Master of Arts (by dissertation) — Philosophy postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

Around midnight at the backpackers' hostel where I work as a night receptionist, someone usually leans over the desk and asks which ride-hailing driver, takeaway or late bar they should trust. I give the answer I have built up over two years: what previous guests told me, what colleagues pass on, and what I have seen myself. Guests nearly always accept it immediately, though they have known me for about four minutes. Then many check the same question on their phones, weighing a stranger's star rating against my word. Watching this every week has sharpened a question I first met as an undergraduate. What makes it reasonable to believe what other people tell us, especially when those people are anonymous and their reports have been gathered by a machine?

I completed a BA in Philosophy, followed by an Honours year, at a South African university. My Honours research essay examined Miranda Fricker's account of testimonial injustice, in which a hearer gives a speaker less credibility than they deserve because of prejudice about the speaker's social identity. I applied her framework to complaints made at community clinic queues, a setting I knew from accompanying my grandmother. My supervisor's main criticism was that I had treated credibility as a single dial. Revising the essay, I separated two questions: whether a hearer believes a speaker, and whether the hearer even recognises the speaker as someone offering knowledge at all. That distinction made the final essay much tighter, and it is the thread I want to follow further.

For the dissertation I would like to ask how the classic debate about testimony applies to aggregated online reports. Reductionists, in the tradition associated with Hume, hold that testimony is justified only when the hearer has independent reasons to trust it. Anti-reductionists, following Reid, treat accepting testimony as justified by default unless there are reasons for doubt. A review platform seems to sit awkwardly between the two. I cannot assess any single reviewer's reliability, yet the average of many reviews looks like a reason of exactly the kind a reductionist wants. I want to work out whether that appearance survives scrutiny, and whether the selection of which voices appear, and how prominently, raises the kind of credibility problem Fricker describes. I have begun reading Jennifer Lackey's Learning from Words, whose argument that testimony can transmit knowledge through statements rather than through the speaker's own belief may suit cases where reviewers are unknown or insincere.

My reading so far has been done in the quiet hours between check-ins, which suits a dissertation degree. I have learnt to keep a running document of objections to my own position, and I return to it after a weekend away from the text. Supervised independent research, rather than coursework, matches how I already work.

The job has given me other useful habits. Night shifts involve handling disputes about noise or lost keys calmly, writing clear handover notes for the morning team and explaining hostel rules to guests who share no language with me. These are practical skills, but they rely on the same care with what was actually said that philosophy demands. Since my mother started working late, I have also supervised my younger brother's homework three afternoons a week. Helping him through Grade 10 algebra reminded me how often a confusion lies in an unstated assumption, and that patiently uncovering it works better than restating the answer.

Outside work I play goal defence in a social netball league. It has nothing to do with epistemology, which is part of its value, though I have noticed how much a team depends on believing a call from someone behind you.

I am applying for a research Master's because I want to spend a sustained period testing one well-defined question against the best existing arguments, with guidance from people who know the literature better than I do. I would bring disciplined reading, steady writing habits and a problem that grew out of everyday life.