familiar via exercises.