Part -1 Description:
Objective: To define the outlines of the two great schools of thought in classical theory of knowledge, the empiricist and rationalist
Assessment: The method of doubt.
What are its presuppositions, what can it accomplish? Epistemological skepticism versus Pyrrhonian skepticism. The difference between the status of mathematical and scientific propositions on the one hand and judgments of experience on the other. The priority of reason over sense as a source of knowledge about the world.
The method of inquiry.
How does one investigate the world?
Clear and distinct ideas- what are the criteria of clearness and distinctness?
How does Descartes' method compare to the method of modern science? Pgs. 56-58
Part -2
Description:
Objective: Identify the role of formal logic in philosophy
Assessment: Identify the laws of contradiction and the law of the excluded middle. The role of formal logic in philosophy. Apply a brief introduction to formal argument, valid inferences, the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments. The law of contradiction and the law of the excluded middle.
What do they assert, how are they different from one another? What can we know solely on the basis of these two laws? The law of sufficient reason. Leibniz's defense of the law. Can we find a better defense?
(Lead in to Hume's skeptical attack on causal inference.)
Chapter 2- Theory of Knowledge /Essay Questions
1. Although Descartes can prove his own existence by reasoning, "The proposition, 'I exist,' is necessarily true each time I pronounce it," he cannot use the same sort of reasoning to prove the existence of anyone else. Explain why this is the case, and what the implications of this fact are.
2. Right before he gives the Cogito Argument, Descartes compares himself to Archimedes, writing that in order to move the world, all that the ancient Greek needed was a sufficiently long lever and that he should have a single "fixed and immovable" place to stand, (p. 53). Why do you think Descartes makes this particular comparison at this point in the Meditations? How apt do you think the comparison?
3. Leibniz famously criticized Descartes's method as amounting to "Take what you need, and do what you should, and you will get what you want." Do you think this criticism is justified? Why or why not?
4. Descartes holds that anything he conceives clearly and distinctly must be true. The inference that 2+3=5 fails to meet this standard of certainty, since Descartes believes he might be deceived by an "evil genius" when he reasons. Yet he seems to think the Cogito Argument is immune to the "evil genius" objection. Was he right? If so, why?
5. Explain why Descartes thinks his thought experiment with the lump of wax shows that the wax is better known through the mind than through the senses. Do you think he establishes his point successfully?
6. If Locke's account of our mental contents is correct, anything we can conceive is either something we've perceived, or something composed of parts of things we've perceived. Does this mean we can never have a completely original idea? Does this mean we can't have an idea of an infinitely powerful God? Explain.
7. Explain why Hume thought causal judgments were unjustified. Do you think he was correct? If Hume was correct, ought we abandon causal reasoning in our everyday life?
8. Explain Kant's response to the Cogito Argument. What role does the notion of the unity of consciousness play in this response?
9. If Kant's claim that we can only know the world as it appears to us (rather than as it really is in itself) turns out to be true, what does that mean the objects of our claims about knowledge are? Can knowledge still be universal? What if we don't all possess the same categories?
Descartes can prove his own existence by reasoning, "The proposition, ''I exist,'' is necessarily true each time I pronounce it," he cannot use the same sort of reasoning to prove the existence of anyone else. Explain why this is the case, and what the implications of this fact are.