Look around. What do you see? We ordinarily think that our experience puts us in touch with things around us, and so enables us to know about those things. But things appear differently from different angles, distances, perspectives. Which, if any, of those appearances reveals to you how things really are?

Worse, it seems imaginable that all of your experiences might be the products of dreams, or neuroscientific experiments. Can you prove that you’re not so benighted? If not, how can you know anything about the world around you? How can you even think about such a world?

If you can’t learn about the world, perhaps you can at least learn about your own experience, what it’s like to be you. But doesn’t your experience depend on your brain, an element of the external world? You’ll be exposed to major philosophical arguments and positions on these and related topics, with the aim of deepening your understanding of the relationship between your mind and the rest of the world.