Origins of modern philosophy
Aubrey Townsend and Rae Langton
8 points * 3 hours per week * First semester * Clayton/Caulfield/Peninsula * Prerequisites: A first-year sequence in philosophy
This subject aims to provide an introduction to the main issues in metaphysics and epistemology. Topics to be covered include scepticism, perceptual knowledge, language and meaning, concepts of substance, identity and causation, minds and persons. The discussion of these topics will be introduced through the work of the major rationalist and empiricist philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries - especially Descartes, Locke and Hume - but the emphasis will be on issues of contemporary relevance.
Assessment
Written (5000 words): 70% * Examinations (1 hour): 30% * Optional replacement of one essay by a 2-hour examination * The Keller Plan assessment program is offered as an alternative (see above for details)
Prescribed texts
Descartes R (tr. J Cottingham) Meditations on first philosophy CUP
Hume D A treatise of human nature: Book one Penguin