MSc Philosophy

Edinburgh has a proud and distinguished place in the history of philosophy and has long been associated with some of the field’s most important thinkers.

Our flagship MSc Philosophy degree programme offers you an excellent opportunity to enhance your learning and join a large, vibrant and supportive postgraduate community.

We provide a broad, advanced education in philosophy, covering all the core areas of analytic philosophy:

• Epistemology
• Metaphysics
• Logic and philosophy of language
• Moral and political philosophy

The department also has a particular focus in the following areas:

• Applied ethics
• History of philosophy, including Ancient philosophy, Islamic philosophy, and Early modern and Enlightenment philosophy
• Meta-ethics
• Philosophy of mind, philosophy of cognitive science and neuroscience
• Philosophy of race and gender
• Philosophy of science

This programme provides an intensive grounding in philosophy, its methodology and techniques of research. It is the ideal programme to lead on to further research and study in philosophy as part of a PhD programme.

Programme structure

This programme comprises two semesters of taught courses followed by a dissertation, which you will write at the end of Semester 2 and over the summer.

At the dissertation stage, you will be assigned a supervisor with whom you meet to plan your reading and discuss your work.

Compulsory courses:

• Phil Skills (a 0 credit study skills course for students without a background in philosophy)
• Philosophy Dissertation

Optional courses vary year to year; recent courses include:

• Applied Ethics
• The Computational Mind
• Epistemology and Evidence Law
• Ethics of Artificial Intelligence
• Freedom, Consent, and Political Obligation
• Islamic Philosophy
• The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre
• Indian Philosophies of Mind and Language
• Philosophy of Information
• Philosophy of Science
• Self, Agency and the Will

The study of philosophy helps develop general intellectual abilities and enhances analytical, critical, interpretive, and problem-solving abilities. This programme brings you into a postgraduate community with a very high academic job-placement record.

This programme provides you with a range of knowledge and skills to prepare you for a variety of career paths, including, but not limited to, further study in a PhD programme in Philosophy.

This is the ideal programme for deepening your involvement in philosophy, giving you a grounding in postgraduate work, or developing an academic career in philosophy.