Show Me
What is the nature of reality, and how do we come to know it? Metaphysics and epistemology ask the biggest questions underlying our sense of the world and the development of the sciences.
Metaphysics is concerned with the fundamental nature of reality: existence, essence and identity, time, space, freedom, causation and God.
Epistemology asks how it is that human beings come to know reality, what kinds of knowledge there are, and what are the limits and obstacles to human knowledge.
Both ancient philosophical areas are fundamental and fascinating in their own right but are also of foundational relevance for the progress of other fields such as the natural sciences, theology and psychology.
First year
PHIL100 Philosophy: The Big Questions
Second year
PHIL204 Knowledge, Rationality and Scepticism
PHIL205 Mind, Body and Consciousness
PHIL206 Problems in Metaphysics
PHIL210 Language, Meaning and Truth
PHIL219 Basic Symbolic Logic
Third year
PHIL322 Metaphysics and Epistemology Seminar
PHIL622 Truth and Interpretation (Hermeneutics)
| Theories of meaning and translation; philosophy and translation | |
| Indicative conditionals; attitude verbs; not-at-issue commitments; moral semantics |
| Philosophy of mind; philosophical psychology; psychoanalysis | |
| Imagination |
| Epistemology of religious beliefs; metaphysical idealism | |
| Contextualism about epistemic modals; propositional temporalism and contingentism | |
| Imagination; thought experiments; counterfactual thinking; truth in fiction; epistemology | |
| Rational belief; internalism-externalism debate; disagreement; legal epistemology; knowledge-first epistemology |
| The value and future of philosophy; analytic vs continental philosophy; philosophy and the university; intuitions in philosophy | |
| Philosophy as a way of life; historical conceptions of philosophy; philosophy and professionalisation; sociology of intellectuals |
We're available 9am–5pm AEDT,
Monday to Friday
If you’ve got a question, our Ask糖心原创 team has you covered. You can search FAQs, text us, email, live chat, call – whatever works for you.
Chat to our team for real-time
answers to your questions.
Find answers to some commonly
asked questions.