Modern Philosophers

Rationalists– Descartes– Spinoza– Leibniz

Empiricists– Locke– Berkeley– Hume

Epistemology - the theory of knowledge (what and how we know)

Epistemology

Epistemology is one of the core areas of philosophy. It is concerned with the nature, sources and limits of knowledge. Epistemology has been primarily concerned with propositional knowledge, that is, knowledge that such-and-such is true, rather than other forms of knowledge, for example, knowledge how to such-and-such. There is a vast array of views about propositional knowledge, but one virtually universal presupposition is that knowledge is true belief, but not mere true belief. For example, lucky guesses or true beliefs resulting from wishful thinking are not knowledge. Thus, a central question in epistemology is: How do we know what we know is true, and what is the difference(s) between knowledge, belief and truth?

Modern Philosophy

Rene Descartes

Rationalist fixated on figuring out how to know truth.

Through deconstruction/reduction, he eliminates everything to get to a CRITERION OF TRUTH – a kernel of absolutely true knowledge from which an entire world can be constructed

Phases

Doubt EVERYTHING that can be doubted

Find the criterion of truth Expand from that point to find what is

knowable and true This is a rational exercise – the senses

cannot be trusted.

David Hume

Empiricist– Believes all knowledge comes through

experimentation and observation or experience of the world

– When we are born, we are “Tabula Rasa”• Locke coins the term, Hume refines it

Hume’s Method

First we experience IMPRESSIONS– Ideas form, which are fainter copies of

impressions– Psychology now calls these impressions “Sense

Data”– Both impressions and ideas can be simple or

complex.• Simple = individual traits• Complex = of the whole

THE MIND HAS THE ABILITY TO CREATE

Examples

Hume claims we have angels and a God because of the “cut and paste” method the mind employs.

By breaking down to simple ideas, then original impressions, we can know that our ideas to correspond to reality and not just make believe.

Hume is a skeptical Agnostic.

Hume deconstructs Descartes

God is an infinite, perfect being. Omniscient and Omnipotent.

• Descartes

No one has experienced infinity, it is imaginary.

Perfection cannot even be defined for everybody. We focus on limited, imperfect reality and remove realistic constraints.

Where Hume succeeded

Found Descartes’ subjectivity and biases, then tore them apart.

We want God and heaven because there is a psychological need or an indoctrination that has not been analyzed.

Hume did not believe in cause in effect. – Something did something, causing something

else. We are perceiving “constant conjunction”; we

see a sequence of events.

EXERCISE

"IF A TREE FALLS IN THE FOREST AND NO ONE IS AROUND, IS THERE SOUND?" – Upon what philosophical assumption does the question

depend? – What should you do next? – What does the phrase "I never heard of that before" really

mean? – As you read these words, do you know what else I am

doing? • What does that imply?

Solve the riddle, and you have a "major" clue to the novel's progression.

Berkeley

Also an empiricist, but is an immaterialist or idealist.

Material substance does not exist; all that exists is spiritual (minds and ideas)

God is an infinite spirit, humans are finite spirits.

Says we cannot perceive tangible reality, everything perceived is in our mind.

We all DIRECTLY perceive ideas in our mind, and what we perceive is reality.

THEREFORE - what is real is only ideas and minds.

The material world is the same as our reality, but on a higher plane. All material objects are ideas in God’s mind

This answers the first cause of how God can create a world out of nothing, but not how God came about.

Immanuel Kant

Synthesized rationalism and empiricism– Said both are partly right and partly wrong, took

the “right” parts from each All knowledge comes from experience, but

reason determines how we perceive reality. We need to keep in mind HUMAN

PERCEPTION - a “think in itself” vs. a “thing for us”

We cannot evade our humanistic filter

Disagrees with Hume on causation and says that is the rational structure of the mind at work. We apply meaning.

Kant’s ETHICS - based on the “Categorical Imperative” – ACT AS IF THE MAXIM OF YOUR

ACTION, THROUGH YOUR WILL, WOULD BECOME THE LAW OF NATURE”

IN OTHER WORDS: if I did something, would I want this action to become the universal standard action for everyone else in my position, every time?

This is a call to leave the INDIVIDUAL perspective and to use the UNIVERSAL perspective.