Rationalism

Question 1

Give the two types of relevant rationalism

Answer 1

Platonic (Plato) & Cartesian

Question 2

Describe briefly Plato’s rationalism in terms of his Theory of Forms; how does he subordinate the realm of the Senses?

Answer 2

Plato believed in a dual reality where we live in the material world and reality in itself is the Realm of the Forms.
While the material world is imperfect, the forms/ideas are reality itself and are the unchangeable essence of things.
For Plato, the empirical world is not as real as the realm of the Forms and knowledge derived a posteriori is only contingently true.

Question 3

What are the Greek terms Plato uses for knowledge and belief?

Answer 3

Episteme and doxa

Question 4

Describe Plato on knowledge and belief

Answer 4

Plato argued opinion/belief relates to the senses (empirical) and knowledge to the real of Forms (rational)
Doxa is fallible and can be mistaken whilst episteme is infallible and about what is real

Question 5

How does Plato explain our innate knowledge of Forms?

Answer 5

Learning is recollection…
Our souls know forms before we are borns, people have immortal souls. Therefore, we have concepts of the Ideal Forms without having sensory experience of them.
The soul is the seat of rationality

Question 6

Examples of Plato’s innate ideas and why

Answer 6

Numbers - we don’t have sensory experiences of numbers themselves; we know what double, half etc. means even though 2 is both double 1 and half 4.

Beauty - Plato argued concepts such as beauty and justice are never encountered themselves (beautiful things/just things do not = beauty and justice). Plato concluded we must acquire these concepts by observing their essential nature with our minds not our senses.

Question 7

Criticism 1 of Plato on knowledge (importance of sensory experience)

Answer 7

Plato’s ideas on immortality depend on recalling things we already know. This can be rejected as empirical knowledge helps us survive so we need knowledge of the physical world.

Question 8

Criticism 2 (rejection of Meno)

Answer 8

Meno’s slave boy example can be rejected as the teacher can be said to have strongly implied the answers rather than the slave boy having innate, pre-natal knowledge.

Question 9

Criticism 3 (lack of explanation)

Answer 9

Plato fails to explain how Forms are apprehended by the soul and in life.

Question 10

What is Cartesian scepticism?

Answer 10

The problem of explaining how knowledge of (or JTF about) the external world is possible given the challenge we cannot know (or justifiably believe) the denials of sceptical hypotheses (like the evil demon).

Question 11

What is a “clear and distinct” idea according to Descartes?

Answer 11

They are “intuit” by the mind by the “light of reason”; truths of reason like mathematical truths.

Question 12

What is Foundationalism?

Answer 12

Foundationalists look for beliefs that are indubitable or self-justifying to build the rest of their knowledge upon

Question 13

What is D’s 1st wave of doubt? Examples?

Answer 13

Sensory deception
- One can believe what they are seeing is there but we can be deceived e.g. illusions, mirages, things too far away to see
- Therefore, “never to trust entirely those who deceive us”
However, this is not enough to doubt all knowledge for D as questioning all our senses is like a madman; moreover, we use our senses to realise they are deceiving us

Question 14

What is D’s 2nd wave of doubt? Examples?

Answer 14

Dreams
- D Doubts that we are not just dreaming because when he is actually dreaming he thinks that it is lucid life
- Therefore, all existence could be a dream
However, again not enough because whether we are dreaming or not self-justifying/analytic truths (e.g. 2+2+4) remain true. Moreover, things that appear in dreams aren’t imaginary, they. are related to truth and only include things we can know (we cannot come up with new concepts in dreams)

Question 15

What is D’s 3rd wave of doubt? Examples?

Answer 15

Evil demon

• D doubts whether God would deceive us because he also has the power to wish D to be deceived every time he forms a judgement
• It would contradict God’s omnibenevolence to allow us to be wrong however he must permit it sometimes
• If this does not suffice, D supposes there is not a God but rather an evil demon who is the source of truth and uses all his power to deceive; “no less cunning and deceiving than powerful”
• This would make all external things illusions and D believes he could be wrong to believe his own body actually exists

Question 16

What does D conclude? Why is this important for his rationalism?

Answer 16

“cogito ergo sum” - I think therefore I am
This is an analytic truth and the first certainty D found; it is true just by thinking it and is important for his rationalism because it is a self-justifying belief from which a body of knowledge can be formed without sense experience

Question 17

Summarise D’s metaphor of the wax to describe the supremacy of the cogito

Answer 17

• When wax melts, its physical properties change yet we understand it to remain as wax
• According to D, what we recognise as remaining is not properties perceived empirically but the stuff underlying these qualities
• D argues it impossible to imagine every state wax could be so concludes we do not understand wax with our imagination
• For D, the only possible option left by which we apprehend the wax is by the intellect or understanding
• D claims it is not our senses which perceive the wax, it is our mind which understands beyond physical appearance seen by senses and with an “intuition of the mind” perceives the wax’s essential nature

Ultimately his own existence as a thinking mind is more certain than the wax: whether or not the wax exists, D can ponder this so he must himself exist.