Questions Flashcards
What is A Priori Knowledge?
Knowledge that isn’t acquired through sensory experience of the external world. These facts are analytic and true within the nature of the sentence rather than having to be confirmed through the senses and empirical data.
What is A Posteriori Knowledge?
Knowledge that is acquired and confirmed to be true through subjective sensory experience of the external world. Facts about this knowledge type are synthetic and require external confirmation before they can be categorised as certainly true via empirical data.
What is Epistemic Luck?
It’s a case of lucky true belief whereby no adequate justification is held as to why somebody believes something but they nevertheless keep their belief.
Smith thinks Jones has ten coins in his pocket but he doesn’t have a good reason why but when he turns out to be correct this is lucky true belief.
Outline the Argument from Illusion.
P1- I perceive an object to have some property.
P2- Therefore an object must contain said property.
P3- Illusion causes this property to be distorted.
C1- Therefore everything we perceive is sense data.
Outline the Argument from Hallucination.
P1- I perceive an object to have some property.
P2- Therefore an object must contain said property.
P3- Hallucination causes this property to disappear.
C1- Therefore everything we perceive is sense data.
Outline the Argument from Time Lag.
P1- It takes time for light and sound to reach our sensory organs.
P2- We can therefore perceive something after it stops existing.
C1- Therefore we are perceiving objects indirectly.
Outline Russell’s Argument from Perceptual Variation.
P1- There are variations in our perception.
P2- Objects can appear to contain different properties depending on our perception.
P3- An objects property doesn’t accurately correspond with our perceptions.
P4- What we’re aware of in our mind isn’t relative to the independent nature of a physical object.
C1- We are therefore perceiving objects indirectly.
Summarise Berkeley’s Idealism.
Berkeley thought that the only things which existed were our ideas regarding the presence of physical objects.
They don’t exist independently within the external world but merely as a thought within our minds. I’m not perceiving an object but actually creating the idea that I’m seeing one. This can lead to Solipsism and doubt about the nature an existence of the external world.
