Reference no: EM132320204 , Length: word count : 1500

Answer the following Questions:

1) In What Does it All Mean, Thomas Nagel reflects on the possibility that "you, the subject of experience, are the only thing that exists, and there is no physical world at all - no stars, no earth, no human bodies" (p. 10). What argument does Nagel provide in favour of this possibility? After outlining his argument, answer the question he raises at the conclusion of his chapter: "If you can't prove that anything exists outside your own mind, is it all right to go on believing in the external world anyway?" (p. 18).

2) Explain why "merely getting it right" is not enough for knowledge with reference to the discussion in Duncan Pritchard's What is this Thing Called Knowledge? (pp. 5-7 of the Week Two reading). Pick one of the other course readings and describe how its approach to knowledge can help us understand what it means to justify our beliefs.

3) Jose Medina argues that in situations of oppression, "epistemic relations are screwed up" ("Active Ignorance, Epistemic Others, and Epistemic Friction," p. 27). Describe what he means with reference to his concept of ‘active ignorance.' Can this help us understand the impact of forms of oppression like sexism or racism?

4) Explain Miranda Fricker's concept of "hermeneutical injustice" with reference to a real world example of injustice. Can Fricker's concept help illuminate it?

5) Describe Cora Diamond's critique of standpoint theory. Is her critique convincing?

6) Compare and contrast the understandings of Indigenous knowledge presented in Bruce Pascoe Dark Emu and Martin Nakata's "The Cultural Interface." Can their accounts help us understand the status of Indigenous knowledge in contemporary Australia?

7) Pick one of the texts from our weeks on religious knowledge or knowledge and creative practice. Contrast the kind of knowledge described in that text with the understanding of scientific knowledge Duncan Pritchard develops from his analysis of the Overton judgment in the Week Four text on scientific knowledge. What are the differences between this kind of knowledge and scientific knowledge, on Pritchard's account of the latter? Might this kind of knowledge have validity even though it is not scientific?

8) Pick one of our Week Twelve readings and describe how it theorises the impact of digital technologies on traditional understandings of knowledge. Should we welcome the changes to knowledge production described in the text? Why or why not?