Knowledge, justice and experience

Part 5 · Bringing the questions together

How do we assess an explanation or a judgment when different methods reveal different aspects of a problem? Across seven lessons, we put approaches met earlier into conversation, keeping track of each argument’s setting and limits.

Three groups guide the inquiry: scientific explanation and credibility; institutions and dependency; and art, conscious experience and responsibility. In each lesson we reconstruct an argument, consider an objection and ask what remains unresolved, starting from what earlier lessons have given us. The final module then brings several of these questions to bear on shared practical concerns.

Time, place and approach. From this module on, the course groups readings by problem rather than by historical period. The comparisons leave room for different methods and conclusions; they form neither one continuous argument nor a survey of all contemporary philosophy.

After these lessons

• Assess an explanation by examining its evidence and assumptions.
• Examine how credibility, institutions or dependency shape a judgment.
• Explain what an argument about art, experience or responsibility establishes and what it leaves open.

Useful preparation

The linked readings offer three starting points: testing ideas in practice, understanding oneself within a racial order, and describing experience. Each lesson points to the earlier readings it draws on and explains its own terms, so you can begin without completing every earlier lesson.

• Review: What difference would an idea make in practice?
• Review: A self seen through a racial order
• Review: Describe experience before explaining it away