General provisions

The department responsible for the course is the Department of Philosophy.

Entry requirements

Students admitted to any Master Programme in the Humanities.

Learning outcomes

Students will be introduced to and analyse typical ways of doing analytic philosophy. After completing the course, students should:

• understand the different basic methodologies in analytic philosophy,
• understand how the typical methods of philosophy are used within each methodology,
• know the relations between the methodologies, and
• know the relations between the methodologies and science.

Content

This course introduces the major methodologies of philosophy in the analytic tradition and analyses the status they confer on typical philosophical methods. The methodologies we will discuss are trans-empirical philosophy, common sense philosophy, ordinary language philosophy, ideal language philosophy, pragmatism, feminist philosophy, naturalized philosophy, and the Canberra plan; some of the methods we will discuss are the use of reflective equilibria, thought experiments, language analysis, formal proofs, and the use of results from the sciences.

Instruction

Instruction will take the form of lectures and seminars.

Assessment

The examination consists of two papers of totally 6000-8000 words on a theme related to the course.