Philosophy Review.txt

• All knowledge is a priori. Independent of experience.
• Descarts

• All knowledge is a posteriori. All knowledge comes from experience.
• Aristotle
• John Locke
• George Berkely
• David Hume

Uses this statement as the basis for all of his later arguments for rationalism. How could he be deceived unless he existed in order to be deceived?

• Dualism-There are material and immaterial things
• Materialism-Nothing exists except matter
• Idealism-No material things only minds and ideas exist

• Naive Realism- mind is directly acquainted with objects of perception
• Representative realism-perception is mediated by ideas
• Idealism-ideas are the objects of perception

Primary qualities are properties that objects have independent of any observer, such as solidity, extension, motion, number and figure. These characteristics convey facts. They exist in the thing itself, can be determined with certainty, and do not rely on subjective judgments. For example, if a ball is round, no one can reasonably argue that it is a triangle

Secondary qualities are properties that produce sensations in observers, such as colour, taste, smell, and sound. They can be described as the effect things have on certain people. Knowledge that comes from secondary qualities does not provide objective facts about things.Primary qualities are measurable aspects of physical reality. Secondary qualities are subjective

• Skepticism.
• To find that which cannot be doubted.

• relations of ideas-proved by demonstration-Math
• matters of fact- given through experience-The sun rises in the morning

Direct realism claims that the senses provide us with direct awareness of the external world. In contrast, indirect realism and representative realism claim that we are directly aware only of internal representations of the external world.

George Berkeley

• Material-body
• Immaterial-mind

Hume says relations of ideas are a priori using reason alone to come to conclusions and that matters of fact are a posteriori and obtained by empirical investigation but causation states that our knowledge or understanding is based on cause and effect and essentially based on habit and not reasoning or investigation

• All simple ideas are copies of impressions
• impressions are the direct, vivid, and forceful products of immediate experience-Perception,
• emotion, pain, etc.
• ideas are merely feeble copies of these original impressions-Conception,
• volition, memory, imagination,
• complex ideas-fire
• simple ideas-heat, cold etc.

• sense perception- senses can be decieving (straight stick bent in water)
• the dream argument-how can i tell this is not a dream
• the evil demon argument-I am being deceived by an evil demon or evil genius
• brings doubt on all the things we use to come to conclusions

• descartes uses the existence of god to prove that what he clearly and distictly percieves to be true is true and then goes on to use this clarity and distinctness principle to prove the existence of god.
• God only need guarantee his memory

Descartes believes in the substance theory which states that all objects are made up of a substance and it's properties. Berkley is a proponent of the bundle theory which states that an object consisits of its properties and nothing more. I believe the bundle theory is more plausible because like berkeley states one can not think of an object without thinking of its properties.

plato uses the allegory of the cave to illustrate how we need to see beyond the illusion of shadows. the allegory of the cave mirrors the theory of the two realms where as the shadows represent the physical world and the exit of the cave represents the intelligible world. When the prisoner leaves the cave and can look upon the sun is where the forms are.

Hume's argument for the problem of induction is that we use inductive reasoning to explain the behavior of objects. Most commonly using causal relations to reason inductively such as the sun will rise tomorrow because it has always risen. This cannot be known a priori because we only know this because it has happened in the past. He believes the uniformity principle is circular because you cant prove something will happen in the future just because it has in the past.

because we learn these causes and effects from experiencing similar causes and effects take place

This is a problem for berkeley because berkeley's idealism states that somethin cannot exist unless it is percieved. Berkeley attempts to solve this problem by stating that there must be an omnipotent being watching over everything all the time.