A Romp Through Philosophy for Complete Beginners

In this series of podcasts Marianne Talbot uses some famous arguments in the history of philosophy to examine philosophy as a discipline. By harnessing participants’ intuitions on both sides of the various arguments she encourages her audience actually to do philosophy. In listening to these podcasts you can yourself learn how to do philosophy, not by listening to someone else do it, but by starting to do it for yourself.

Questions and Answers Session

Marianne answers questions from the audience about the four talks in this series.

11-11
01:12:58

The Philosophy of Science

In the fourth and final lecture, we examine the notion of ‘objective fact’ on which scientific theories are built; what sort of fact is such that we can build a scientific theory on it?

11-11
01:15:26

Epistemology and Metaphysics

In the third lecture we examine first the so-called “Gettier Problems” for the traditional account of knowledge, the arguments for saying that possible worlds exist and finally we ask whether there really are unactualised possibles.

11-11
01:17:00

Moral and Political Philosophy

In the second lecture we examine first the famous ‘Wilt Chamberlain’ thought experiment that demonstrates a retention between freedom and equality, then arguments for and against two famous moral theories; deontology and utilitarianism.

11-11
01:30:11

Logic and Argument: the Methodology of Philosophy

In this first lecture, using Descartes famous argument for the claim “I think therefore I am’, we examine how to identify and evaluate arguments.

11-11
01:23:32

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