 Hi, everyone. I'm Dr. Andrew Hines. Please just call me Andrew and I'm going to be leading this taster session today on why world philosophies and what it might look like to do a BA in world philosophies and so as. I want to start by asking you a question and so if you could just pop it in the chat box one word and what that one word I want you to do is I want you to put one word in the chat box that you associate with the word wisdom just curious what your thoughts are when you hear that word so if anyone could just write write a word in the chat box with the word wisdom so you might think of I see somebody says knowledge okay anyone else experience contemplation experience knowledge reflection nice okay love of interesting insight these are these are all really good things thanks everyone I think the most students when they study philosophy they will hear the word wisdom because philosophy actually means lover of wisdom it comes from the greek and the word philo and sephia together they combine to mean love of wisdom so it's something most people learn I'm going to tell you a quick story that relates to this word and then I want to tell you another story that you may not be as familiar with so most students when they study philosophy will hear this story there's this guy socrates he's one of the most famous philosophers in ancient Greece so thousands of years ago and he hears that someone has said socrates I heard you're the wisest man of all and socrates says I am I I don't think I'm particularly wise I don't know very much he's confused by this and he thinks there must be some error there must be some mistake so he decides to go about and start asking people questions and he goes to people that he thinks are particularly knowledgeable or wise men he goes around and he says okay so I know that you know a lot about construction I know that you know a lot about politics I know that you know a lot about medicine I know you know a lot about poetry tell me about those things and they give they give very good answers they give answers that sound very you know sophisticated and polished and they are very knowledgeable and socrates kind of gathers all this information and he's learning things that he doesn't know and he comes to the conclusion finally comes back to his friend he says you know I think I am actually the wisest but it's not because I know things it's because everybody I asked thought that they were really wise because they knew loads about one thing a lot about poetry a lot about politics a lot about construction a lot about medicine but actually I realized that but they thought they were wise and they knew everything but I realized that I didn't know everything and the inside of the story the kind of lesson that you usually learn when you study philosophy is that it's really important to continue questioning and continue learning because real wisdom doesn't just come from knowledge which is important but it also comes from recognizing that you don't know everything and you always need to learn more you always need to question more and that's a really important skill in philosophy and in university but there's another part of this story that you might not learn or that students might not learn when they study philosophy and that's this idea of a philosopher being wise and needing to continue question everything actually is written down even earlier thousands and thousands of years before in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and they define the first definition in history of a philosopher as someone who is wise and who asks questions and continues to learn doesn't isn't just satisfied with the knowledge they have but is continues to ask questions and continues to learn about things and they define that as a philosopher and they define it as someone who's wise and so this idea in ancient Egypt becomes really prominent in North Africa and the Greeks would go to study in North Africa so there's actually a way that the ideas traveled up so by the time that story I told you at the beginning which is a great story about Socrates a lot of times people don't know that actually that that idea about being wise is what makes you a philosopher connects back to ancient Egypt and to North Africa and that's kind of an example of why world philosophies because it puts ideas in a wider and very global context so now I want to ask you another question I want to ask you what you think of when you hear the word philosophy so maybe just again one word in the chat box what's some associations you might have with it culture art culture and art thoughtfulness academia thoughts and ideas theory okay debate there's lots of different definitions here this is really interesting questioning okay debate everything somebody said beliefs fantastic big questions okay thanks everyone all of these things are are definitely related to to philosophy when we study world philosophies we might be studying how people come about the beliefs they have by asking asking different questions we you do study how to debate and build better arguments one of the key things that I often tell my first year students in philosophy is fundamentally that you'll learn a lot of information but you won't necessarily answer all the questions you have in philosophy philosophy is more about the skill of asking questions and so some people I've seen have put culture art you will think about all these things and we'll ask questions about these things but it's more about the skill of asking questions about art and culture and so usually philosophies kind of associated with the big questions of life like what is truth is there a god how should I live these types of questions are what we might popularly associate with philosophy and when we study world philosophies we'll be asking those types of questions and we'll be looking at them from the perspective of multiple cultures around the globe and I'll be looking at how those different cultures interact and how their ideas might interact so let me give you another quick example if you think about going back to we talked about ancient Greece a moment ago so another quick example is after Socrates a few hundred years later another guy comes along in Aristotle and Aristotle writes a book all about the world around us the natural world and it becomes the most you know everybody looks to it as a great source of wisdom in the ancient Mediterranean and it spreads not just in Greece and then in Rome but it spreads over to over parts of Africa over to what we would today call the Middle East and it becomes a really important text in the Abbasid dynasty and in the Islamic golden age and Aristotle becomes the most prominent kind of foundation for philosophy in that period however the first time China ever hears the name Aristotle China had already an entire system of philosophy based on the philosopher Confucius and when they hear Aristotle it's hundreds and hundreds of years later and they look at Aristotle's writings they're interested in them and but they said but they had a very different system based on Confucius and these are also some of the questions that we might study in world philosophies is how different philosophers become important in different cultures and that way the questions people might ask become different in those cultures so that's another example of why world philosophies and the types of questions we might ask so I'm just going to now put up on the slide a few different points about the types of things we might study in world philosophies so philosophy is the first point there it's a global discipline so we really think it so as it should reflect the intellectual traditions of the whole world as much as possible and there's a real emphasis on dialogue like I was saying a moment ago between different philosophical traditions so for example I teach a class on metaphysics and I'll talk about what that means in a second and every week we look at one philosopher from say ancient Greece on what metaphysics means and then we look at a philosopher from ancient India on what metaphysics means we look at a dialogue and we try to find areas of commonality areas of difference and how those strengthen and can talk to each other's positions we also think so as there's an importance of understanding philosophical traditions comparatively but also in their own terms so we might ask in the case that story I told you about confucius and Aristotle why is it that what does it mean to have a philosophy based on confucius and not this guy Aristotle what's the difference and we think about that in its own terms not only in relation to western philosophy and the other thing that we do is a really rigorous training in the main branches of philosophy and so I'm those I'm gonna read you they're on the screen there the main branches of philosophy we teach it so as is logic ethics metaphysics what I mentioned a moment ago the epistemology hermeneutics and ontology that's a mouthful so I want to I want to think really quickly about a few of those words and what they mean so again just in the chat box what do you think of when you hear the word logic one word that might come to mind reason using reasoning okay system sense good yeah rational thinking good yeah mathematics comprehension these are all different types of things that do relate to logic and so as we'll study logic as we are it's we're thinking about the rules that govern rational thinking and so when you're in your first year you'll take a course on that the second thing is ethics what do you think of when you think of ethics just pop it in the chat morals morality yeah right and wrong culture again good good and evil politics dilemmas ethical dilemmas yeah um so ethics usually means the study of how should we live it is close to relative to morality it's the question of how should we live but also not just us personally but how should how should the society make the decisions it makes um what should be um a law and what shouldn't be a law the the types of things that govern our our behaviors and the choices we make that's ethics okay now there's now there's the big one that might be confusing what's metaphysics what do you think of when you hear that abstract ideas beyond the world other worlds it's interesting um that some of you are saying other worlds are beyond the world could you if you feel comfortable could you just pop in the chat what you mean by that why do you think it's beyond other worlds not in the physical realm that can't be explained empirically okay like that somebody else has said um something could be possible in other worlds not possible in this world yeah so i think these are all really interesting associations um and sometimes when we study metaphysics we do study that but actually metaphysics is something that is fundamentally just about the ultimate nature of reality and so sometimes that is about other worlds that is about this idea of perhaps a god or gods or perhaps a realm that's different to kind of the natural physical realm we live in um and sometimes those those are metaphysical answers but sometimes the answers about the ultimate nature of reality are are not about those things so there's lots of different um methods by which we can ask metaphysical questions but i think somebody said it's about the big abstract ideas and that's exactly right metaphysics is the broadest discipline and you'll also take that in your first year because it gives you a vocabular to talk about big questions really well okay how about this next one epistemology what comes to mind when you hear that knowledge again somebody says the cogito what is knowledge yeah sounds like you have a better sense of this everyone this is exactly right so epistemology if you don't know is about asking that question what can i know what am i capable of knowing how do i understand the world around me and that's actually something i'm a specialist of is epistemology and asking how do i understand the world what can i actually know about the world and then i won't go in the last ones hermeneutics and ontology but those are the other branches of philosophy and we deal with those in the the second year we also think that so as about questions about decolonization race gender disability sexuality and how all of these relate to the history of philosophy so that's a really quick overview of kind of some of the themes you might study what i'd like to do then is i just want to show you sorry i'm having trouble switching screens here we go um if you i wanted to introduce you to the teaching team so on the left hand side is me you can see that i've swapped my long hair on the top to my long beard in the bottom and short hair um the joys of lockdown and these are the people you would be working with here so i'm the first year academic advisor um and then um my colleague elvis amafodon dr amafodon is the second year advisor and there's sean hawthorne and they are the core teaching team that would be kind of guiding you through three years at so as and they would be the core people that essentially you would reflect on these questions about what world philosophies is together um i'm not going to bore you with um too much information about the program but i'm quite curious to hear from you about questions you have when you hear the term world philosophies so um we've talked about what wisdom is we've talked about what philosophy is but there's this other term about the world i've given you a few ideas but i'm quite curious what do you think when you think of not just philosophy but world philosophies what does that mean to you in any comments in the chat political economics is this deeper sense is a really interesting one why can i ask clara can you say why do you why do you mean deeper sense what does the word deeper mean to you okay go ahead um i was just gonna say like understanding um basically like the questions and ideas behind cultures and different cultures and how they relate to each other okay so a deeper sense is is maybe not just what we normally think about it but how maybe different cultures think about these questions is that right yeah okay great yeah and that's exactly that's exactly the kind of thing we think we we learn it so as is we learn to understand different cultures and how they ask those big questions like i outlined what is reality what can we know and so we try to understand how different people from different cultures might ask those questions and why that's important good thank you clara um anyone else um i i've just a few comments here philosophy beyond just the western philosophy you says so asian african and arab philosophy thought and yeah that's exactly right so the great thing about um the question of world philosophy is it includes multiple different um philosophical traditions and so i just want to show you if you look here on the bottom right there it says traditions of philosophy you can choose from your second year on all these different um type traditions so we could look at african philosophy and my colleague dr. maffadon is an expert in african philosophy is that he's actually he's actually from nigeria and is really involved in african philosophical tradition you could also do ancient and medieval indian philosophy buddhist philosophy japanese philosophy tawism islam religion rationality islamic philosophy jewish identity and philosophy so you can see a whole list of things beyond western philosophy and we'll look at not just these in dialogue with the west but these in dialogue with each other so for example we might ask questions about how does japanese buddhist thought for example relate to aspects in islamic philosophy so we're not just thinking about things in dialogue between say Aristotle and confucius but perhaps thinking about things between say islamic philosophy and japanese philosophy so yeah um and then the last comment just reading here in the chat people said about world philosophies is knowing the human as a whole and the different way of seeing the world in function of our own culture that's really interesting what do you mean by the word function kenny like we're born in a culture that shapes yeah and it's really interesting because um that's okay i think um so i teach in the first year a class called world philosophies in context and actually the thing the main thing that we study is the function of philosophy in different cultures so philosophy might have a slightly different function in different cultures so sometimes philosophy might be more related to a religious tradition of a particular culture sometimes it might be more related to kind of academia and a field of study and sometimes it might be more related to kind of a scientific inquiry but philosophy has a different purpose in different cultures and so you kind of get to learn not just about the ideas but also the way it relates to everyday life in those cultures in kind so that's that's a bit about what function means what i want to highlight um thank you all for your really excellent replies what i want to highlight is the way that i'm teaching now asking you questions and then asking you to expand on it is exactly the way we teach philosophy so philosophy is all about like i said at the beginning asking questions and then it's about asking another question and thinking more about your answer so this style is a little bit of a taster of the style actually of how classes go it asks you to kind of get involved and ask questions and and then the the lecturers like myself or Elvis or Sean we will ask you questions and we'll ask you to then explain your answer even deeper but what it does is it gives you really excellent skills to be able to think about something as someone else said more deeply not just simply on the surface but more deeply and so let me close with a final story before i open up to questions and then i want to well do two things i'm going to close the final story and highlight some of the skills philosophy might give you in this method of asking questions then i want to spend plenty of time with you being able to ask questions um so here's the final story so there is this side there's this word that is in ancient Greek called orthodoxa all it means is um we might know the word orthodox in english but the word is a slightly different meaning in ancient Greek and it actually means common opinion or popular opinion it just means the everyday understanding of the word so like when i asked you i said what does wisdom mean to you and you throughout a few answers knowledge contemplation etc um that's exactly what orthodox meant in ancient greece it's just that common initial understanding and the story is is that um uh Aristotle the the philosophy who i said became the most important philosopher in the islamic golden age Aristotle said we have to start with what's common but then we move on to this place called paradoxa which is what the english word paradox comes from and in paradox you suddenly feel confused because you thought you understood what something meant but then you suddenly are confused because you don't you don't know what it meant so for example it's kind of like when you're looking and you think um you think you see your friend on the street and then suddenly you run up and you're like oh that's not them um and it's somebody else but they had the same haircut um so you're slightly confused and there's there's that moment of paradox where you're suddenly disoriented but Aristotle says that's where truth comes is in the moment of paradox so you take something you thought you knew like wisdom you ask a lot of questions about it and you get to a paradoxical moment where you don't know exactly um what you thought you knew is different but then suddenly you have a moment of aha now i understand that first word in a much deeper way and so that's why we use the method of question asking and here's what that will help you do so um the question asking helps you a lot with i'm just put up these graduate graduate destinations here a lot of our students go on to work in NGOs um in development work in teaching and government research and journalism publishing consultancy all these fields really people who know how to ask good questions and also who know how to communicate well and that's what philosophy teaches you so it teaches you how to really think about if you think you know something but not just have the simple everyday understanding of it be able to explain it in a much deeper way through the process of asking questions and you'll be able to do that not just through the perspective of a western philosophy but in dialogue with several different traditions around the world so it'll give you a really great skill set in question asking but also in question asking and asking questions about other cultures and their identities and their beliefs and so it helps you not just ask questions but also have a dialogue with other people's questions and that's really the i think the the best thing um about why world philosophies because it does teach you to ask questions but it also teaches you to have a dialogue with others about the questions they might ask and to understand more deeply why those questions matter to them so um i want to open it up now to to your questions whether um what so over to you and maybe if um our student ambassadors like to help jump in ask some questions that they might have had uh before studying philosophy or questions um yes let's start with that what questions might you have had shon when you before you began studying philosophy um sorry i can hear you um i'm not sure if i can hear you shon are you able to speak yeah can you hear me now yeah so what's the question i'm sorry i just i just um wanted to begin asking questions by wondering what questions you might have had i mean you uh began studying philosophy so if you think back to kind of your first year what questions did you walk in with i think through the context of studying in um in college at the age of four and then come to start where it's a right like right the range i was came in with the questions of is western philosophy similar to the african philosophy or chinese philosophy if there's similarity if there's a similarity why have i not been taught it before or why have i not been taught these different traditions before in the in the um in the college system so that's what kind of question i have okay yeah that yeah thanks for that shon so you might have been it's not like you were thinking um i was taught western philosophy so i'm curious about what these other traditions are like are they similar um are they different but also why why haven't i necessarily been taught about these other traditions so those are some of the things that you walked into the degree with yeah good okay thank you for that um just open it up to others if you want to just type in you have question andrew in the actually from zara yeah go ahead he's asking what if you were studying world philosophies as a joint honors so if you could just elaborate on that point sure um what i might do actually before we open it up properly to more questions i can quickly run through um some of the practical details if that if that would work jack um so that you know um so i'm sorry you want me to run them through how to um put questions in sorry was that no no no so i'm just um i'm just double checking i'm going to go back actually and show the difference between joint or single honors oh yes absolutely yeah the screen would be helpful fantastic okay um so what i want to do we'll we'll go back to broader questions in a second um but i think what i'd like to do is is highlight what the structure looks like for those of you who might be interested in that so this is the structure if you're a single honor student so if you're a single honor and i'll come to zara to your question in just a moment i'll highlight both of them in comparison okay as a single honor is these are the courses you take in your first year so you take world philosophies in context with me reading writing philosophy um and then there's a few and then you have a choice after that you could choose philosophy of race and racism you could choose metaphysics so there's a few different choices in your first year and that's um 30 credits but you can also take a language if you want alongside so if you're really interested for example learning arabic japanese there's so many different interesting languages that so as and you could choose one of those languages it's really useful to choose one of those languages in philosophy as well because you're studying so many different philosophical traditions um then there is the second year and which is on the screen there and those two courses are compulsory that i've mentioned philosophies of language with me and then philosophies of interpretation understanding which is with dr amaphodon and then that box on the right you have all those choices of credits um and so that you and those are the topics i mentioned earlier that you could choose from and then finally in your third year it's the same thing you have one main course you take with dr shan hawthorne margins of philosophy um and then you also do an independent study project so you kind of pick your own topic and then you have again you have the same choice of options so that's a single honors degree now if you want to do a joint honors like zara's asking about um it's essentially the same thing um but in half so for example it would be um instead of the entire um bulk being philosophy which is a bit split straight down the middle and so that you could choose um you know i am so sorry everyone i think this screen is is the wrong screen for a joint honors and so um andrew yes you might if i felt because i'm actually a joint honor student myself please shan go ahead that'd be fantastic yeah because okay so um i was going to give that a brief layer of what my timetable kind of looks like throughout the year so it's kind of it is like a half a split in half so like you do half or for me half of history a half of philosophy so this year i for the philosophy side i'm doing the i've done philosophy down which is andrew um i'm also doing um doctor macadam interpretation understanding as well and then i and then the other half is my history side so for history i've been 50s in history women in chinese history um coaching society in african history and i did history approach a method so it's kind of 50 50 split because and then yeah it's equal to the credits as well so you have to kind of like look at the credit and then look at the combinations you can do as well i hope that helps yeah no definitely shan and are you kind of sad so that does that answer your questions zara while we wait to hear back from zara on that one should we move on to one of the other ones we've had two questions about how the course is examined yeah exams or just coursework or a mixture sure um it's totally a mixture um so i think however i would say that philosophy tends towards um essays more than exams because we really care about you learning the skill of writing um and so um the a lot of the courses you'll be examined through um writing an essay and submitted it by a deadline as opposed to sitting in an exam um have you found that to be the case shan that your class is 10 towards essay writing more than exams yeah actually i found because looking through my modules i've seen that i don't have exams at all it's mostly the state and journals the majority of the time and we have that in one exam yeah okay yeah good thanks thanks shan i would say one thing for those of you who might be nervous about writing first of all take a deep breath that's okay um but also we do teach you a reading and writing philosophy course which is specifically designed to give you the skills you need to write at university and so it will really help you be a better writer and not a writer about philosophy um jack what's the next question so zoya asks what does the unit is land religion and rationality involves what do you explore in this do you know that's a really good question and if i'm completely honest um that is not a course i'm particularly familiar with and so i don't want to make up an answer and tell you but i can tell you who teaches it um which is um my mind is just drawn a blank i'm so sorry um do you know i i'm not in the best position to answer that however what i can tell you is that one thing i do know probably more broadly is it probably involves questions about the relationship between philosophy and religion um and so how those two might go together because philosophy like we said is about asking questions and religion is about belief so it might have to do with the relationship between the things we believe versus the questions we might ask that's a very broad answer but i don't know more specific than that i apologize great thank you um is it possible to combine the course with a year abroad short answer is yes hopefully when when we're able to travel again but there is an application process it's not just simply you tick a box and do it you have to kind of make a case um and and i think the main thing that they're looking for there is mainly looking to to see that you're interested in studying philosophy within a different cultural context and not just having a year abroad for fun um but yes you're totally able to do that great thank you yeah asya and ask is there maths in the logic module and if so is it particularly difficult so it's interesting i um i teach the logic one as well i have the book here i can show you the short answer is no but i can show you some of the questions i don't know if you can see that on the screen that looks a bit like maths um it's not math it's called symbolic logic but um so as so symbolic logic is a very short part of the overall course because we think it's important for students to know what that is and it's a bit like maths but we also ask about what are the limits of logic and what types of logic have other cultures employed in their own philosophical system so it's not just the maths kind of logic there's about a week on that is all um and it so it won't be the main thing that would determine whether you pass the course or not if that's not your week it's fine these are the weeks yeah i just want to add to that so yeah yeah you do learn the symbols but like you can't and then because i studied the logic last year because we mostly focus on um do you see flow text if any of you are familiar with that but so as most who was the assessment was mostly actually on the fee throw and then the logic and then the that then the symbols for the logic was kind of additional to that if you can know i mean so don't stress it won't be the main thing for for any essay so don't stress about that good thanks both we have about 12 minutes left everyone so do get your questions in um we've got about three or four in the chats to to address but please do submit if you have anything to ask um Amy heard that asks i've only had the opportunity to study western philosophy at a level which non-western philosophical movements do you consider to be the most thought thought provoking or pivotal to be completely honest i i i don't think you can i think each philosophical movement has their own logic um and by that i mean the their own reason why it's interesting or pivotal um in my own interest i am really really interested in what's called the Kyoto school um and i can i don't know if i'm able to type in the chat here but i can type um name of a book if you're interested it's called inquiry into the good by Kitaro Nishida um that's one of my favorite books um and it's it's it's by a movement called the Kyoto school which is in Japan it's named after the Japanese city that it was founded and we certainly studied quite a lot of the Kyoto school here at so as um and certainly in my courses so that's just one suggestion um but i don't think it's really that there's ones that are more important than the other um they each have their own importance to their own culture really so yeah great do uh Jasper asked do you not have a choice of as many traditions stroke roots i'm not sure i understand the question can you rephrase that maybe i think he's basically asking us like how many you know do you get to go in a multitude of different ways or do you have to specialize ah i see okay no um it's really you have the option to do both so the first year is a lot more prescripted as you'll see in on the screen here um the first year we teach you kind of the basics that will be useful for the rest but in your second and third year it's fine Jasper don't worry um in your second or third year you can do either you can either take lots of classes about islamic philosophy that's really interesting to you or you can do a bit of african philosophy a bit of japanese philosophy a bit of islamic philosophy a bit of western philosophy so you really have the option to go either direction um yeah and uh to wonder asks will we be learning much history in the course yes is the short answer because what we found at so as is that it's really important because we're not just looking at one tradition of philosophy we're looking at multiple it's quite important to understand the history surrounding each of those traditions it helps us put them in context so um it's not necessarily loads of history but there is um we take what's called an intellectual historical approach meaning that you look at the intellect or the ideas of a culture alongside their arguments so it's not just about argumentation but about the history surrounding it would you agree with that shawn yeah i was just gonna say like during my courses you find that a lot of historical circumstances like has an impact on like philosophical work so like some of the um eventually might be talked about like colonialism enlightenment period um um maybe even the world wars obviously so like yeah thanks for that shawn yeah i hope that answers your question uh claire has asked what kind of careers have past graduates gone on to do all study yeah so i put up a um a slight a moment ago i'll just put that up again because i know i buzzed through it um this is a list of the things um i think there's kind of a few things that link all these together one is that there are things that we would consider to kind of be um to make a difference really in the world and the second is they're quite clever degrees are quite clever jobs and by clever i don't mean that everybody's a genius but that they require you to not just um for example make a cup of coffee but rather um have to use critical reasoning which is what philosophy teaches you so a lot of our graduates do stuff with NGOs um or charities a lot of them do stuff with journalism and teaching and perhaps diplomacy and international law so things that really make a difference in the world and require you to make a difference by using your brain to ask questions i hope that's a clear enough answer but that's a list of some of the main things people go into we've had a question about um possibility of work placements so you know the great thing uh the where the best way i can answer that is so as has a just finding the right slide here so bear with me a moment um so as has a really great career services the final point on the screen there at the bottom the career service can help you with that i don't know if jack or sean you want to talk more about that but they do help students find work placements it's not something the philosophy department specifically does rather the university itself helps you do either of you want to expand on that i just want to add that like um there there are so if any of you are familiar with job sites like indeed or reed so as kind of has the own kind of site where they actually advertise the opportunities and jobs and then i've got i've got practically every day i can get any more of any opportunities and then and work that can be done i for during school or after school or and that's what it seems as well so you have there's a constant um so when it comes to work i'm trying to say so there's kind of there's many opportunities that comes to work that's all i'm trying to say so yeah and just to add to what sean said is that it's actually something that is i used to work in a career center before i was a university lecturer and when employers really like philosophy students because they i think it just sounds clever to them or they think oh they're you know they're probably learning how to be quite conscientious reflective people and so it looks really well when you try to get a work placement philosophy students do quite well typically getting work placements. Just to add on to that what i'm doing actually right now is actually a perfect job for you at university because not because it gives you not only that you earn a wage it actually gives you a lot of skills to actually get references for future jobs so yeah i actually recommend being a student ambassador in university. We've been asked a question about the teaching and learning so our students taught through lectures and seminars and are the slides shared with students? Yeah so um i think the best way to answer that let me give you a really quick snapshot on what each week each week looks like um so at the moment obviously things are a bit different but there's a site called Moodle which is an online learning platform where everyone will have access to if you're a part of a course and on there there is the syllabus so it's what we cover each week and every week before I start the course a few days in advance I upload my PowerPoint or the slides so the slides would be up there in advance you could look over them then there is a lecture um on those slides so you could kind of look at the slides while the lecture is happening and then there's a seminar about those like about those where you can ask deeper questions and maybe read some of the texts that you're looking at for that week a bit closer so usually a philosophy week looks like a powerpoint side that's shared in advance on this site called Moodle and then there is a reading usually that you're asked to do and there's a lecture about that and about the slides and then an opportunity to kind of ask more specific questions in the seminar about that reading so that's kind of what it looks like week to week um Andrew are there any other books you'd recommend reading before starting the course do you know what one of my favorite books actually recently there's two things um I'm gonna try to help us in the chat Julian Bajini um has written a book called Other World Things it's really easy to read and it's a great introduction to kind of not just Western philosophy but um different traditions of philosophy are on the world um the other book that you know the other thing you might want to look at is a guy named Peter Adminson the Kings College um and he does a thing he does a podcast which is quite interesting called the history of philosophy without any gaps um and he does a lot of I mean interesting interviews with different people to learn about the history of philosophy from all over the world through all periods of time it's one of the most comprehensive sources I can imagine but the podcast is really fun and easy to listen to so those are two sources to check out do um do we require textbooks for each year that's an interesting question um so the short answer is best way I can answer that is it does change year to year or or class to class but I think don't make that a cause for concern because all the stuff that you need is provided for you online Sean do you have any comments on that of course there's not necessarily a main textbook that like the classes really follow there's mostly like various readings and extracts from various books so yeah that's what we have to say so yeah yeah so typically it's not a whole textbook but usually it's a different reading each week um that's kind of an article or a chapter from a book and that's posted online so it's not like you have to go out and buy a textbook yeah and it will be provided for you so it just makes things easier yeah anything else no I don't think so um and we're coming up to three 350 which is when we were scheduled to close the session so if you just have a few final words maybe Andrew and then we can we can sign out yeah certainly so um I think you know I really hope that it was useful today I'm just going to pop my email uh my sora's email into the chat um if you have any questions please look back at the slide and um get in touch with either myself or other members of staff and we're super happy to chat with you and ask you any questions you might have um I think you know I would just say that um philosophy is probably the most important skill you can learn in life so um because it's applicable to so many different fields whether you become an academic or whether you go on to do another type of job it's a skill that won't go amiss because it teaches you how to ask ask good questions and doing it at a place like sora's helps you ask questions in such a a broad way that helps you understand how other people think and I think that's really the value of it so I hope it's been useful today and um please do drop us a line if you have any more questions thank you so much great and thank you Andrew for giving us a wonderful presentation appreciate it and uh for all of you for attending today and have a great weekend everyone and I'll sign out to the session now for everyone so um goodbye thank you bye bye everyone