Key Concepts in the Social Sciences and Humanities

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Key Concepts in the Social Sciences and Humanities

• Theories of Knowledge Part 1 Scepticism
  Rationalism

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Outline

• The Matrix
• Platos Cave
• The Truman Show
• Descartes Dreams and Evil Demon Argument

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• Morpheus I can see it in your eyes. You have
  the look of a man who accepts what he sees
  because he is expecting to wake up. Ironically,
  this is not far from the truth.

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• What do we really know?
• What is the limit of what we can know?
• How is knowledge about the world best acquired?

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Platos Cave (427-347 B.C.)

• all our senses give us access to is the
  appearance of reality, rather than reality itself

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• the human condition is one in which most people
  live their lives in a position of ignorance

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• Morpheus The Matrix is the world that has been
  pulled over your eyes to blind you from the
  truth.Neo What truth?Morpheus That you are a
  slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into
  bondage, born into a prison that you cannot smell
  or taste or touch. A prison for your mind....

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• only when we start to think critically about the
  world can we liberate ourselves from our
  enslavement to illusion

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• similarities between the experience of the
  prisoners in Platos cave and our experience when
  we watch cinema

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• experience and our senses are unreliable for
  knowledge about the world

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The Hermann-grid illusion (Hermann 1870)
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Descartes (1596-1650)

• sceptical arguments which radically call into
  question what we think we know

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• how we can know whether what we think we
  experience isnt actually a dream?

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• how we can know whether what we think we
  experience isnt actually an illusion generated
  by a malevolent being?

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Rationalism

• things are not really perceived by the senses
  or the imaginative faculty, but only by intellect
  reason/intelligence

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• we dont tend to question our commonsense
  knowledge
• we are enslaved by ignorance
• a critical mind is a liberated mind
• See also
• Plato's Cave The Matrix
• Rene Descartes in Internet Encyclopaedia of
  Philosophy