Term 1 Flashcards
(17 cards)
_______ is the most influential figure in the modern theory of knowledge, known as epistemology
Rene Descartes
Descartes believed that we should ______ our foundations of belief to reach the truth
challenge or question
What two issues is Descartes addressing in his meditations
God and the soul
How should we go about questioning our falsehoods?
It’s too much to call every belief we have false so instead we should question the foundations on which we base all of our beliefs.
What are Descartes’ two important Ideas?
Foundationalism and Global skepticism
What is foundationalism?
a view about the structure of justification or knowledge. The foundationalist’s thesis in short is that all knowledge or justified belief rest ultimately on a foundation of noninferential knowledge or justified belief.
What is global skepticism?
argues that one does not absolutely know anything to be either true or false ~universal skepticism of all
Descartes claims that whatever he has accepted as true he has acquired though his ______.
What is the issue with this?
senses
senses can be wrong
Descartes believed that there was a ______ that has employed all his energies in order to deceive him.
demon
Descartes’s first mediation overall claims what?
In order to guard against asserting falsehoods we should assume that an evil demon is trying to deceive him.
Only against this knowledge can we assert something to be true.
According to Descartes, what can two things can we be certain of?
- Cogito ergo sum
2. God exists
What does “cogito ergo sum” mean?
“i think therefore I am”
I can doubt everything, but I know that there is something doing the doubting
What is cartesian dualism?
The view that “I am” two different kinds of things; mind and body
Descartes makes a _______ argument
Ontological
What proof does Descartes offer for God’s existence?
hint: it can be simplified to three premises
1) our idea of God is a perfect being
2) existence is perfect; it is more perfect to exists than to not exist
3) Therefore god exists
; if God was not perfect he would not exist
Descartes understanding of knowledge relies on solitary introspection. What is solitary introspection.
A mechanism to scrutinize your internal feelings by going inward, which helps you to rebuild your lost relation with your own self.
How did Descartes believe we could sort true beliefs from false ones?
Through solitary introspection
