Topics in Epistemology: Self-Knowledge

A black and white illustration of an animal that can be seen as a duck or rabbit. The two German captions translate to: Which animals are most like each other? Rabbit and duck.

Made famous by Ludwig Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations, this image of a rabbit (or a duck?) features the caption "Welche Thiere gleichen einander am meisten?" which translates to "Which animals are most like each other?" Wittgenstein used this image to describe two different ways of seeing: seeing that / seeing as. Selections from Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations are assigned readings for Session 2. (This image is in the public domain.)

Instructor(s)

MIT Course Number

24.805

As Taught In

Fall 2015

Level

Graduate

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Course Description

Course Features

Course Description

This course is a graduate seminar surveying recent work on self-knowledge. Some questions that will be explored and discussed are: What is the distinctive philosophical interest of self-knowledge? Is self-knowledge really an epistemic achievement? Is it plausible that there is a uniform explanation of all distinctively first-personal self-knowledge?

Related Content

Alex Byrne, and Sarah Paul. 24.805 Topics in Epistemology: Self-Knowledge. Fall 2015. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: MIT OpenCourseWare, https://ocw.mit.edu. License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA.


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