This is a course in epistemology, the study of what it takes to know something is true and what it takes to be justified in believing something is true.

We often pose questions — e.g., What percentage of Iraq is Kurdish? Will the Sixers win tonight? 68+57=? — and take ourselves to know the answers, or to have rational opinions, or to have good evidence for our views. Rather than answer these questions directly, we will take a step back and investigate the nature of evidence, and what it is to know something, or to be rational. The course will begin by considering some well-known skeptical challenges to much of what ordinarily take ourselves to know and/or have justified beliefs about. For instance, some have thought that our apparent inability to rule out the sort of scenario described in the movie The Matrix, shows that we don't know (or even rationally believe) anything about our surroundings. We will then look at a number of related questions concerning the structure and nature of knowledge and justification. Does knowledge or justification have to rest on foundations? Is the standard for what counts as knowing or being justified higher in, say, the courtroom or epistemology classroom than in more normal contexts. To know or to be justified in believing something, do you always have to be in a position to say how you know or what your grounds are?

Finally, we will examine some particular areas of knowledge, as time permits, to see what special problems they pose.

• self-knowledge
• scientific knowledge
• memory
• a priori knowledge
• knowledge of right and wrong

The official course title & number is Belief, Truth, and Knowledge, V83.0076-001.

The course meets Monday and Wednesday from 9:30-10:45 a.m. in the Tisch UC56.

The instructors for the course are

• instructor: Peter Kung, pfk2@nyu.edu
  office hours: Monday/Wednesday after class in 503 Silver

• TA: Dana Evan, de285@nyu.edu
  office hours: Monday 5 to 6 in 719 Broadway, Room 446
  Monday 4 to 5 in 503 Silver