Philosophy

Philosophy is an impossible discipline to define. It is a way of seeing the world, a curiosity that stems from the need to challenge, question, reflect and ultimately to learn about ourselves and our environments. Such a quest for knowledge will entail an examination of some of the most challenging and pervasive questions of all time such as those posed by philosophy of religion, including whether there is a God, why human beings exist, is there an ultimate purpose to life, and the problem of evil. Ethics, or moral philosophy, covers a vast number of topics including meta-ethics, which looks the nature and status of ethical language; normative ethics within which competing theories set out the basis for living and achieving a good life; and applied ethics, looking at the ways in which ethical dilemmas ought to be approached. Rival doctrines of empiricism and rationalism will afford an insight into the diversity of views surrounding the origin of knowledge, whether it is primarily innate or learned through environmental interaction. In this regard, philosophy and psychology ask somewhat similar questions. The study of epistemology and metaphysics allows further investigation into the nature of knowledge and of reality, whilst political philosophy concerns the structure of the state, the rights and responsibilities of the individual and whether or not punishment can be justified. Philosophy of mind is an enquiry into the nature of mental events and their connection with behavioural phenomena, raising interesting questions about the mind-body problem and personal identity. These and many other considerations give rise to the question of whether people are free to act as they decide or are instead determined by forces beyond themselves, again linking to the some of the central debates in psychology. Students frequently study both of these disciplines and as such will come to be sensitive to these fascinating and complementary interrelationships.

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