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Introduction to Philosophy (UNO) > 6: What is knowledge? > Flashcards

6: What is knowledge? Flashcards

1
Q

What is the definition of Epistemology?

A

The study of nature, origin and extent of human knowledge

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2
Q

What are the two types of knowledge?

A
  1. Performative Knowledge
  2. Propositional Knowledge
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3
Q

What are some characteristics of Performative Knowledge?

A
  1. It means that you know how to do things
  2. We are born with certain innate performative knowledge (to eat, etc.)
  3. Questions about truth DO NOT arise in performative knowledge
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4
Q

What are some characteristics of propositional knowledge?

A
  1. It means that you know that certain things…
  2. There are different takes on whether or not there is innate propositional knowledge
  3. Questions about truth DO arise in propositional knowledge
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5
Q

What are the two types of propositional knowledge?

A
  1. A priori knowledge
    • Not justified by experience, but by reason alone
  2. A posteriori knowledge
    • Justified by experience
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6
Q

What is the traditional analysis of propositional knowledge?

A

S knows that P if and only if,

  • S believes that P
  • S is justified in believing that P, and
  • P is true

There are three conditions: belief, justification and truth.

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7
Q

What is the belief condition?

A
  • Is it possible to know something that something that you do NOT believe?
    • No.
  • What is belief?
    • S believes that P if and only if S thinks that P true
  • Belief IS a necessary condition for knowledge.
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8
Q

What is the justification condition?

A
  • Justification = sufficient (good enough) reasons
    • Personal experience
    • Expert testimony
    • Authority
    • Textbooks
    • Accepted history, theories, facts
  • Justification IS a necessary condition for knowledge.
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9
Q

What are the three conceptions of truth?

A
  1. Subjectivist (me)
    • The specific individual
      1. What true for me is for me, and you you
  2. Relativist (we)
    • Relativise to a particular society or group
  3. Objectivist (the)
    • There is some fact to the matter that allows us to settle
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10
Q

Who was Bertrand Russell?

A
  • Longest lived philosophy
  • British
  • Cambridge University
  • Prolific writer
  • Pacifist
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11
Q

What did Bertrand Russell thought about truth?

A
  • How is knowledge of truth and knowledge of things different?
    • We can’t be wrong about how things seems to us
    • We can be wrong about how things are
  • Truth bearers & Truth-bearing
    • Belief + Statements
      • No one’s ever seen a belief or a statement
      • These are truth-bearers.
    • What are the kinds of things that are bearers of truth?
      • Declarative sentence; meaning
      • In the absence of belief and statements, truth will not exist in the world.
        • Truth is a property of beliefs and statements
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12
Q

What are the three requisites for a theory of truth?

A
  1. “Our theory of truth must be such as to admit of its opposite, falsehood”
  2. Truth and falsehood need to be based on belief and statements
  3. It depends upon something which lies outside the belief
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13
Q

What are some theories of truth?

A
  1. Coherence Theory
  2. Correspondence Theory
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14
Q

In what consists the Coherence Theory of truth?

A
  • “A belief is true when it coheres with the body of our others beliefs”
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15
Q

What is the difficulty of the Coherence Theory of truth?

A
  • There’s no reason to suppose there’s only one body of beliefs
  • The coherence theory presupposes the law of non-contradiction
    • “A statement cannot be both true and false at the same time”
  • Coherence = consistency ≠ truth, therefore coherence ≠ truth
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16
Q

In what consists the Correspondence Theory of truth?

A
  • The thing you need to look at outside, is the world = the fact
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17
Q

What is a fact?

A
  • An associated complex of some state of affairs in the world
  • It is NOT the statement expressing the state of affairs, it IS the state of affairs
  • Correspondence with fact as constituting the nature of truth.
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18
Q

What were some characteristics of the Modern Period?

A
  1. Renaissance: revival on “old learning” gave way to innovation in technology, painting and music
  2. Growing dissatisfaction with the church, reformation; counterreformation
  3. Exploration and expansion
  4. Dissatisfaction with scholasticism; in particular, Aristotelianism came to be viewed as confining, dogmatic or simply wrong
  5. Skepticism about philosophy and theology (conflicting “truths”)
  6. Rise of science and the value of the scientific method (observation and experimentation)
19
Q

What were the major epistemic views of the Modern Period?

A
  1. Rationalism
  2. Empiricism
20
Q

In what did Rationalism consist?

A
  1. The epistemological view that reason (not experience) is the fundamental means of gaining knowledge
  2. Method - deduction
  3. Knowledge requires certainty - yes
  4. Innate ideas - yes
21
Q

In what did Empiricism consist?

A
  • That experience (not reason alone) is the fundamental means of gaining knowledge
  • Method - science
  • Knowledge requires certainty - no
  • Innate ideas - no (Locke: tabula rasa)
22
Q

Who was Rene Descartes?

A
  • Father of modern philosophy
  • Modern philosophy began with his doubt about the nature and extent of human knowledge and his defense of dualism
  • Rationalist
  • Scientist (optics, physiology)
  • Mathematician: invented analytic geometry
23
Q

What are the six meditations of Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy?

A
  1. On doubt, attack on the senses
  2. He exists, he is “thinking substance”; dualism
  3. On ideas; God exists
  4. “Clear and distinct” ideas are true
  5. Nature of corporeal bodies; God exists
  6. Dualism
24
Q

What was Descartes aim in his Meditations?

A
  1. To discover a foundation for knowledge, which is something about which one must be certain
  2. To be certain about something means that it must be impossible to doubt
25
Q

What was Descartes method in his Meditations?

A
  1. Cartesian Doubt
    • Use reason to methodologically doubt absolutely everything which we cannot know with certainty
    • He’s not trying to show that all his former opinions were false
      • But that through this doubt he can discover something which cannot be doubted
26
Q

What was Descartes’ first meditation about?

A
  • An attack on the senses
    • It is possible to doubt the ideas that you get from your senses
    • Since the conclusions of physics, astronomy, medicine, etc., do not follow with certainty, neither they, nor the senses upon which such pursuits depend, yield truths.
27
Q

What was Descartes’ second meditation about?

A
  • “I am, I exist” is impossible to doubt
    • This becomes the foundation for his epistemology
  • What is he not?
    • ​He can doubt that he is a man, for this relies on the senses
    • He is not a body, for that is a material substance
  • What is he?
    • a thing that thinks, a thinking substance
    • Thought is the attribute that really belongs to him
28
Q

Who was John Locke?

A
  • First of the three “british empiricist”
  • Academic
  • Ecomonic writer
  • Political activist
29
Q

What was the purpose of Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding?

A
  1. “To enquire into the original, certainty, and extent of human knowledge; together with the grounds and degrees of belief, opinion and assent”
30
Q

What was John Locke’s method in his Essay?

A
  • Identifying the origin and types of ideas that we posses
  • Identifying the means by which our ideas give us knowledge, as well as its extent
  • What grounds we have for faith
31
Q

What is the tabula rasa?

A
  • We need experience to gain ideas
32
Q

What is Locke’s understanding of an idea?

A
  • Whatsoever the mind perceived in itself, or is the immediate object of perception, thought or understanding
    • Any immediate object of the mind (presentation)
    • Recall that idea (representation)
33
Q

What does Locke mean by the quality of the subject?

A

the power to produce any idea in the mind

34
Q

How are our simple ideas produced?

A

The mind received its simple ideas of sensation in virtue of certain powers that inhere in bodies (material substances)

35
Q

What are the three types of qualities?

A
  1. Primary
  2. Secondary
  3. Tertiary
36
Q

In what consist the Primary quality?

A
  • They are in the things themselves whether they are perceived or not
  • Give us ideas of extension, solidity, figure, motion or rest, and number
  • The ideas produced are resemblances
37
Q

In what consist the Secondary quality?

A
  • Sensible qualities
  • Produce sensible ideas
    • Colors, sounds, tastes
  • These are NOT objects.
    • These are powers that produce various sensations (simple ideas) in us
    • Eg. sweetness and whiteness of ice cream vanilla
  • The ideas produced are NOT resemblances
38
Q

In what consists the Tertiary quality?

A
  • Powers within objects that can change the primary qualities of other objects
    • Eg. fire has the power to make “lead fluid”
39
Q

What was Locke’s understanding of knowledge?

A
  • What we know we express through beliefs and statements which are expressing ideas
  • All knowledge reduces to a perception of either an agreement or disagreement among our ideas
  • Locke defends a hierarchical structure of knowing
    • Knowledge per se only occurs when one perceives a truth
  • We do have knowledge (including knowledge of the existence of the external world) but it is limited
  • We must recognize that we shall never reach certainty with regard to all we might desire to know
40
Q

What are the three kinds of knowledge (three ways by which the mind perceives a truth)?

A
  • Intuitive Knowledge
  • Demonstrative Knowledge
  • Sensitive Knowledge
41
Q

In what does Intuitive Knowledge consists?

A
  • Perceive the agreement or disagreement of two ideas immediately by themselves, without the intervention of any other
  • Highest kind of knowledge for Locke
42
Q

In what does Demonstrative Knowledge consists?

A
  • Occurs when the mind employs intervening ideas (proofs) to mediate the perception of an agreement or disagreement between other ideas
  • Although demonstration is more imperfect that intuition, it yields truth that are no less certain
43
Q

In what does Sensitive Knowledge consists?

A
  • When the mind perceives the particular existence of extra-mental objects as the cause of our ideas.
  • External objects do exist independently of us
  • But such knowledge extends no further that to the existence of things actually present to and operating upon our senses

Introduction to Philosophy (UNO) (9 decks)

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