Graduate Certificate in Arts - Philosophy

The University of Melbourne

The Graduate Certificate in Arts builds a solid foundation for further studies and research. The certificate helps you develop the analytical and critical capacities you need to understand the important issues and conceptual frameworks relating to your area of study and how to apply these skills to contemporary issues. You will use relevant technologies to understand the best way to handle research tasks.Philosophy is the study of the most fundamental aspects of reality and value. Every area of inquiry and endeavour-from art and history through politics and economics to biology and mathematics-generates philosophical issues about our world and our place in it. Philosophers debate the meaning of life and the meaning of adverbs, the analysis of Divine foreknowledge and the analysis of colour, the nature of mathematics and the nature of terrorism. Work in philosophy involves the creative, critical task of constructing, clarifying and comparing ideas. We dig into the fundamental assumptions beneath our everyday views, to see how they hang together, how they can be improved, or how we might have reason to prefer one over another. We learn to take conflicting views seriously, to clarify imprecise concepts, and to synthesize new positions. You learn both traditional and contemporary approaches to individual topics in Philosophy. In tutorials and written work you practice the important skill of advancing cogent and informed arguments of your own. Students go on to apply their philosophical skills in a wide range of different careers where creative and analytic thinking is useful, such as law, education, analysis, advocacy and policy development.

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