Aims This is the first half of ‘Knowledge and Reality’. The aim of this course is to give you a good, broad introduction to some of the key themes in epistemology (the theory of knowledge). Now, epistemology is a big subject, and in one term we have to be selective. Our strategy will be to start with questions about what knowledge is, we’ll then move on to raise some issues about the justification of our beliefs, and how this has implications for thinking about the ‘structure’ of knowledge. We’ll cover quite a few ‘-isms’ that are central to epistemology: internalism; externalism; foundationalism; empiricism; scepticism; naturalism, and, en route we will look at different sources of knowledge (e.g., perception; introspection; testimony). The first 6 lectures focus on what we might call the ‘classical’ tradition in epistemology (from Descartes onwards), one that is individualistic, and bound up with individual subjects and their subjective points of view. In the final three lectures we examine various contemporary epistemological debates about whether this ‘classical’, Cartesian, epistemology is correct (see “core readings” below for list of weekly topics).