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en.m.wikipedia
Philosophical study of knowledge The school of skepticism questions the human ability to attain knowledge while fallibilism says that knowledge is never certain. Empiricists hold that all knowledge comes from sense experience, whereas rationalists believe that some knowledge does not depend on it. Coherentists argue that a belief is justified if it coheres with other beliefs. Foundationalists, by contrast, maintain that the justification of basic beliefs does not depend on other beliefs. Internalism and externalism debate whether justification is determined solely by mental states or also by external circumstances. Separate branches of epistemology focus on knowledge in specific fields, like scientific, mathematical, moral, and religious knowledge. Early reflections on the nature, sources, and scope of knowledge are found in ancient Greek, Indian, and Chinese philosophy. Epistemology explores how people should acquire beliefs. . Major schools of thought [edit] Skepticism and fallibilism
Partially Examined Life Podcast - Pat Churchland (and Hume)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:44:57 — 96.1MB) We spoke with Patricia Churchland after reading her new book Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Morality. We also discussed David Hume’s ethics as foundational to her work, reading his Treatise on Human Nature (1739), Book III, Part I and his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), Section V, Parts I and II. What does the physiology of the brain have to do with ethics? What bearing do facts have on values? Churchland thinks that while Hume is (famously) correct in saying that you can’t deduce “ought” from “is,” the fact that we have moral sentiments is certainly relevant to figuring out what our ethical positions should be, and it’s her main goal to figure out what the mechanisms behind those moral sentiments are: What brain parts and processes are involved? To read along with us, buy Pat’s book. End song: “Bring You Down” from the 1994 album Happy Songs Will Bring You Down by The MayTricks. by
Belief
First published Mon Aug 14, 2006; substantive revision Sun Nov 21, 2010 Contemporary analytic philosophers of mind generally use the term “belief” to refer to the attitude we have, roughly, whenever we take something to be the case or regard it as true. To believe something, in this sense, needn't involve actively reflecting on it: Of the vast number of things ordinary adults believe, only a few can be at the fore of the mind at any single time. Nor does the term “belief”, in standard philosophical usage, imply any uncertainty or any extended reflection about the matter in question (as it sometimes does in ordinary English usage). Many of the things we believe, in the relevant sense, are quite mundane: that we have heads, that it's the 21st century, that a coffee mug is on the desk. Most contemporary philosophers characterize belief as a “propositional attitude”. 1. 1.1 Representationalism It is also common to suppose that beliefs play a causal role in the production of behavior. 1.1.1.
Allegory of the Cave
Plato realizes that the general run of humankind can think, and speak, etc., without (so far as they acknowledge) any awareness of his realm of Forms. The allegory of the cave is supposed to explain this. In the allegory, Plato likens people untutored in the Theory of Forms to prisoners chained in a cave, unable to turn their heads. All they can see is the wall of the cave. Behind them burns a fire. Between the fire and the prisoners there is a parapet, along which puppeteers can walk. From Great Dialogues of Plato (Warmington and Rouse, eds.) Here are some students’ illustrations of Plato’s Cave Go back to lecture on the Phaedo Go back to lecture on the “One Over Many” Argument Go to next lecture on Criticism of Forms Need a quick review of the Theory of Forms? Return to the PHIL 320 Home Page Copyright © 2006, S.
The Roots of Consciousness: History, The Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment Descartes and Mind-Body Dualism Rene Descartes Rene Descartes (1596-1650), who was certainly not an occult scholar or even a sympathizer, nevertheless attributed all of his philosophic ideas to images that appeared to him either in dreams or when he was in the hypnogogic state just before awakening. (In fact, he had to "prove his visibility" to keep from being associated with the Invisible College. The association of creativity with dreaaming apparently gave rise to public speculation about an actual college, perhaps diabolical, that dreamers visited in their sleep.) Mind body dualism was first formally stated in modern philosophy by Descartes. Leibnitz and Monadology Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz Carrying on the Pythagorean-Platonic doctrine of universal harmony, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz, who with Isaac Newton was the co-inventor of calculus, developed an elegant grand philosophy based on the concept of an evolving unit of consciousness called the monad. Idealism . .
www.britannica
Most people have noticed that vision can play tricks. A straight stick submerged in water looks bent, though it is not; railroad tracks seem to converge in the distance, but they do not; and a page of English-language print reflected in a mirror cannot be read from left to right, though in all other circumstances it can. Each of those phenomena is misleading in some way. Although such anomalies may seem simple and unproblematic at first, deeper consideration of them shows that just the opposite is true. One possible answer is to say that vision is not sufficient to give knowledge of how things are. Another possible response would begin by granting that none of the senses is guaranteed to present things as they really are. Clearly, there is a network of difficulties here, and one will have to think hard in order to arrive at a compelling defense of the apparently simple claim that the stick is truly straight.
Blog
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:35:22 — 87.4MB) Discussing David Brin’s novel Existence (2012) with the author. What’s the point of thinking? Brin sees the future as a pressing threat, and Existence speculates that the reason we don’t see evidence of life on other planets is that no species survives its technological adolescence. The solution? We need to be smarter than our parents and work to give our kids the tools to be smarter than we are. In our present political difficulties, Brin sees the solution as positive-sum games: institutions like science and markets that (are supposed to) result in everybody benefiting overall. The point of thinking for Brin is to “be a good ancestor.” As this is largely a Brin monologue (with a few interjections by Mark, Seth, Dylan, and also Brian Casey), we recorded a follow-up without him that you can listen to after this. End song: “Persevere” by Mark Lint & the Simulacra (recorded mostly in 2000, sung and mixed now).
