Topic: Knowledge, God, and Wisdom

Are you genuinely responsible for your actions?  Might you have, or
be, an immortal soul?  Do you know that others see the color blue as
you do?  Do you know that anything exists outside of your own
experience?  In this course, we'll read, talk, and write about these
and other "big questions" -- questions concerning what you are and
what you can know.

You'll be graded on the basis of papers, which you'll prepare at home
and write in class.  In addition, I'll be calling on you to speak
with me in class about the assigned readings - Descartes' Meditations
and Simon Blackburn's Think.  (Both are required texts.)

Two warnings:  You will be called upon to speak in class.  If you
hate speaking in front of your peers, this may not be the course for
you.  (2) You'll be called upon to follow complex lines of reasoning -
to think hard about hard things.  Some (maybe much) of the reading
material will seem unintelligible until you've read it through slowly
several times.  If you're looking for an easy way to meet a
distribution requirement, this is not the course for you.