1. The Search for Knowledge
Chapter 3
The Search for Knowledge

2. Charting the Terrain of Knowledge
Epistemology
The area of philosophy that deals with questions concerning knowledge and that considers various theories of knowledge

3. Charting the Terrain of Knowledge
Types of knowledge
-Knowledge by acquaintance
-Competence knowledge
-Propositional knowledge
Knowledge as true justified belief
-Necessary and Sufficient Conditions

4. The Issue of Reason and Experience
Analytic statements
“All Bachelors are Unmarried”
“All bodies are Extended”
“All Triangles have three sides”
Synthetic statements
“All creatures with hearts have kidneys”
“drinking Water quenches thirst”
“sugar is sweet”
A priori knowledge
A posteriori knowledge

5. Three Epistemological Questions
Is it possible to have knowledge at all?
Does reason provide us with knowledge of the world independently of experience?
Does our knowledge represent reality as it really is?

6. Perspectives on Knowledge
Skepticism
Rationalism
Empiricism
Constructivism
Relativism

7. Skepticism We do not have knowledge Universal (or global) skepticism
Limited (or local) skeptics

8. General Skeptical Argument
We can find reasons for doubting any one of our beliefs.
It follows we can doubt all of our beliefs.
If we can doubt all our beliefs, then we cannot be certain of any of them.
If we do not have certainty about any of our beliefs, then we do not have knowledge.
Therefore, we do not have knowledge.
Is the skeptical argument consistent?
Is the skeptical argument practical?

9. Early Greek Skeptics
Cratylus
Pyrrho
Carneades

10. Rene Descartes The quest for certainty Methodological skepticism
Meditations of First Philosophy

11. Meditations of First Philosophy
Meditation I:
Universal Belief Falsifier
The role of thought experiments
Doubting of senses: Sensory illusions, dreaming, etc.
Mathematics: The possibility of a “malicious demon”

12. Meditations of First Philosophy
Meditation II
-One point of Certainty
-”I am, I exist” or cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am)

13. Three Anchor Points of Rationalsim
Reason is the primary or most superior source of knowledge about reality
Sense experience is an unreliable and inadequate route to knowledge
The fundamental truths about the world can be known a priori: They are either innate or self-evident to our minds

14. The Rationalist Perspective on Epistemology
Knowledge is possible
Only through reason can knowledge be obtained
Beliefs based on reason represent reality

15. Socrates on Epistemology
We can distinguish true from false
Standards for distinguishing true from false are based on reason
Rational knowledge gives us an adequate picture of the world

16. Plato on Epistemology
Difference between knowledge and opinion must be rationally justified
Agrees with Socrates that reason is able to provide knowledge of the real world
Our knowledge of the world of sense is dependent on reason
The world of sense is “less real” than the world understood through reason
Knowledge and reality are universal, permanent and perfect
The world of sense is in constant flux, impermanent, and so an unreliable basis to justify knowledge

17. Phaedo perfect Justice, Beauty, Goodness, and Equality
We have never seen these things, yet we know they exist
WE can make judgements based on our knowledge of such concepts
Knowledge of perfect things must be innate
Doctrine of recollection

18. Plato on Universals Universals or Forms
Universals are unchanging; experiential reality is in flux
Anything we can know about the material world through our senses depends on the corrective function of reason and the discovery of permanent and consistent principles of change (e.g. universal laws of nature)

19. Rene Descartes, Rationalist
Methodological doubt
One point of certainty: “I am, I exist” or cogito ergo sum
Something cannot arise from nothing, and there must be at least as much reality in the cause as in the effect

20. Descartes’ Meditation III
Innate ideas
Principle of sufficient reason
Idea of a perfect God
Because Descartes is not perfect, the source of the idea of God (which includes perfection) must be God

21. Three Anchor Points of Empiricism
The only source of genuine knowledge is sense experience
Reason is an unreliable and inadequate route to knowledge unless it is grounded in sense experience
There is no evidence of innate ideas within the mind that are known apart from experience

22. John Locke’s Perspective on Epistemology
Rejection of innate ideas
Knowledge is possible
Simple ideas (ideas of sensation, ideas of reflection)
Complex ideas
Activities of the mind
Compounding
Relating
abstracting
Reasons not sufficient for knowledge of the world
Knowledge represents reality
Primary qualities (objective)
Secondary qualities (subjective)

23. George Berkeley on the Representation of Reality
Idealism, immaterialism
Rejection of the concept of “matter”
Argument from the mental dependency of ideas
Berkeley thought Locke’s representative realism was dangerous
Materialism leads to atheism
All ideas, including primary qualities, are ultimately subjective
Objectivity is preserved by God as a cause of all our ideas

24. David Hume
Empiricism
Principles of Induction
Uniformity of nature

25. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
We cannot know that there is an external world.
-Impressions are always internal to our experience
Hume does not deny that the external world exists, only that we can know it
Fundamental beliefs rest on psychological habits, beyond the proof of logic and experience

26. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Radical implications of empiricism: rejection of matter, cause and effect, and the self
The principle of induction and Cause and effect questioned
constantly conjoined events
Habit
Uniformity of nature questioned
Circular reasoning of induction
Rejection of any knowledge of the ‘self’

27. Contemporary debate between empiricism and rationalism
Nativism and human nature
Difference between cognitive capacities and innate content
Can the mind have ideas of which it is unaware?
Different accounts of which ideas are innate?

28. Kantian Constuctivism
Kant’s agenda
Synthetic a posteriori knowledge
Synthetic a priori knowledge
Critique of Pure Reason: A compromise?
-rationalism
-empiricism

29. Kant’s Solution
“There can be no doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience…But though our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it all arises out of experience.” “thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.”

30. Kant’s Revolution
Copernican revolution: from geocentric to heliocentric universe
Kantian revolution: from “knowledge conforms to objects” to “objects conform to knowledge”
Phenomena and noumena
Categories of the mind: space and time

31. Categories of the Understanding
Sensibility
Understanding
For Kant, categories of the mind structure understanding

32. What is “Reality” Like and what can we know about it?
Phenomenal: The world of possible experience
We can know this world so long as we recognize that knowledge of phenomena implies knowledge of ourselves and how we order our experience.
Noumenal: The world as it exists “in itself” and independent of any experience of it
We Can’t know reality “in itself” because our minds always and unavoidably structure our experience of reality
We can’t know the essential or unconditioned nature of the world or even ourselves.
Universal forms and categories govern this structuring