Knowledge from Reason

Question 1

What is Empiricism?

Answer 1

The belief that all knowledge comes from experience

Question 2

What is Rationalism?

Answer 2

We can acquire knowledge purely from intuition and deduction

Question 3

What is Innatism?

Answer 3

You are born with certain knowledge

Question 4

What are Analytic and Synthetic statements?

Answer 4

Logically true (tautologies)

Empirically verifiable (experiential knowledge)

Question 5

What are Apriori and Aposteriori statements?

Answer 5

Logically true (tautologies)
Before experience

Empirically verifiable
(experiential knowledge)
After experience

Question 6

What is Ration (intuition)?
and Deduction

Answer 6

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

Question 7

What are Empiricist and Rationalist views on Apriori knowledge?

Answer 7

E: All apriori knowledge is of analytic truths

R: Not all apriori knowledge is analytic, at least one is synthetic

Question 8

What are Descartes’ clear and distinct ideas?

Answer 8

Descartes says that ‘cogito ergo sum’ is a clear (obvious) and distinct (self sufficient) idea, and is therefore an apriori claim.

Question 9

What are Descartes’ 3 waves of doubt?

Answer 9

1. Illusion - my senses deceive me
2. I may be dreaming
   but analytic statements are still true in dreams?
3. The evil demon may be falsely making me think that I’m doing maths correctly, when I am not.

I can doubt everything

Question 10

Is there anything that Descartes can know for sure?

Answer 10

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.

Question 11

What is Descartes trademark argument for the existence of God ?

Answer 11

1. I can conceive of God.
2. God is perfect and infinite
3. I am imperfect and limited
4. The cause of an effect must have at least as much reality as the effect
5. The cause of my idea of God must have as much reality as my idea
6. My idea of God is infinite and perfect.
7. God exists

Question 12

What is Descartes’ argument for the existence of the external world?

Answer 12

1. I perceive objects external to me
2. They are involuntary (No sane person would create perceptions ocntrary to their wishes), so they must be external to my mind
3. The cause of my perceptions must be external to my mind
4. God exists
5. If God caused my perceptions, then He has created me with a tendency to form false beliefs.
6. God is all loving and perfect by definition, so wouldn’t create me with a tendency to form false beliefs.
7. I can trust my perceptions and the external world exists.

Question 13

What are the problems with Descartes’ Apriori views (I, God, and external world)?

Answer 13

1. 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.

Question 14

What is Plato’s Meno slave example and what he argues?

Answer 14

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.

Question 15

What are Leibniz’s necessary truths? and how they relate to be innatism?

Answer 15

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.

Question 16

What are the problems with Innatism +response?

Answer 16

1. 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
2. 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.

Question 17

What is Locke’s tabula rasa?

Answer 17

You are born a blank slate and need experience to gain knowledge.

Question 18

What are the two ways to get knowledge according to Locke?

Answer 18

Sensation: our sense perceptions e.g. what we see, hear, smell and taste.

Reflection: Experience of our own minds e.g. thinking, wanting, believing.

Question 19

What are Locke’s simple, complex and abstract ideas?

Answer 19

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.