What is Empiricism?
The belief that all knowledge comes from experience
What is Rationalism?
We can acquire knowledge purely from intuition and deduction
What is Innatism?
You are born with certain knowledge
What are Analytic and Synthetic statements?
Logically true (tautologies)
Empirically verifiable (experiential knowledge)
What are Apriori and Aposteriori statements?
Logically true (tautologies)
Before experience
Empirically verifiable
(experiential knowledge)
After experience
What is Ration (intuition)?
and Deduction
The ability to know something by just thinking about it.
Deriving that a statement is true as another statement is true
e.g. If A is true, B is true
A is true, therefore B is true
What are Empiricist and Rationalist views on Apriori knowledge?
E: All apriori knowledge is of analytic truths
R: Not all apriori knowledge is analytic, at least one is synthetic
What are Descartes’ clear and distinct ideas?
Descartes says that ‘cogito ergo sum’ is a clear (obvious) and distinct (self sufficient) idea, and is therefore an apriori claim.
What are Descartes’ 3 waves of doubt?
- Illusion - my senses deceive me
- I may be dreaming
but analytic statements are still true in dreams? - The evil demon may be falsely making me think that I’m doing maths correctly, when I am not.
I can doubt everything
Is there anything that Descartes can know for sure?
Whatever you can clearly and distinctly conceive of, is the rational intuition.
I doubt, therefore I think, and therefore I am - Cogito Ergo Sum
Even if the evil demon is deceiving him, there must be something to deceive in the first place.
What is Descartes trademark argument for the existence of God ?
- I can conceive of God.
- God is perfect and infinite
- I am imperfect and limited
- The cause of an effect must have at least as much reality as the effect
- The cause of my idea of God must have as much reality as my idea
- My idea of God is infinite and perfect.
- God exists
What is Descartes’ argument for the existence of the external world?
- I perceive objects external to me
- They are involuntary (No sane person would create perceptions ocntrary to their wishes), so they must be external to my mind
- The cause of my perceptions must be external to my mind
- God exists
- If God caused my perceptions, then He has created me with a tendency to form false beliefs.
- God is all loving and perfect by definition, so wouldn’t create me with a tendency to form false beliefs.
- I can trust my perceptions and the external world exists.
What are the problems with Descartes’ Apriori views (I, God, and external world)?
- The concept of God isn’t innate:
- Locke argues that the belief in god is synthetic
- Descartes’ argument for the external world relies on the existence of God
- Hume’s fork:
Descartes’ argument relies on ‘matters of fact’, which are Aposteriori, thus they are not entirely Apriori - No logical contradiction in denying that a cause must be as real as an effect
-Berkley’s Idealism says that there isn’t an external world, and this premise can be false, thus it is not Apriori either.
What is Plato’s Meno slave example and what he argues?
Plato shows how even an illiterate slave innately knows the laws of geometry and when prompted, can recall it. (the diagonal of a smaller squrare of half the area = the side of the original square.
All knowledge is just recalling information from our pasts - we are born with it.
What are Leibniz’s necessary truths? and how they relate to be innatism?
There are:
- Necessary truths (must always be true under any circumstance e.g. triangle has 3 sides)
- Contingent truths (what is the case - could be false in some universe)
Leibniz says that the knowledge of necessary truths are innate.
What are the problems with Innatism +response?
- Locke says that if knowledge was universal, then every human would have such knowledge, but children and idiots don’t know a lot of things, thus knowledge isn’t innate
- Propositional knowledge relies on other concepts, for example to know that 1+1=2, you have to know what 1 is.
e.g. newborn babies have no concepts beyond the womb
Babies do not have the concept of God, aswell as atheistic communities.
Response: Leibniz says that you can have innate knowledge without you knowing
e.g.
- identity (A=A)
- impossibility (A and not A cannot exist)
Babies and atheists have the idea of God, but don’t have the ability to articulate it.
What is Locke’s tabula rasa?
You are born a blank slate and need experience to gain knowledge.
What are the two ways to get knowledge according to Locke?
Sensation: our sense perceptions e.g. what we see, hear, smell and taste.
Reflection: Experience of our own minds e.g. thinking, wanting, believing.
What are Locke’s simple, complex and abstract ideas?
When looking at the sky, you see the simple idea of blue.
Complex ideas are made of the building blocks of simple ideas e.g. blue + cold = ocean
We form abstract ideas from experience e.g. every time we see a beautiful person, painting, lake etc, we abstract the common features and get the concept of beauty.
Therefore, all types if ideas come from some sort of experience.
