Unit 2: Berkeley, Gettier, Goodman

Question 1

Materialism and Immaterialism

Answer 1

on what kinds of substances exist in the universe
Hobbes: strict materialism, realism
Descartes: dualism, realism and idealism
Locke: dualism, realism and idealism
Berkeley: immaterialism, idealism

Question 2

strict materialism aka materialist realism

Answer 2

that only 1 kind of substance exists: matter

• material things exist independently of us, we are perceivers
• mind independent existence

Question 3

dualism: material realism and some form of idealism

Answer 3

2 kinds of substances exist: matter and incorporeal (not composed of matter) things (ideas)
-both material and at least some immaterial things exist

Question 4

immaterialism: substance idealism

Answer 4

only one kind of substance exists: incorporeal things (ideas)

• no material things exist
• esse est percipi “to be/exist is to be perceived”

Question 5

Basic claims

Answer 5

• challenges to materialism in general, negative theses
• what exactly is a material thing? No satisfying answer is given by the materialist
• A general, in common, materialist commitment: the material things are mind independent things/substances, Berkeley argues that no such mind independent things exist

Question 6

consequences of materialism

Answer 6

• resulting in skepticism: if mind independent material things exist, then our senses deceive us about the nature of such things
• resulting in atheism: if a material world exists independent of the mind, then a God would not be required to explain how the world works/operates

Question 7

what are we directly aware or immediately aware of in our sensory perceptions or experiences?

Answer 7

• public material that we all see?

- private sensory entities only you alone perceive? “sense data”

Question 8

naive realism

Answer 8

DIRECT or immediate perception of external materials just as they are

Question 9

representationalism or indirect realism

Answer 9

INDIRECT or mediate perception of material things

• aware of only ideas or representations of external material things, ideas are in the mind and cant exist without the mind
• our sensory perceptions are depictions of an independent realm of material objects
• mediately perceive external material objects the ideas represent or depict, external objects are outside the mind and can exist without the mind
• -provides an alternative to naive realism with an answer to each question

Question 10

Direct realism

Answer 10

• direct or immediate perception of material things themselves
• our sensory perceptions are imperfect or subjective

Question 11

naive realism reasons to reject

Answer 11

• reasons to reject: variations in subjective experience while external objects remains the same
• 5 senses: sight: 2 people can see red as a different color, hearing: what are you really hearing?, taste, smell: are we smelling things as they actually are, touch: changes based on body temperature, time: experience of time changes depending on how fast you process light..so what is real time? time is relative.
• illusions: perceive properties that objects dont actually possess ie bistable images
• hallucinations: perceive objects that arent actually there
• these considerations should puzzle us about the nature of our sensory perceptions or experiences
• –What is the nature of what we are immediately aware of in sense perception?
• –we experience things as sensible things, with color, smell, sound, feel, etc

Question 12

Berk’s arguments to deny the existence of mind-independent things

Answer 12

The relativity argument about warmth and cold
1. the same thing cant be cold and warm at the same time
2. things we feel as warm are themselves warm and things we feel as cold are cold
3. the same bucket of water can be cold to one hand, and warm to another
4. therefore, the same water can be cold and warm at the same time (infer from 2&3, contradicts 1)
Valid line of reasoning: hot and cold exist independently of the mind, but senses are not always accurate
Materialists: suggest real/true heat is fire, the idea of heat is in the mind
Berkeley says:
1. there is no such distinction, its irrelevant
-can sensible things exist outside the mind?
-what is a sensible thing?: it is something perceived by the senses
-is this perception immediate or mediate?: ours is immediate
-what we immediately perceive cant exist independently of the mind: immediately see letters (sensation), vs concepts (inference) ie immediately see smoke and a hill (sensation, infer a fire)
-sensible things dont make inferences; they are not mediate but immediate: heat in the fire is not immediately perceived, the idea of the heat is

Question 13

Finalization of Berkeleys Argument

Answer 13

Once you concede that sensible qualities are not mind independent, that they are merely ideas, you’ve conceded that our epistemological starting point is behind a veil of perception

• -therefore, how do you know anything else?
• -if the materialist is arguing for the existence of real heat that is not felt, real color is invisible, and real sound is inaudible that exist beyond our sensory perceptions

Question 14

if naive realism is implausible, what our our options?: Questions

Answer 14

Questions:

• What are we directly/immediately aware of in our sensory experiences? if it isnt external objects themselves?
• -generically, sensible things: things we see, hear, etc, we must ask about the nature of sensible things
• What exactly is bringing about our sensory perceptions of experiences? That is, what is causing our perceptions or experiences of sensory things?
• -must it be independently existing material objects?
• -could it be a god, a demon?
• -could it be a computer youre hooked up to?

Question 15

sensory conscious experience: Naive and representative realism

Answer 15

Naive: Directly aware of external material objects with real sensible properties, that exist independent of, or outside the mind
Representative realism: Directly aware of representations of sensible things and properties that exist only in the mind, indirectly aware of real sensible properties that exist independent of, or outside the mind.

Question 16

considering a realist form of representationalism: Locke and Descartes

Answer 16

• Locke and Descartes, dualists, seem to be representational realists
• what we are immediately aware of/directly are representations/ideas/sense datum in our own mind which are depictions of independently existing objects
• so, what we perceive in our conscious experience is not the actual world

Question 17

Berks attack on representational realism

Answer 17

-Regarding likeness
-how can ideas, in the mind, represent material objects?
he thinks that ideas can only be like other ideas
-its nonsensical that an idea can resemble something material
-“2 things cant be said to be alike or unlike until they have been compared”: the mind can only compare its own ideas, what it is immediately perceiving, so, we are not in a position to compare our sensory ideas with external material things
-we stand behind a veil of perception
—how can we know what is actually causing our sensory perceptions?
—we do not necessarily have to appeal to the existence of material things to explain our perceptions

Question 18

the master argument

Answer 18

• Berk shifts the burden of proof to the materialist realist (material things also exist too, ontology)
• we stand behind a veil of perception: epistemic possibility
• if it is possible to conceive of a sensible object existing outside the mind, berk will grant that it is actually so
• if something is possible, then it is conceivable
• if something is inconceivable, then it is impossible
• if it is inconceivable for something to exist outside the mind, then it is not possible for something to exist outside the mind
  ex: a tree in a solitary place unperceived or unthought of…not possible

Question 19

conclusions of master argument

Answer 19

• sensible things cant exist outside the mind
• materialist realism is false
• idealism is true

Question 20

gettier, an analysis of knowledge & inquiry

Answer 20

what sort of inquiry?
only concerned with propositional knowledge
-not knowledge of acquaintances, that you know the person
-not practical knowledge, that you know how to do something

Question 21

gettier propositions

Answer 21

• fundamental bearer of truth values
• what your cognitive attitudes: believing, assuming, are about
• s believes that p, p=some proposition
• when do you have knowledge of a proposition?
• what is a satisfactory analysis of this?
• what are the necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge? for s knows that p
• —conditionals represent necessary conditions and sufficient conditions
• —when is x necessary condition for y? when y cant be the case without x being the case
• —x sufficient for y? when x cant be the case without y being the case

Question 22

knowledge as justified true belief, the traditional approach

Answer 22

• analysis of k as justified true belief
• 3 necessary conditions, when taken together, are sufficient for knowledge: s knowing p
  1. the truth condition: knowledge only if proposition is true (what is false cannot be known)
  2. belief condition: knowledge only if s believes it
  3. justification condition: knowledge only if s is justified to believe it

ie: s believes that tails will be called when coin flips
- flipped coin lands on T
- this is not knowledge

Question 23

gettiers 2 assumptions

Answer 23

1. it is possible that S is justified in believing p even though p is false
2. s is justified in believing q when met:
   s believes p
   q follows from p
   s deduces q from p, by way of reasoning
   -conjuctive: true when Q & R are true, false when at least Q or R is false
   -disjunctive intro: true when at least 1 is true, false when both are false
   -existential generalization and distribution: person S has feature F, S has feature G, therefore S has F and G

ie: today is tuesday, today there is a phil 110 lecture

Question 24

case 1

Answer 24

• the man who will get the job has 10 coins in his pocket
  i. e is true
  ii. smith believes e
  iii. smith is justified in believing e
• under JTB, smith knows e, but surely smith doesnt know e
• so JTB fails as an account of knowledge

Question 25

case 2

Answer 25

JTB fails

-smith knows h, but surely smith does not know h

Question 26

the gettier problem

Answer 26

JTB fails

• despite failure, its conditions seem correct as necessary conditions
• many epistemologists believe it is close
• underlying problems: the beliefs are a matter of luck, beliefs are not sensitive to the truth

Question 27

modifications to add to JTB

Answer 27

• to eliminate gettier cases from counting as knowledge when they are not
• replace entirely or strengthen justification clause, or add another justification clause
• JTB+_______=knowledge
• include a “no false lemmas clause”, S’s belief that p is not inferred from any falsehoods

Question 28

Goldmans barn county

Answer 28

p=there is a barn right there

• this one is the only real barn, all the previous seen were falsehoods
• fulfills JTB + iv condition
• s knows that p, if an only if i: p is true, ii: S believes that p, iii: s is justified in believing p, iv: s’s belief that p is not inferred from falsehoods

Question 29

dog in the park

Answer 29

p=theres a dog in the park

-one seen is a robot, but there is one behind the tree, unseen

Question 30

Goodman theories of justification

Answer 30

s knows that p, if and only if, p is true, s believes p, s is just in believing p

• strengthen justification account
• reliabilitist theory: externalist: by appeal to features external to ones mental state
• evidentialist theory: internalist: by appeal to whats internally available in ones mental state

Question 31

evidentialism

Answer 31

• case that s believing p is just because
• a matter of whether s’s belief fits so evidence and support
• what is evidence? what is it to possess evidence? what is it to base a belief on evidence?
• support: in virtue of what does a body of evidence support or confirm a proposition? *fundamental question in epistemology, theory of knowledge

Question 32

theory of confirmation

Answer 32

• focus to explain nondeductive or inductive relations of support, not relations of logical necessity and truth conditions
• nondeductive: evidential support, confirmation and disconfirmation, central concern to science
• deductive: logical relations, valid inference

Question 33

humes problem of induction

Answer 33

the unobserved matters of fact

• assumptions in scientific explanation and inquiry
• we can arrive at a general and unobserved empirical truths/facts about the world based on our own particular observational experiences
  ex: experience: snow has always been cold, infer: snow is always cold, infer: the next piece of snow will be cold
• is this legit? its not deductively valid, not making a fully explicit line of reasoning, implicit principle we seem to be accepting to reach the conclusion: the future will resemble the past
• my sample experience is representative sample of the universe, makes it valid
• why should we accept the additional premis/principle? we dont know it as a conceptual or logical truth. it can be false. we cant arrive at this claim by pure deductive reasoning, but we cant directly observe that it is true either
• so, if theres reason to accept it, it must be on the basis of inductive argument
• *there is no noncircular argument for the premise/principle behind instances of inductive reasoning
• problem: argument attacks inductive references

Question 34

problem example

Answer 34

hyp: a huge meteor hit 64 million years ago
evidence: high level rare chemicals
obs: these chemicals are found in meteors
result: observation strong
- -no inductive or projective inference here
- -humes argument wants added premise to draw the conclusion
- presupposes inductive reasoning is a special case of deductive reasoning
- but perhaps, it is a separate theory instead
- Q motivates “theory of confirmation problems”