Philosophy 110 Test #2

Moral Reasoning (Hume)

Concerning matters of fact. If all our predictions about the future are based on this principle (that the future will resemble the past) and that principle is derived from past experience, we cannot know that it will remain true in the future except by assuming that principle from the outset (logical fallacy).

Demonstrative Reasoning (Hume)

Concerning relations of ideas. We cannot know that the future will resemble the past by means of demonstrative reasoning, since there is no contradiction in suggesting that the future will not resemble the past.

Empiricism

Epistemological view that emphasizes experience as the source of knowledge (Hume).

What is experience?

Sense experience. Perceptions derived from the five senses: sight, sound, touch, taste, smell.

Problem of Induction

The problem of discovering rational foundations for all the conclusions we draw based on experience.

Epistemological Dualism

There are minds and there are ideas (Locke).

Idealism or Immaterialism

the belief that only ideas exist (Berkeley).

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume

• Draws distinction between Impressions and ideas. • The idea of God arises from reflecting on the operations of our own mind. • There are no ideas without senses. • Draws distinction between relation of ideas and matters of fact. • We know matters of fact from unobserved things because they are founded on the process of cause and effect.

Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke

• Locke supports the Cartesian assumption that the world consists of two different kinds of things: minds and bodies. • Locke thought that the mind only knows its own ideas and that these ideas somehow represent the extended world of bodies. • He rejects the notion of innate ideas by charging that the arguments in support of it do not actually prove the theory of innate ideas. • For Locke, all ideas derive from outer experience (sensation) and inner experience (operations of the mind and our awareness of it). • Outer experience is based on primary qualities (substance that supports secondary qualities) and secondary qualities (senses which vary from person to person).

What are Locke's views?

He argued against innate ideas and for experience as the source of ideas. Locke and his followers relied on sense perception for obtaining knowledge about the world, and they were skeptical about the possibility of achieving absolute certainty in most fields of knowledge. Locke argued that experience gives us what he called "simple ideas" (ideas of sensation) and ideas of reflection (believing, doubting, and comparing). He also thought that the mind was not just a passive recipient of ideas, but that we obviously put ideas together into what he called "complex ideas," and this meant that the mind was also active. Locke was an epistemological dualist.

Who laid the foundation of modern empiricism and with what text?

Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding.

Synthetic Statements

Matters of fact (Hume). These are contingently true because their truth depends on certain state of affairs.

Idealist Philosophy

Not worrying about any correspondence between ideas and things.

Analytic Statements

Relation of ideas (Hume). These are necessarily true. They are true by virtue of the terms meaning.

Egocentric Predicament

The claim that all we can know is our own ideas. In this view we are trapped in the world of our own ego ideas. We could never get outside of ourselves to verify whether ideas correspond to anything in the external world.

What are the problems resulting from Locke's views?

The question arises, how do we know what the external world is like? He thought that ideas represented the physical object in the external world. This dilemma is called the egocentric predicament.

The Principles of Human Knowledge by George Berkeley

• Berkeley makes a distinction between minds and ideas as the objects of human knowledge. • There is something which perceives these ideas. • Our ideas formed by the imagination cannot exist without the mind (esse is percipi). • Objects that we do not perceive do not exist certainly. • Objects can be imagined such as the trunk of a human body without limbs but these imagining powers do not extend beyond the possibility of real existence or perception. • Every object of the world cannot exist without the mind and that their being is to be perceived and known. • There is no substance to those ideas, they exist in the mind only. • Denotes Locke's and other philosophers' notion of primary and secondary qualities. • Qualities existing in matter can appear various and therefore cannot be images of something settled and determined. • Considering the argument of senses only existing in the mind can also suggest the same of matter. • The notion that primary qualities support secondary qualities cannot be explained since matter (primary qualities) itself cannot be explained. • There is no distinct meaning to the words material substance which suggests it is inconceivable. • If we believe that objects exist without the mind we must know it by reason or by sense. • The existence of the external body provides no explanation for why ideas are produced. • In short, if there were external bodies, it is impossible we should ever come to know it; and if there were not, we might have the very same reasons to think there were that we have now.