Epistemology - Limits Of Knowledge Flashcards
(9 cards)
What is normal incredulity?
Normal everyday doubts about whether some claim is true or not.
What is philosophical scepticism/sceptical doubt?
Reflecting on how we know what we think we know. (Appearance being a reliable guide to reality?)
Scepticism challenges our usual justifications.
Distinction between local and global scepticism
LOCAL -> scepticism about some particular branch of knowledge.
GLOBAL -> extends the sceptical challenge to knowledge without limit, and especially to the question of whether there is a world beyond the individual’s mind.
Argument from illusion - Descartes
Things can look a certain way that they are not e.g, a pencil in water looking crooked.
Examples from unusual perceptual conditions give us no reason to doubt all perceptions.
Illusion doesn’t undermine perception generally.
Argument from dreaming - Descartes
Doubts whether he knows he’s awake.
When we dream, we represent to ourselves all sorts of things - this attacks all sense perception e.g, i cannot know that I’m looking at a piece of paper as i don’t know whether I’m dreaming.
Can we tell reality from what we experience in dreams?
We can object that to distinguish between dreaming and being awake there is a far greater coherence in perception whilst awake - but this assumes that i can rely on my memory which may also remember the dream/dreaming experiences.
Descartes’ claims that dreams are formed of simple concepts/basic ideas that correspond to something real.
The evil demon argument - Descartes
Has God deceived him?
He says; suppose God doesn’t exist, suppose that all my experiences are produced in me by an evil demon who wants to deceive him - If this were true, we wouldn’t know as my experiences would be the same, THUS i cannot know that I’m not being tricked by an evil demon.
This reaches the point of global scepticism - he cannot know anything unless he can prove that he isn’t being deceived by an evil demon.
Descartes’ response to scepticism
GLOBAL SCEPTICISM -> use rational intuition and deduction, THE COGITO; even if an evil demon is tricking him, he can know that he exists and he thinks.
CLEAR AND DISTINCT IDEAS -> e.g, truths of maths are indubitable and he can know these regardless.
He argues that he can prove the existence of God by relying on the concept of God - God is not a deceiver, thus he would not allow errors and has provided the ability to form true beliefs; this dismisses the evil demon as if the evil demon was deceiving me then i wouldn’t be able to correct my beliefs about the world.
AS God isn’t a deceiver i can know that physical objects exist which I experience in perception (illusion)
We can confirm our perceptions using different senses to know that we are not dreaming, BECAUSE God isn’t a deceiver.
Empiricists response to scepticism
Empiricists argue that any claim tat doesn’t fall under one of these categories we do not know;
A) a priori knowledge of analytic propositions and what can be deduced from them;
B) a posteriori knowledge of synthetic propositions about the world outside one’s mind and
C) knowledge of our own minds, derived from impressions of reflection.
Empiricists argue that we can only know that God exists through sense experience.
All a priori k is of analytic propositions.
Many Indirect realists argue that we can know that PO exist because their existence is the best explanation of our sense experience - scepticism challenges this claim e.g, if we are brains in a vat then our sense experience is exactly as it is now e.g, involuntary, coherent, systematic and yet the world is nothing like what we experience it being.
BERKELEY denies the distinction between appearance and reality - only minds and ideas exist; the content of our sense experiences is what reality is.
Reliabilist response to scepticism
Rejects the sceptic’s assumption that our beliefs must be justified to be k.
As long as our beliefs about physical objects are caused by a reliable process then we must know that such objects exist - e.g, we do not need to know that we are not brains in a vat in order to have knowledge about and regarding the world.
