Should be named "Naval Gazing"

These diatribes really are misnamed. This series has nothing at all to do about "knowledge." Rather, it's more about ignorance -- blatant ignorance. This is just the kind of thing most people cannot stand about professors -- they don't live in the real world and some of them have completely lost touch. Mr. Shieber fits this description. I have 2 doctorates and enjoy heady material, but I don't like listening to made-up terms about made-up occurrences that are "tested" on little undergrads age 18-22.

31 people found this helpful

Prof. Shieber murders logic...

Let me give you specific example here. In chapter 3 about Descartes the lecturer starts by discounting some argument as non-sequitur and even explains what it is for much richer sense of irony to be had later.

Then describes Descartes internalist philosophy by saying he cannot trust to his senses, but his doubt of those senses is an internal state, which he can build on: “Dubito Ergo Sum”, although he puts it in the more known version of “I think therefore I am.”

Then he proceeds to attempt to invalidate internalism by constructing an argument, where he adds to internal states other states that simply fit his understanding of the word internal, but have nothing to do with Descartes, later he carefully selects out of those one to disprove, which he further limits and limits until he gets to claim that the internal state is produced by vision and if we doubt ability to see what is there, then we have to doubt our internal senses. Adds the traditional Gorilla experiment and voila ... Descartes and Internalism disproved through a complete non-sequitur.

The irony is so big that just like the Gorilla it is completely ignored by all who look at it.

13 people found this helpful

Professor has poor delivery

The PROFESSOR places unnecessary EMPHASIS on KEY WORDS in EVERY sentence, and before very long it becomes quite TIRESOME to listen to...

11 people found this helpful

Great topic, but hard to keep up

A lot of the logical arguments had to string together several unfamiliar concepts, which decreased accessibility.

11 people found this helpful

Absorbing, but not if you are distracted

I picked this course as I am very interested in psychology, education, and human behaviour. I was starting to feel I had reached some sort of saturation point at the armchair researcher level in a number of areas as many themes were starting to repeat themselves, but now I've found a new fascination, epistemology. The content is well written and narrated, although I found the very cleverly laid out cases and logic to be tough going for a lay person, but not so much that I honestly think I'll give it another round just to see how far I can get my head around the methods used in presenting the concepts and debating them.

9 people found this helpful

i dont know nothing new

a lot of bla. all the time you think that next chapter there will have something. but no

8 people found this helpful

Practical Jargon!! Unbelievable!

Was this created as a Joke??!!?? If anyone is serious, DO stay away from wasting your time with this one!!!

I enjoyed this very much

This lecture touches on prevalent modern theories in epistemology. While one might disagree with certain concepts such as moral encroachment or testimonial Justice the lecturer doesn’t take sides. He presents the ideas and information and allows the listener to decide the validity of such ideas. As a transference of general information in the field of epistemology and epistemological research this series of lectures is more than adequate for the lay person. I recommend it for any person looking for an entry point to the subject.

Shallow

What a waste of time & energy!
Little depth of knowledge, not understanding of spiritual knowledge or faith.
Seems he was selling another course.

interesting but very biased

interesting and broad range of topics but the author was just trying to sell his own viewpoints with very little regard to giving other theories a fair representation. i found that very annoying.