2017/2018

2017/2018

DM270

M-FIL/05 (PHILOSOPHY AND THEORY OF LANGUAGE)

DEPARTMENT OF HUMANITIES

THEORETICAL AND APPLIED LINGUISTICS; LINGUISTICS AND MODERN LANGUAGES

PERCORSO COMUNE

1°

1st semester (25/09/2017 - 10/01/2018)

6

36 lesson hours

Italian

ORAL TEST

PIAZZA TOMMASO (titolare) - 6 ECTS

None applies

Present the most influential philosophical theories on knowledge, and critically discuss the most influential constructivist and relativist argument to the effect that knowledge is socially constructed

This course is divided in two parts. The first part is meant as an introduction to contemporray epistemology, and to the contemporary debate about the analysis of knowledge. Most positions share the claim (that P. Boghossian has dubbed “the classical conception of knowledge”) that knowledge is objective and is not, in any philosophically interesting sense, socially constructed or dependent on the practical interests of the subject of knowledge. This claim has come under attack by philosophers such as R. Rorty and H. Putnam, who have presented arguments to the effect that a belief’s truth, or its being supported by good epistemic reasons, are socially constructed facts. In the second part of the course these arguments are presented and critically examined in the light of P. Boghossian’s book Fear of Knowledge.

Lectures

T. Piazza, Che cos’è la conoscenza, Carocci, 2017.
P. Boghossian, Paura di conoscere. Contro il relativismo e il costruttivismo, Carocci, 2006
H. Putnam, Realismo dal volto umano, Il Mulino, 1995 (parti).
R. Rorty, Verità e progresso: scritti filosofici, Feltrinelli, 2003 (parti)
R. Rorty, La filosofia e lo specchio della natura, Bompiani, 1998 (parti).

Oral examination

Oral examination