Episode description

Was Marx wrong when he said that philosophers can only interpret the world in various ways, and contrasted that with actually changing it?

Epistemology, or the theory of knowledge, was once considered one of the more abstract areas of philosophy, far removed from the concerns of every-day life. Now, philosophers like Miranda Fricker have developed epistemological concepts that can help us recognise, understand, and address areas where disparities in knowledge feed into wider social and political disadvantages, for example indigenous people articulating their relationship with land using Western legal concepts like ‘ownership’ or patients trying to describe symptoms not addressed by medical text books. Shahidha Bari talks with Miranda Fricker, Havi Carel and Constantine Sandis.

You can find a playlist of conversations about philosophy on the Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07x0twx

Producer: Luke Mulhall