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PHILOSOPHY 1204 – KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY

PHILOSOPHY 1204 – KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY. Dr. Stephanie Semler Virginia Tech. Rene Descartes (1596 – 1650). Widely regarded as the father of modern philosophy Made major contributions to mathematics and medicine and physics Major Works in Philosophy Discourse on Method

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PHILOSOPHY 1204 – KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY

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  1. PHILOSOPHY 1204 – KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY Dr. Stephanie Semler Virginia Tech

  2. Rene Descartes (1596 – 1650) • Widely regarded as the father of modern philosophy • Made major contributions to mathematics and medicine and physics • Major Works in Philosophy • Discourse on Method • Meditations on First Philosophy • Principles of Philosophy • The Passions of the Soul

  3. Descartes’ Meditations • Overall Structure: • Meditation I: Descartes sets out to doubt all his beliefs through the method of doubt, starts with his perceptual beliefs • Meditation II: Continuation of the method of doubt, now on rational beliefs, arrives at the Cogito • Meditation III: Argues for the existence of God as foundation of knowledge • Meditation IV: Explanation of errors made by us • Meditation V: Survey of what can be known by us • Meditation VI: Argument for the distinction between the mind and the body, and for the existence of the external world

  4. Background to Meditations • Descartes responds to two philosophical forces: • Aristotelian Scholasticism, most importantly, the conflicting conclusions arrived at by Aristotelian physics. • Renaissance Skepticism, specifically claims by Chandoux that science can only rest on probabilities. • Descartes seeks to put science, and so all knowledge on a foundation of certain truths.

  5. How to Find Certain Truths • The Method of Doubt • Treat  all beliefs that are not absolutely certain as if  they were false. • Try to determine if there is anything that can be known with absolute certainty, any belief that is immune to doubt. • You don’t need to go through all your beliefs one by one to see if they can be doubted.  • You can show a belief is doubtful if you can show that its source is unreliable! • What are the sources of our beliefs?

  6. The Argument for Universal Doubt • Argument occurs in two phases • The Dream Argument (Mediation I) • Which source • The Deceiving God Argument (Meditation II) • Conclusion of the Dream Argument?

  7. The Dream Argument • When we dream, we often have experiences indistinguishable from ordinary sense experience. • The objects of dreamed sense experience are not real objects – dream experience deceives us. • If the senses deceive us in dreams, they can deceive us at any time. • Therefore, all the beliefs based on sense perception are susceptible to doubt (and so much be considered to be patently false on the method of doubt).

  8. A priori and A posteriori Beliefs  • A posteriori knowledge is based on  beliefs whose source is the senses. • A priori knowledge is based on beliefs that are not justified on the basis of sense experience. • What beliefs seem to survive the Dream Argument?

  9. In Class Question • Consider the Dream Argument – is there any counterexample that you can think of? How could we ever be certain that we are not really dreaming right now?

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