Tuesday,April 9

Read: Preface
Chapter 1
Chapter 2


(Locke,Hume,Berkeley)
Empiricism: Knowledge comes primarily through the senses (seeing, tasting, smelling, touching, hearing).
Trivial truths known through reason alone (i.e. A=A)

(Plato, Descartes)
Rationalism: Knowledge comes primarily through reason. There are some truths known through pure reason.
Significant truths can be known through reason.

Negal "What is it like to be a bat"
Factual vs. experimental knowledge
We would never know what it's like to be a bat no matter how much we know about bats.

19th century Immanual Kant: hybrid of rationalism and empiricism -

a priori- independent of sense experience
(truth/knowledge).
2+2=4
a triangle has 3 sides
Could any new sense experience (or report) change your mind about it?

Valid argument form
If p then q = p/q (modus ponens:logical fallacy)
If Socrates is a man then Socrates is mortal. Socrates is man/Socrates is mortal

a posteriori- dependent on sense experience.
The board is green (seeing)
Extreme temperatures always burn human flesh (touching)
King is a dog (looking)

a priori
(Kant) analytic- the predicate is contained in the subject
(Hume: relations of ideas)

A bachelor is an unmarried male.
This is a conceptual truth

a posteriori
(Kant) synthetic- the predicate is not contained in the subject.
(Hume: matter of fact)

John is a bachelor.
Using senses to figure out if John is a bachelor.

Kant- There are no analytic a posteriori truths.
There are some synthetic a priori truths.
"Every event has a cause." presupposition of science

Skepticism vs. "common sense"
Is it folly or irrational to doubt common sense?