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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 • empiricism, scepticism, induction • knowledge/justification, Gettier, internalism/externalism • perception: primary/secondary qualities, idealism, realism • mind–body dualism • free will, determinism, responsibility • personal identity, memory, consciousness, brain/person distinctionThis podcast presents a structured set of introductory philosophy lectures aimed at beginning students, organized as an eight‑week course that combines historical context with focused discussion of enduring philosophical problems. The approach is broadly chronological, using key figures in early modern philosophy and their intellectual background—ranging from Aristotle’s influence through the scientific revolution and thinkers such as Galileo, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant—to frame how philosophical questions developed alongside changes in scientific and mechanistic conceptions of nature.
Across the lectures, a central theme is how human beings can claim knowledge of the world. The podcast examines scepticism about the external world and evaluates attempts to answer it, while also introducing major issues in epistemology such as the traditional analysis of knowledge, justification, internalist and externalist accounts, and challenges raised by Gettier-style cases. Related to this is sustained attention to perception: how the distinction between what the world is like and how it appears leads to debates about primary and secondary qualities, resemblance theories, idealism, phenomenalism, and direct realism.
Another major strand concerns the mind and agency. The lectures explore the mind–body problem through Cartesian dualism and subsequent responses, and then connect questions about mental life to debates about freedom and responsibility. The podcast develops the problem of free will in relation to determinism, contrasting different concepts of freedom and considering how moral responsibility might depend on the kind of control agents have over their choices, including compatibilist and other contemporary perspectives.
The course culminates in discussions of personal identity, asking what it is to be the same person over time. It uses classic arguments—especially those associated with Locke’s emphasis on consciousness and memory—along with objections involving forgetting and false memory, before considering whether distinctions between persons, human beings, and brains (and more generally between mind and body) affect what personal identity amounts to. Overall, the podcast aims to model philosophical method by presenting problems, clarifying concepts, and comparing competing solutions.