Intuition and Deduction thesis (Epistemology) Flashcards
What does intuition and deduction mean?
Intuition-rational mind apprehends truth or falsity of something with immediacy.
Deduction- uses premises to reach a conclusion which is true because the premises are true.
Explain the cogito
1st step of intuition and deduction thesis. “Cogito, ergo sum”, I think therefore I am. Because Descartes existence is so obvious and has to be then his existence therefore must be an undoubtable knowledge claim, apriori synthetic.
What are criticisms of the cogito?
Hume-empirically we never experience any such thing as mind or mental experience. In introspection we only ever experience single instances of emotion, never ‘self’ as a whole.
Explain clear and distinct ideas
Descartes uses the cogito as an example. A clear idea is ‘‘present and accessible to the attentive mind” and distinct ideas are “so sharply separated from all other ideas that every part of it is clear”.
What is the trademark argument?
P1. I exist (intuition)
P2. I have an idea of a supremely perfect being in my mind. (intuition)
P3. The causal adequacy principle is true. (intuition).
C1. I am not causally adequate to create the idea of a supremely perfect being, only a supremely perfect being is. (deduction.
C2. A supremely perfect being exists (deduction)
What are empiricist responses to the TMA?
Hume argues that the concept of God is not innate but can be created by our minds. We start by imagining finite human qualities like goodness and imagine what they were like without limit by abstractly negating finitude/imperfection to create the concept not-finite/not-perfect, which is the concept infinite/perfect. We then combine goodness and infinite/perfect to imagine God’s omnibenevolence, and so too with God’s other attributes.
What is Descartes’ proof of the external world?
P1. I have a clear and distinct idea of a physical substance (as something which has extension and is changeable).
P2. My perceptions are involuntary and thus cannot come from my own mind over which I have voluntary control.
C1. Therefore, there are three other options for the origin of my perceptions: physical objects, God, or a tendency to have false beliefs that I cannot correct.
P3. The source of these perceptions cannot be God, nor would God create me with a strong tendency to believe something false which I cannot correct. In either case, God would be deceiving me, yet it is a clear and distinct idea that deception involves fault or imperfection, and God is perfect.
P4. According to Descartes’ other arguments, God exists.
C2. Therefore, through process of elimination, the source of my perceptions must be physical objects, and therefore, an external world exists.
Empiricist responses to Descartes proof of the external world?
Hume’s Fork.
