Intuition and deduction thesis

Question 1

What is a priori knowledge?

Answer 1

Propositional knowledge known gained without the use of sense experience.

Question 2

What knowledge can be known a priori by rational intuition?

Answer 2

Clear and distinct ideas and self-evident truths which are known just by being understood a priori.

Question 3

What knowledge can be known a priori by deduction?

Answer 3

Deductive arguments whereby if the premises are true, then the conclusion must be true. You can reason a priori from true premises to know and discover the conclusion a priori.

Question 4

What do rationalists claim?

Answer 4

We may also have synthetic a priori knowledge e.g. I know I exist, God exists, the external world exists.

Question 5

What is Descartes cogito?

Answer 5

‘Cogito Ergo Sum’ - I think therefore I am. It is a clear and distinct idea as it is necessarily true each time I perceive it.

Question 6

What are the first three premises of the Trademark Argument?

Answer 6

1. I am finite and imperfect.
2. (Known by rational intuition):
   Causal Adequacy Principle - The
   cause of something must contain
   at least as much reality as its
   effect.
3. So the cause of the concept of
   God must contain at least as much
   reality as God – i.e. cause is infinite
   & perfect.

Question 7

What are the last four premises of the Trademark Argument?

Answer 7

4. Therefore I am not the cause of
my concept of God.
5. The only infinite and perfect
being is God – everything else has
less reality.
6. Therefore the cause of my
concept of God is God.
7. Therefore God exists.

Question 8

What is the Ontological Argument?

Answer 8

P1. I have a clear and
distinct idea of God.
P2. The idea of God
is the idea of a
supremely perfect
being.
P3. A supremely
perfect being does
not lack any
perfection.
P4. Existence is a
perfection.
C. Therefore, God
exists.

Question 9

Give proof of the external world by deduction.

Answer 9

1. I clearly and
distinctly perceive the
external world.
2. God exists & is
supremely perfect.
3. So God doesn’t let
me be systematically
deceived when I
perceive clearly and
distinctly.
4. Therefore there is
no evil deceiver and I
know that I am awake
not dreaming.
5. Therefore I know
that the external world
exists.

Question 10

What is Hume’s criticism of the Cogito?

Answer 10

We only ever experience thoughts, never a mind or ‘I’ thinking them. So I only know that thoughts exist through my experience of them. Therefore, I do not know I exist as a thinking thing.

Question 11

What is Hume’s Fork?

Answer 11

Two ‘prongs’ or types of knowledge, matters of fact and relations of ideas.

Question 12

What are matters of fact?

Answer 12

A posteriori, contingent, synthetic truths about what exists.

Question 13

What are relations of ideas?

Answer 13

A priori, necessary, analytic truths about what ideas mean.

Question 14

What is something that isn’t a matter of fact or relation of ideas?

Answer 14

Sophistry and illusion - should consign it to the flames’.

Question 15

What is a criticism of deduction from Hume?

Answer 15

Deductive arguments are tautologies, the conclusion is just a previously unthought of way of expressing the premises. They cannot ever be synthetic only analytic.