Course finder

Semester 2

Social Philosophy (PHIL10204)

Subject

Philosophy

College

CAHSS

Credits

20

Normal Year Taken

3

Delivery Session Year

2023/2024

Pre-requisites

Visiting students must have completed at least 3 Philosophy courses at grade B or above; we will only consider University/College level courses. **Please see Additional Restrictions below**

Course Summary

This course covers issues and questions in social philosophy - philosophy that treats our socially-embeddedness as something which philosophers should explore and try to understand, and also as a crucial starting point for philosophical inquiry.

Course Description

People do not typically live as isolated individuals, but as part of larger social groups; families, communities, groups, and societies. This may seem like an obvious point, but some areas of philosophy have been accused of neglecting our fundamentally social nature, and of failing to treat this as worthy of philosophical attention in its own right. Social philosophy treats our socially-embeddedness as something which philosophers should explore and try to understand, and also as a crucial starting point for philosophical inquiry. It includes areas such as feminist philosophy, critical race theory, philosophy of race, and philosophy of disability, but social approaches in areas like ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, political philosophy, and the philosophies of language and mind. For example, social metaphysics asks what social groups are, how social practices categorize people, and what ethical and political consequences follow, and social epistemology looks at the ways in which we can gain knowledge from others through testimony, how we can identify experts, how our views can be challenged by disagreement with others, and the distorting effects of systems of oppression, prejudices, and ideologies on what people do or don't believe and what they do or don't know. This topics-based course introduces student to issues in social philosophy, either generally or through attention to particular social groups. The precise focus of the course within social philosophy will shift from year to year, depending on the interests and expertise of the course organiser.

Assessment Information

Written Exam 0%, Coursework 100%, Practical Exam 0%

Additional Restrictions

Unless you are nominated on a Philosophy exchange agreement, visiting students are only permitted to enrol in only one 3rd year Philosophy course each, per semester, before the start of the relevant semester’s welcome period – and spaces on each course are limited so cannot be guaranteed for any student. Enrolment in additional courses from this subject area will depend on whether there are still spaces available in the January Welcome Period, and cannot be guaranteed. It is NOT appropriate for students to contact staff within this subject area to ask for an exception to be made; all enquiries to enrol in these courses must be made through the CAHSS Visiting Student Office. This is due to the extremely limited number of spaces available in this very popular subject area.

view the timetable and further details for this course