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A series of lectures delivered by Peter Millican to first-year philosophy students at the University of Oxford. The lectures comprise of the 8-week General Philosophy course, delivered to first year undergraduates. These lectures aim to provide a thorough introduction to many philosophical topics and to get students and others interested in thinking about key areas of philosophy. Taking a chronological view of the history of philosophy, each lecture is split into 3 or 4 sections which outline a particular philosophical problem and how different philosophers have attempted to resolve the issue. Individuals interested in the 'big' questions about life such as how we perceive the world, who we are in the world and whether we are free to act will find this series informative, comprehensive and accessible.Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):
➤ Intro philosophy lectures • history from Aristotle to Kant • scepticism, induction, knowledge (justification, Gettier, internalism/externalism) • perception (sense-data, realism, idealism) • mind-body dualism • free will, determinism, moral responsibility • personal identity, memory, persons and brainsThis podcast presents an introductory philosophy course in lecture form, aimed at first-year university students and other listeners interested in major philosophical questions. It takes a broadly chronological path through early modern philosophy and the rise of modern science, tracing how Aristotelian frameworks were challenged by developments associated with figures such as Galileo and Newton, and how these shifts influenced later philosophical problems.
Across the series, the lectures use classic debates as entry points into central areas of philosophy, regularly setting out a problem and then comparing different philosophers’ attempts to resolve it. A recurring focus is epistemology: what it is to know something, how beliefs can be justified, and how sceptical challenges arise, including concerns about whether we can know an external world and how “Gettier-style” complications affect traditional analyses of knowledge. Related to this is the problem of induction and the difficulty of justifying general claims about the world through reason alone.
Another major theme is perception and the relationship between experience and reality, including distinctions between primary and secondary qualities and contrasts between positions such as idealism, phenomenalism, and direct realism. The podcast also examines the mind–body problem, introducing dualism and later critiques and alternatives.
Later material turns to personal agency and the self: debates about free will, determinism, moral responsibility, and differing concepts of freedom, alongside detailed discussion of personal identity over time, especially memory-based accounts and objections involving forgetting and false memories, culminating in questions about persons, humans, and brains.