1. The Philosophical Journey: An Interactive Approach, 6th Edition By Dr
The Philosophical Journey: An Interactive Approach, 6th Edition By Dr. William Lawhead Slides prepared by Dr. Lee Walton, WallaceWallace State Community College
Copyright © 2014 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.

2. Unit 2 Epistemology

3. Are you a….

4. “Where is Everybody?”

5. “Where is Everybody?”

6. The Search for Knowledge “What is TRUTH
The Search for Knowledge “What is TRUTH?” “How do you KNOW that you know the TRUTH?” “Is there any such thing as TRUTH?” “How do you know that you know that you know something?”

7. Epistemology Epistēmē: Greek for “knowledge”
The area of philosophy that deals with questions concerning knowledge and that considers various theories of knowledge

8. TRUTH vs
truth

9. 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?
Where Your Eyes Don’t Go

10. Or is it worse because it's always waiting where your eyes don't go?

11. Questionnaire pg 175
What are you?

12. FOUR VIEWS in Epistemology
Rationalism/Universalism
Skepticism
Empiricism
Relativism

13. Homework Read 170-174 Write: Something interesting X2
Something you didn’t understand X2
A question you have about the reading.

16. Where Your EYES DON’t GO They Might Be GIANTS Giantshttps://play

17. Where your eyes don't go a filthy scarecrow waves its broomstick arms
And does a parody of each unconscious thing you do

18. When you turn around to look it's gone behind you
On its face it's wearing your confused expression Where your eyes don't go

19. Where your eyes don't go a part of you is hovering It's a nightmare that you'll never be discovering

20. You're free to come and go or talk like Kurtis Blow But there's a pair of eyes in back of your head

21. Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part that wonders
What the part that isn't thinking isn't thinking of

22. Should you worry when the skullhead is in front of you?

23. Or is it worse because it's always waiting where your eyes don't go?

24. Where your eyes don't go a part of you is hovering It's a nightmare that you'll never be discovering

25. You're free to come and go or talk like Kurtis Blow But there's a pair of eyes in back of your head

26. MUSICAL
INTERLUDE

27. Where your eyes don't go a filthy scarecrow waves its broomstick arms
And does a parody of each unconscious thing you do

28. When you turn around to look it's gone behind you
On its face it's wearing your confused expression Where your eyes don't go

29. STYLE MUSIC

30. Define the following:
A priori knowledge
A posteriori knowledge

31. Skepticism

32. THOUGHT EXPERIMENT

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

34. 8 Bit 34

35. Strategic Reading Reading Descartes “Meditations on First Philosophy”Pg

36. Descartes’s Meditations Notes
Read 183 and answer “Stop and Think”
Descartes’s Strategy
“Doubt everything” in hopes of finding something that is CERTAIN
If he can possibly doubt it, for the sake of experiment, he assume it to be false…

37. Doubting Everything? Read 184 answer “Stop and Think” General Senses
Read 185: What else does he doubt?
VIVID sense experience
Mathematical and Geometrical truths
What’s left?

38. Meditations of First Philosophy
Meditation I
Doubting of senses
The possibility of a “malicious demon”
Radical doubt (methodological skepticism)

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

40. Rene Descartes 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

41. Rene Descartes The quest for certainty Methodological skepticism
Meditations of First Philosophy
Press for Video

42. FOUR VIEWS in Epistemology
Rationalism/Universalism
Skepticism
Empiricism
Relativism

43. Skepticism

44. M R I O L S A T I N A

45. Leading QuestiOns
P.189

46. Homework Read 190-192 Write: Something interesting X2
Something you didn’t understand X2
A question you have about the reading.

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

49. 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

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

51. THOUGHT EXPERIMENT
p. 193 P 195

52. UniversalIsM

63. “Eye of the Beholder”relativism

64. on Epistemology
Press for Video

65. “RECOLLECTION” Three Scenarios

66. Strategic Reading
Plato’s “Phaedo“ Pg

67. Phaedo Discusses perfect Justice, Beauty, Goodness, and Equality
We have never seen these things, yet we know they exist
Knowledge of perfect things must be innate (???)
A PRIORI
Doctrine of recollection

68. THOUGHT EXPERIMENT p. 199 Have a friend describe you. Be complete.
Switch roles.
Could your description fit anyone else?

69. Plato on Universals Universals or Forms
Universals are unchanging; experiential reality is in flux
Phaedo
Connection to Christianity

70. Homework Read 200-204 Write: Something interesting X2
Something you didn’t understand X2
A question you have about the reading.

73. Descartes and Rationalism
“As soon as the opportunity arises I must examine whether there is a God, and, if there is, whether He is a deceiver. For if I do not know this, it seems that I can never be quite certain of anything else.”
Rene Descartes

74. Descartes’ Logic Something cannot come from nothing.
There must be at least as much REALITY in the CAUSE as in the effect.
I have an idea of a God (infinite and eternal being)
This idea in my mind of God is an effect that is caused by something.
I am finite and imperfect, so I cannot be the cause of the idea of an infinite and perfect God.
Only an infinite and perfect being could cause such an idea.
Therefore God exists.
Since He is perfect, He cannot be morally imperfect.
Therefore He cannot be a deceiver.
Therefore I CAN trust my that my senses are not deceiving me.

75. Empiricism

76. Leading QuestiOns P

77. John Locke’s Perspective on EpistemologyPg
Questions:
Where does Locke believe we get knowledge?
Define:
Ideas
Simple Ideas
Complex ideas

78. John Locke’s Perspective on EpistemologyPg
Questions:
Does Locke trust reason alone?
Locke does not believe in innate ideas. Instead he believes babies are born with a mind like a ____________.
Where do we get the ideas of perfection, infinity and morality according to Locke?

79. John Locke’s Perspective on EpistemologyPg
Questions:
Does Locke think that our knowledge represents reality as it really is?
Define:
Primary qualities
Secondary qualities

80. Ideas
Simple
Complex
Primary Qualities
Secondary Qualities

81. 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

82. Berkeley and Hume
Taking Empiricism to its LImit

83. Berkeley
Anglican Priest

85. Locke says:
All we can know is what we find in ________.
Therefore….
We can never know, or even make sense of a material world that allegedly lies outside our own experience.

86. IDEALISM Ultimate reality is non-physical All of reality is either
Spiritual- minds
Ideas perceived by minds
“To be is to be percieved”

87. Berkeley Believed that ultimately everything is perceived in the mind of God

88. David Hume Empiricism Based on experience Based on Induction
The Problem of Induction

89. The Problem Induction worked yesterday. Induction worked today.
Therefore
Induction will work tomorrow.
The problem is…
You have to use an inductive argument to prove that induction is valid
This is Circular Reasoning
You cannot define a word with the word itself!
You cannot say that I know the sun will come up because the sun will come up.
X happened yesterday
X happened today
Therefore….
X will happen tomorrow

90. Cause and Effect

91. Cause and Effect

92. Cause and Effect

93. Cause and Effect

94. What about science?

95. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Cause and effect questioned
-constantly conjoined events
Uniformity of nature questioned
Appealing to past experience to justify the principles of induction is circular

96. 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
Fundamental beliefs rest on psychological habits, beyond the proof of logic and experience

97. Forms of Physicalism Identity theory, or reductionism
-Mental events re identical to brain events
-Brain research will answer all questions about the mind
Eliminativism
-Labels traditional psychological theories as folk psychology
-No beliefs or desired, only brain states and processes

98. RELATIVISM

99. Leading QuestiOns

100. THOUGHT EXPERIMENT p

102. RELATIVISM Epistemological OBJECTIVISM Define
Epistemological RELATIVISM
Define P

103. AND THINK… “That may be true for you, but not for me.”
“Beauty is in the Eye of the beholder”
We all have our own opinion, who’s to say whgose belief is right?”
“It all depends on your point of view.”
Talk with your neighbors
Think of other common ways of expressing relativism.
Write down 2-3 in your journal.
Think of an everyday converstaion that expo

104. Friedrich NietzChe Pg 256 Correspondence Theory of Truth
There is an objective truth
A belief is true or false depending on how well it corresponds to this truth

105. PERSPECTIVISM P
105

106. Questions
Read 1-5 on p 264
What does Nietzsche mean by “God is dead?” p
How does this statement connect to relativism?
Do you agree with the “standard criticism” of relativism?
How might a relativist answer this criticism?
What is gained by relativism?
What dangers are there to denying objectivism?
Objectivism: the belief that there are absolute truths.
Relativism: the belief that there are no absolute truths. “Everyone has their own truth”

107. Share 3 minutes with a neighbor about the question that interests you most.
Switch and share with neighbor again- 3 minutes.
Switch one more time- this time discuss the most difficult question.

108. PRAGMATISM
108
108

109. PRAGMATISM
Write a 1 paragraph summary of the definition of Pragmatic Theory of Truth.
Then evaluate the theory in a second paragraph.
109
109

110. Epistemological Constructs Project
You will be assigned one of five Epistemological constructs.
You will be assigned a philosopher from your “construct”
Rationalism
Pragmatism
Relativism
Empiricism
Skepticism

111. Epistemological Constructs Project
Research:
Read your category. Create a Pros and Cons Chart.
Skepticism:
Rationalism:
Empiricism:
Relativism:
Pragmatism:
Rationalism
Pragmatism
Relativism
Empiricism
Skepticism

112. NAME of PHILOSOPHICAL VIEW
MAJOR THINKER
Question #1:
What is Truth?
In this section explain your thinker’s answer to the question. Include:
A summary of beliefs, being sure to utilize key terms essential to understanding the position.
At least one quote from the thinker.
Question#3:
Is the chair real?
In this section discuss how your thinker would address this question. Include:
An explanation of how this view would understand this issue. Use key terms appropriate to the view your are studying.
At least one quote from the thinker.
PIC Q2
Question#2:
What are the major objections to this view?
In this section discuss at least 2 objections. Include:
Names and arguments from specific alternate philosophical positions.
2. Demonstrate an understanding of the opposing side.
PIC Q1
PIC Q3

113. “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”

114. Fishbowl Was the monster real? Is science trustworthy?
Fishbowl discussion- Your goal is to try and argue your side on the following questions.
Was the monster real?
Is science trustworthy?
Rationalism
Pragmatism
Relativism
Empiricism
Skepticism