Is it wrong to slap a child? If it is, is it wrong in every society and in every age, or is its wrongness relative to those factors? What is knowledge? What kind of knowledge do we have? Can social practices subvert knowledge or undermine its value? What is the nature of reality? Is reality a construction of the mind or is it independent of the mind? Does uttering words communicate more than the words that we say, and if so, how? Does language encode a perspective? What is freedom of expression? What are the ways in which it can be subverted? Via these kinds of questions, this elective course is an introduction to some central philosophical topics such as metaethics, epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of language, and political theory.