Term
| What, do Socrates and Meno contend, make Knowledge? |
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Definition
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Term
What's the important difference between someone who merely has *true belief* and someone who has full-blown *knowledge*?
Why ultimately do we prize knowledge above mere true belief? |
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Definition
| Knowledge is *justified*. That is to say, it can be backed up with evidence. Socrates describes this sort of knowledge as "tied down," like statues being protected from robbery. |
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Term
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Definition
| The study of knowledge - i.e. how do we know anything? |
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Term
| According to Socrates and Meno, is true opinion as helpful as true knowledge? |
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Definition
| Yes, but only knowledge is justified |
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Term
| Describe the pyramid of beliefs |
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Definition
Beliefs exhibit these two parameters: True/False and Justified/Unjustified
Justified True Beliefs are true knowledge. Not only are they true, but the believer has good reason to believe them.
Unjustified True Beliefs are just as true, but are often arrived at erroneously. Say I believe you will have a PB&J sandwich for lunch because my imaginary friend Polly Prissy Pants told me so. You may indeed have a PB&J, but my reasoning was guesswork at best.
False Justified Beliefs are incorrect, but there is good reason to believe them. If I believe 5x6 is 32 because an advanced graphing calculator told me so, I'd be wrong but have good reason to be so.
False Unjustified Beliefs are simply insane. Say I believe you will poison me because my imaginary friend Polly Punky Pants told me so. You are not in fact planning any such murder. I am not only wrong, but have no good reason to be so. |
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Term
| What is Descartes's goal? |
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Definition
To identify a belief that is *absolutely, 100% certain and indubitable*
He wants this so he can have a firm *foundation* upon which to build all of his beliefs. This concept is known as Foundationalism |
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Term
| What made Descartes so obsessed with certain knowledge? (hint: when did he write his most famous work?) |
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Definition
René Descartes (a Frenchman) wrote his Meditations in 1641
At this time, the Western world was undergoing some foundational new discoveries.
- The "new world" of America had just been discovered and Europeans were beginning to colonize it en masse.
- The Protestant Reformation was underway, finally displacing longheld Catholicism.
- This was the beginning of the Renaissance, in which many earth-shattering discoveries were being made - for instance, Copernicus's discovery that the earth is not the center of the universe
Like everyone else, Descartes was questioning everything he ever pretended to know |
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Term
| What is the Cartesian Method of doubt? |
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Definition
If a belief (or source of belief) *can* be doubted in any way, it must be treated as though it were *patently false*
Only an undoubtable belief can be considered absolutely certain.
The idea is to unleash doubt like bulldozing a skyscraper. Whatever crumbles gets tossed. Whatever is left is certain.
These doubts may not be *probable* - all that matters is if they are *possible* |
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Term
| What is an epistemic criterion? And what is Descartes's epistemic criterion? |
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Definition
An epistemic criterion is a Standard to be Met In order to be considered Knowledge (SMIK) - in Socrates's case, justified true belief.
Descartes's epistemic criterion is absolute certainty and indubitability |
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Term
| What are Descartes's doubt-makers? |
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Definition
1) Sometimes our senses deceive us
Just think of any optical illusion for instance
2) Madman Argument
Even if my senses are functional, I could be insane and hallucinating everything
3) Dream Hypothesis
Even if my senses and sanity were fine, I could be dreaming everything
4) Evil Deceiver Possibility
Even after all that, there could be some evil omnipotent god that could deceive me even to believe that 2+2=5 |
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Term
According to Descartes, what is the only thing of which we can be certain?
How does he come to this conclusion? |
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Definition
I am
I exist
Cogito Ergo Sum (I think therefore I am)
Even if my senses are deceiving me, there is still a *me* being deceived.
If I am mad, it is still *I* who is delusional.
If I am dreaming, it is still *I* who is dreaming.
If an evil god is deceiving me, it is still *I* who is being deceived.
Denying my own existence is a performative contradiction. I can't truthfully say I don't exist, because I had to exist to say it. |
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Term
| According to Descartes, what is the being we call "I"? |
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Definition
An immaterial thing that thinks (aka res cogitans)
It must be immaterial because all material things can be called into doubt.
"I" minus the material/perceivable equals an immaterial, thinking being.
I am not my body. |
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Term
| What is substance dualism? |
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Definition
| The belief that there are either material or immaterial things, not just one or the other. |
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Term
| What is the Mind-Body problem? |
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Definition
| Am I reducible to a material or immaterial being? Basically, does the soul exist (a ghost in the shell), or are we just physical bodies? |
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Term
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Definition
| The belief that everything is reducible to material things |
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Term
| What is John Searle's take on the Mind-Body problem? |
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Definition
- People believe in the soul out of a religious agenda
- There's no good argument for an immaterial soul
- If we had a perfect science of the brain, there'd be nothing left over that couldn't be explained
This argument begs the question though. It asserts, "IF we could explain the soul physically, then we could explain the soul physically!"
Also, there are many secular philosophers who believe in the soul. Searle's flippancy in argument may betray an agenda of his own |
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Term
| What is Alvin Plantinga's take on the Mind-Body problem? |
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Definition
1) If I were material, I'd have to be equivalent to my body/brain
2) However, I can conceive of myself as existing without a body (for instance Kafka's Metamorphosis)
3) So *I* have a property not shared by *my body*
4) Thus I am NOT equivalent to my body
5) Thus I must be something non-bodily
I would contend that I *can't* conceive of myself existing without my mind. If my soul were transported to a beetle's brain and body, I would no longer have any of my old memories, personality, or behavior. The brain stores these things. I would have no conscious, justified knowledge of ever being anyone else. Rather, I would inherit the beetle's memories, personality, and behavior. For all intents and purposes, I would snap into the beetle's "soul" and believe that I had always been a beetle. *I* would no longer exist, at least not as someone who existed in another body. |
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Term
| What is Peter van Inwagen's take on the Mind-Body problem? |
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Definition
We are only living organisms. Yet it is unclear how biological systems could ever give rise to consciousness. No matter how much we know about it, we could never understand the process of consciousness.
However, this mystery does not necessitate the existence of an immaterial soul. It doesn't help the mystery. After all, how could an immaterial thing (the soul) lead to material actions?
If the immaterial causes the material, then that would break the laws of conservation. New energy or matter would be introduced into the universe. This, however, assumes that only material things can exist, and that the physical world is a closed system. A spiritual world could be part of the system; not only that, but a spiritual world may not play by the same rules as the physical world. |
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Term
| What is Fred Alan Wolf's take on the Mind-Body problem? |
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Definition
| Quantum mechanics are able to explain the physically inexplicable - for instance, the observer effect. One can cause an event to occur simply through observation or intent. This collapses the wave function of possible outcomes for a given particle. This process cannot be explained in a mechanistic way. It can only be explained with an "observer" - effectively a spiritual soul. The brain itself may be a complex of quantum entanglements. What we describe as the "spiritual" world may in fact be what we observe in quantum mechanics. |
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Term
| What is Rodolfo R Llinas's take on the Mind-Body problem? |
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Definition
People who deride materialism are "maligning matter." Matter is precious! Llinas can imagine a religion in which matter is God!
Like all things, we are ultimately material. Thus we are one with the universe. What more could we ask for?
Consciousness arises from processes of the brain's special geometry. But it is not immaterial. |
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Term
| What is David Chalmers's take on the Mind-Body problem? |
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Definition
In principle, neuroscience could never provide any knowledge about consciousness.
There are three materialist responses to this gap in knowledge:
1) Deny consciousness. There is nothing to be explained, it's just an illusion caused by the brain's complex processes (chaos theory).
2) Consciousness is just an illusion caused by gap between experiencing the brain and observing the brain. Different understandings, same object.
3) We will eventually be able to explain consciousness with neuroscience.
Chalmers then offers two views of substance dualism:
1) The physical world affects consciousness, but consciousness cannot affect the physical world. This preserves the laws of conservation, but free will of the soul is a total illusion.
2) The physical and spiritual worlds are able to affect each other. The physical world remains a closed system thanks to a loophole in quantum mechanics. |
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Term
| BONUS: John Locke had a direct hand in drafting the constitution of which state? |
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Definition
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Term
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Definition
| The view that some ideas and principles are *always already preloaded* into our minds from birth; even before we've had any empirical experience of the world around us. |
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Term
| What are the two branches of thought on Knowledge that sprouted from 17th century philosophical Modernism? |
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Definition
| Rationalism and Empiricism |
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Term
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Definition
We gain knowledge through *reason* alone.
We must start with some *foundational, axiomatic truths* (axiomatic = self-evident, absolutely certain) and then build our understanding upon them through reason.
We should pursue perfect certainty in our quest for truth.
René Descartes, Gottfried Liebniz, and Baruch Spinoza champion this view. |
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Term
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Definition
We gain knowledge through *experience* alone - not reason.
All the contents of our minds is traceable to empirical experience.
We should seek as much certainty as possible in truth, but since perfect certainty is unattainable, we must be satisfied with less.
John Locke, David Hume, and George Berkeley champion this view. |
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Term
| What were some supporting views of innatism in the 17th century? |
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Definition
- Many say the law of non-contradiction is innate
- John Calvin and René Descartes both contend that the idea of God and his existence is innate (sensus divinitatis)
Descartes (Meditations): A "mark of the craftsman stamped upon his work."
Calvin (Institutes of the Christian Religion): "some sense of Deity" put in place "to prevent any man from pretending ignorance...[so they] may be condemned by their own conscience when they neither worship him nor consecrate their lives to his service." |
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Term
| According to Locke, what is the standard argument for innatism? |
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Definition
1) If an idea/principle ("the content before the mind's eye") is universally agreed to by everyone, then that idea/principle must be innate.
2) There are certain ideas/principles that are universally agreed to by everyone.
3) Thus, those ideas/principles are innate.
4) Thus, innatism is true. |
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Term
| What is Locke's case against the following? "If an idea/principle is universally agreed to by everyone, then it must be innate." |
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Definition
1) If there's some other way to account for universal agreement, it doesn't necessarily entail innatism.
2) There is such a way. For instance, we could conceivably all come to the same conclusion based on our shared experience of life.
3) Thus universal assent does not necessarily entail innateness.
4) Thus the offered premise is false. |
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Term
What is Locke's case against the following?
"There are certain ideas/principles that are universally agreed to by everyone." |
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Definition
1) If any idea/principle is a plausible candidate for universal agreement, it's the law of non-contradiction.
2) However "children and idiots" don't even comprehend the law of non-contradiction (that is, they don't appear to believe it to be true or false)
3) If someone doesn't even comprehend an idea/principle, then that person doesn't agree to the idea/principle.
4) Thus the most plausible candidate for universal assent fails to be an idea/principle that actually garners universal agreement (precisely because it's not even universally comprehended).
5) Thus the offered premise is unsupported. |
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Term
| What is the law of non-contradiction? |
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Definition
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Term
How could Locke's case against the existence of universally agreed ideas be challenged?
What is Locke's response to this challenge? |
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Definition
"Children and idiots" may lack comprehension of the law of non-contradiction now - but once they learn to reason properly, they will come to understand it and agree to it when it's proposed to them. They can assent to an idea before they comprehend it.
Locke says that if learning ideas over time is innate, then nearly *everything* would count as innate, including complicated scientific theories. And surely *that* can't be correct! |
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Term
| THOUGHTS: Is anything about the mind innate? |
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Definition
Not ideas, but instincts. An idea is "the content before the mind's eye," a mental representation of some concept. These are gained only through personal experience.
Instincts, on the other hand, are behavioral responses. Without ever knowing about a cat, mice are born to instinctively flee from them in fear. However, they have no "idea" of a cat. It is the instinctive behavior that is innate. |
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Term
| According to Locke, what are our minds like at birth, and where do our ideas come from? |
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Definition
Our minds come into the world as blank slates (this is Locke's Tabula Rasa Theory)
All the ideas that get etched into our minds are traceable back to experience (this is Locke's Idea-Empricism) |
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Term
| According to Locke, what are the two basic ways we form ideas? |
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Definition
We acquire simple ideas through Sensation and Reflection.
Sensation is the process of sensing the physical world: hearing, seeing, feeling, and so on. I see an apple, so I think of an apple.
Reflection is the process of perceiving the internal operations of our own minds. I feel nervous, so I think about nervousness.
We acquire complex ideas by reconfiguring and combining these simple sensations and reflections. I can imagine a unicorn by combining an image of a horse with an image of a man and an image of a horn or tusk. |
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Term
| Describe the Atlantic article "What It's Like for a Deaf Person to Hear Music for the First Time" |
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Definition
| Austin Chapman had been deaf for his whole life until he got a hearing aid at the age of 23. Until then, he had been totally baffled by the idea of music and the way people made total fools of themselves singing and dancing to it. But the first time he heard it, tears streamed down his face and he proceeded to binge as much music as possible, receiving suggestions from thousands of people and even support from Spotify. |
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Term
THOUGHTS: Imagine, since birth, Mary has been locked in a gray-colored room filled with only black-and-white objects (she's also in an impenetrable gray bodysuit, receiving food and expelling waste intravenously - suspend disbelief for a moment, please).
If she's never left the room and never seen a red object, would Mary somehow have the *idea* of red?
And if she's never left the room or seen a red object, but she's been told all about red, would Mary have the idea of red? |
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Definition
Mary could come to understand red as the color of blood and stop signs. She could understand that red is a "hot" or "angry" color. But she could never know what red is like.
Same way humans understand ultraviolet. We know a lot of things about it, but almost nobody is capable of experiencing it the way, for instance, a bee does. |
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Term
| What is Molyneux's problem? |
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Definition
New York Times: "If a blind person were suddenly able to see, would he be able to recognize by sight the shape of an object he previously knew only by touch? Presented with a cube and a globe, could he tell which was which just by looking?"
If so, would that suggest that this person has an *innate* idea about the relationship between the touch and sight of objects? Does this disprove Locke's empiricism? |
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Term
| What does the New York Times article "Study of Vision Tackles a Philosophy Riddle" have to say about Molyneux's problem? |
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Definition
It shows that a formerly blind person could *not* distinguish the sphere and cube without touching them.
Researchers restored sight to five children and had them try to match felt objects with seen objects. They got it right only half the time, no better than guesswork. But they were very quick to learn afterward. |
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Term
THOUGHTS: Science has shown that fetuses learn in the womb before they are even born - for instance, recognizing the sound of their mother's voice.
Does this provide a counter-example to Locke's tabula rasa theory? Or does it provide support? |
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Definition
| This is no counter-example at all. On the contrary, it shows that the fetus learns things from their experience in the womb, rather than by some innate knowledge. The fact that they are still in the womb has nothing to do with the theory: the idea is that from the moment of their first cognition, their mind is a blank slate. |
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Term
| According to Hume, the contents of our minds consist of two broad types of perceptions. What are they? |
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Definition
Impressions and Ideas
Impressions are more vivid. They are the things we sense and experience in the moment.
Ideas are less vivid. They are the experiences we anticipate or remember outside of the present moment. |
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Term
| How does Hume explain our "innate" knowledge of God? |
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Definition
| He suggests that we construct the idea of God by combining and augmenting perceptions from experience. So we observe the quality of goodness in a philanthropist, or the power of a wrestler, or the intelligence of a philosopher, and mentally exaggerate those qualities to a level of perfection. |
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Term
| According to Hume, all knowledge deals with what two things? (hint: what is Hume's Fork?) |
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Definition
Relations of Ideas and Matters of Fact
Relations of Ideas are:
- a priori (abstract ideas drawn from reason)
- logically necessary truths
- anyone can know them from the terms alone
- not informative about the world, since they only describe abstract rules, or relationships between ideas
Examples:
5 is less than 6
A triangle has 3 sides
All bachelors are unmarried men
Matters of Fact are:
- a posteriori (concrete ideas drawn from experience)
- not logically necessary truths
- contingently true (meaning their truth depends on the real world)
- informative about the world, but not knowable from the terms alone
- directly related to the idea of cause and effect (You think Caleb's a nerd *because* you've seen him nerd out over Hume)
Examples:
Water freezes at 32 °F
Caleb Clanton is a big nerd
What goes up must come down |
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Term
| According to Hume, how do we come to have knowledge about cause and effect? |
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Definition
NOT a priori.
1) We continually observe that B follows A
2) Based on seeing this over and over, I come to think that A *causes* B. Not because I can *see* the "cause" as some kind of observable object, but because I fall into the *habit* of thinking "every time A happens, B happens."
Akin to Pavlov's "classical conditioning"
Without the repeated past experience of seeing A cause B, I have *no reason* to suppose they are causally connected! |
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Term
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Definition
| The process through which we learn from past experiences to make predictions about the future, or make generalizations based on a sample of previous experiences. |
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Term
| What is Hume's Problem of Induction? |
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Definition
In induction, we ASSUME that the future will resemble the past - but what justifies us in assuming this?
We can't know this a priori, because it's not a mere relation of ideas.
But we can't know it from past experience either. If we could, it would run thus:
1) In the past, the future always resembled the past.
2) The past tells us about what the future will be like.
3) Thus, the future will resemble the past.
But clause 2 assumes the very thing we're trying to prove: that the past will resemble the future.
Thus knowledge cannot be truly justified - there is no true knowledge.
This has enormous repercussions on science and medicine, which are predicated entirely on inductive reasoning. |
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Term
| According to Hume, what is the basis of our reliance on induction? |
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Definition
| Our reliance on induction has no *rational* basis. It has *psychological* basis. Our belief that the future will resemble the past is simply a *custom* or *habit*. |
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Term
| According to Dr Richard Goode, what is the problem with American history? And what is its purpose? |
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Definition
The problem is that it technically isn't the history of most Americans. Many Americans arrived in the States well after they were founded.
But it still serves its purpose (or telos): to unite Americans with a common story, despite all the other things that divide us. Goode describes this as "cultural liturgies"
Not only to unite us, but also to form in us a certain kind of identity: in this case, as good patriotic citizens. "To *embed* our political system so deeply in their *souls* that no one can take it away." |
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Term
| What is Dr Richard Goode's attitude toward history? |
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Definition
It is identity formation. There is no such thing as objective history: we CHOOSE the history we remember. But we shouldn't accept historical fact uncritically.
"Maybe history is less like a jigsaw puzzle, and more like a mosaic." Rather than everything having to fit one way, we ultimately decide where the pieces go. |
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Term
| What is the coherence theory of truth? |
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Definition
According to the coherence theory of truth, a proposition is true if and only if that proposition *coheres* with our operative system of beliefs - that is, with the totality of what we believe.
So "the cat on the mat" is false if "nothing's on the mat" is part of that system of belief. |
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Term
| According to Bertrand Russell, what are the two big problems with the coherence theory of truth? |
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Definition
1) There could be two or more different systems of belief, and the proposition p might cohere with one system and *not* cohere with the other. But of course, p cannot be both true and false at the same time (good ol t-f).
For instance, "the earth is flat" fits with an Ancient Egyptian's system of beliefs, but not with mine. How could they both be true?
2) The notion of coherence has to presuppose the truth of the law of non-contradiction. And sadly, this law of non-contradiction cannot be tested for truth by means of coherence (because this test relies on the very thing it's trying to prove: the law of non-contradiction).
To test proposition p's coherence, I have to check that p does not contradict the other propositions in my system of beliefs. But in order to do this, you have to assume that p cannot coexist with ~p. |
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Term
| What is the correspondence theory of truth? |
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Definition
According to the correspondence theory of truth, a proposition is true if and only if the proposition *corresponds* to reality.
Truth is indexed to reality. "The cat is on the mat" is true if the cat is, indeed, on the mat. The truth is about the reality/facts (not equal to it). |
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Term
| What are three problems with the correspondence theory of truth? |
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Definition
1) What reality do moral propositions correspond to?
2) If we have proposition F and say it is false, we create a new proposition: that F is false. But what reality does this proposition correspond to?
3) If we have proposition T and say it is true, we create a new proposition: it is true that T corresponds to reality. This creates another proposition: it is true that it is true that T corresponds to reality. Frege contends there's a regress problem around the corner here: is this theory not simple as it claims to be? |
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