Teaching

This course is a mid-level introduction to epistemology as a subdiscipline of philosophy. To begin etymologically, epistemology is the study of knowledge; but more generally it is the study of our intellectual relationship with the world. How should we think of the ways our minds grasp and learn from the world. What does it take to know something, instead of believing it, or even having a rational, justified, or true belief? Can we be sure that we are not being deceived by an evil genie, or a simulation, or even our own social environment? Are the ways we know about the world inevitably marked by our social standing? Why do these questions even matter? Throughout the class we will delve into classic and contemporary debates in epistemology and its relevance to our social and political and political lives.

This course is an introduction to philosophy as an academic discipline. It consists of a cursory overview of classic problems in the history of philosophy and their importance to contemporary philosophical discussions and research. We will use Descartes’ Meditations in First Philosophy to address critical questions that pertain to philosophy today. Some of these questions include: What can and do we actually know about the real world if our experiences often deceive us? What does it mean when we say that we have mental states? Are they part of our body, like stomach pains, or another thing altogether? Can the universe exist without a first cause? If not, is that cause God? What is it to say that some or other action is morally wrong? Is it a matter of cultural convention, like table manners, or an objective reality, like the greenness of tree leaves? Throughout the class we will endeavor to develop critical skills that allow us to assess and questions arguments across a variety of topics and concerns. In turn, we will aim to draw connections between these seemingly abstract concerns and today’s pressing issues, like the nature of artificial intelligence, the role of social power in determining what we learn or stop learning.

Although it is hard to say what exactly counts as Latin American philosophy, one clear conceptual thread among Latin American philosophers is their concerns with personal, political, and cultural liberation. This class will be an introductory exploration on how this common thread has informed philosophical views on race and gender in the history of Latin American thought. We will begin by discussing philosophical discussions and challenges on race, gender, and political equality raised in colonial times. Then, we will turn to foundational work on what has been called the philosophy of liberation and to philosophy of liberation itself. We will see how this philosophy has inspired distinctive answers to questions like, “do we need a concept of race?”, “what is the role of gender in political action?”, and “What does it mean to say that gender or race are socially constructed properties”’? Finally, we will turn to contemporary Latinx and Latin American work and reflect on how they challenge the assumptions, methods, and commitments of the philosophy of liberation.

When philosophers talk of Latin American philosophy, they immediately face a metaphilosophical problem: what would a Latin American philosophy even be? Is it philosophy produced in Latin America or by Latin Americans? Does it have a precise set of problems that distinguish it? In this course, we will explore a possible thematic answer by investigating how the concept of liberation is a common thread in Latin American philosophical thought. This exploration will take us from Latin American Catholic theology and the distinct philosophical humanism developed in Mexican and Chilean universities to the manifestos of indigenous revolutionary groups, like the Mexican Zapatistas. By focusing on the concept of liberation, we will collaboratively develop the skills to write successful academic texts that address important questions for our own political moment, like “How should we compare the search for liberty with the search for liberation?”, “How can we ensure the cultural and political freedom of others?”, “Is individual autonomy compatible with cultural autonomy?”.