Today

1
Todays Lecture

• Preliminary comments on epistemology
• Epistemology and our knowledge of the external
  world - some preliminary considerations.
• René Descartes

2
Writing a philosophy paper

• There are a few simple rules to writing a good
  philosophy paper.
• (1) Make sure that you properly understand the
  position advocated by the philosopher you are
  examining.
• (2) Make sure your account of this philosophers
  position is accurate.
• (3) Do not make any claims for which you offer no
  defense.

3
Writing a philosophy paper

• (4) Only make claims for which you offer evidence
  that can be plausibly regarded as adequate.
• (5) Do not conclude more than your evidence will
  justify.
• (6) Do not try to prove your thesis.

4
Writing a philosophy paper

• (7) Avoid broad sweeping (or categorical) claims
  or conclusions.
• (8) Always consider objections to your thesis.

5
Preliminary comments on Knowledge

• There are three traditional aims of epistemology
  (1) To provide an analysis of knowledge, (2) tell
  us the scope or extent of our knowledge, and (3)
  rebut or refute the epistemological skeptic.
• Epistemological skepticism is marked by a refusal
  to make positive claims of knowledge about
  ourselves, the world, abstract objects or the
  realm of the supernatural.
• The or in the previous sentence is inclusive.
  This is to accommodate the fact that
  epistemological skepticism comes in degrees.

6
Preliminary comments on Knowledge

• Three distinctions are useful when doing
  epistemology (at least in the so-called Western
  tradition) Foundationalism versus coherentism,
  internalism versus externalism, and a priori
  versus a posteriori knowledge.

7
Preliminary comments on Knowledge

• Both foundationalism and coherentism are theories
  about justification, or the epistemic relations
  that must hold between beliefs if they are to be
  properly regarded as justified.
• Think of the justificatory structure of beliefs
  according to foundationalism as if it were a
  house.
• On the bottom you have a foundation. Then you
  have the walls and the roof. Without a good
  foundation the house will not be stable.

8
Preliminary comments on Knowledge

• Foundational beliefs are known as basic beliefs.
  The non-foundational beliefs that make up the
  rest of the structure of your belief system are
  non-basic beliefs.
• Basic beliefs are those beliefs in our belief
  system that are regarded as justified without any
  reference to other beliefs. Non-basic beliefs
  receive their justification from either other
  non-basic beliefs or basic beliefs.
• The justification of all our non-basic beliefs
  ultimately rests on our basic beliefs.

9
Preliminary comments on Knowledge

• Foundationslists disagree over what basic beliefs
  are properly basic. Properly basic beliefs are
  beliefs that are justified without any reference
  to other beliefs.
• One set of criteria for proper basicality you can
  find in the literature is A belief that p is
  properly basic if and only if it is self-evident,
  incorrigible or evident to the senses.

10
Preliminary comments on Knowledge

• Think of the justificatory structure of beliefs
  according to coherentism as if it were a huge
  circle of distinct points or a web.
• According to coherentism there are no beliefs
  that are justified independently of other
  beliefs. Coherentists deny the existence of
  properly basic beliefs.

11
Preliminary comments on Knowledge

• Beliefs are justified (in large part) by their
  relations with other beliefs.
• You can think of the justificatory structure as
  if it were a circle with p being justified by q,
  which is justified by r, which is justified by s,
  and so on until we get to a belief n that is
  justified by p again.

12
Preliminary comments on Knowledge

• Alternatively, you can think of the justificatory
  structure as if it were a web with no one belief
  gaining its epistemic strength solely from itself
  or a non-belief. Rather, each belief
  epistemically supports and is supported by other
  beliefs.

13
Preliminary comments on Knowledge

• Take care not to confuse these theories of
  justification with psychological theories about
  how our beliefs are actually related to each
  other (in our head) or to experience.
• You could be a coherentist about justification
  and still believe that we have basic beliefs that
  arise directly from our experience and, in turn,
  give rise to other beliefs that would not arise
  were it not for the appearance of these basic
  beliefs.

14
Preliminary comments on Knowledge

• Internalism is basically the view that our
  beliefs do not possess positive epistemic value
  unless they are justified by evidence that is (1)
  within our ability to find and (2) and which we
  can relate to these beliefs as justifiers (even
  if we actually do not).

15
Preliminary comments on Knowledge

• Externalism is basically the view that our
  beliefs can possess positive epistemic value if
  we stand in a right relationship to the relevant
  states of affairs (which our beliefs are about)
  or if our belief forming mechanisms or processes
  are reliable (produce substantially more true
  than false beliefs when used in those
  circumstances for which they were designed).

16
Preliminary comments on Knowledge

• Remember that positive epistemic value comes in a
  spectrum with knowledge at one extreme (being
  those beliefs that possess the most positive
  epistemic value) and (merely) rational beliefs at
  the other extreme (being those beliefs that
  possess the least positive epistemic status
  without losing value or becoming negatively
  valued.)
• Justified beliefs and warranted beliefs fall
  somewhere along the spectrum.

17
Preliminary comments on Knowledge

• A priori knowledge is knowledge that is acquired
  before experience.
• A posteriori knowledge is knowledge that is
  acquired after experience.

18
Epistemology and our knowledge of the external
world - some preliminary considerations.

• Consider the following problem.
• Our beliefs about the external world are
  (largely) grounded in experiences that we believe
  to be the effect of objects out in the world
  impacting our senses.
• Our beliefs about objects in the external world,
  then, are primarily informed by experiences that
  are not themselves the objects in question.

19
Epistemology and our knowledge of the external
world - some preliminary considerations.

• The truth value of these beliefs depends on their
  accuracy.
• Can we get beyond, or behind, our experiences to
  compare our beliefs to the objects-in-themselves?

20
René Descartes Preliminary comments

• He was born in 1596 and died before his time in
  1850.
• He not only engaged in what we understand as
  philosophy, but also in the science of optics,
  physics, psychology and mathematics.

21
René Descartes Preliminary comments

• Descartes is associated with a movement known as
  Continental Rationalism.
• There are a number of features of Rationalism
  associated, rightly or wrongly, with Descartes
  epistemology.
• (1) Reason is privileged over the senses as a
  source of knowledge about ourselves and the
  world. (Knowledge derived from reason alone
  enjoys a higher status than knowledge derived
  from the senses alone.)

22
René Descartes Preliminary comments

• (2) This is largely because the senses are
  regarded as a less reliable source of knowledge
  (about ourselves and the world) than reason.
• (3) The senses are an acceptable source of
  knowledge (about ourselves and the world) when
  corrected and constrained by reason.

23
René Descartes Preliminary comments

• Descartes epistemology is foundationalist.
• In the Meditations Descartes appears to use
  self-evidency and indubitability as criteria for
  regarding beliefs or (epistemic) principles as
  properly basic.

24
René Descartes Preliminary comments

• Descartes desires to have our beliefs about the
  world formally derived from basic beliefs or the
  application of principles that are themselves
  free from reasonable doubt or are self-evidently
  true, or from other non-basic beliefs that find
  their own justification in such properly basic
  beliefs or principles (or from yet more non-basic
  beliefs so justified).

25
René Descartes Preliminary comments

• Descartes is also internalist.
• The basic method of doubt suggested in the
  Meditations points to the importance of
  justifying our beliefs (at some point in our
  life), or at some point ensuring that our beliefs
  are properly grounded or secured against
  reasonable doubt.

26
René Descartes Preliminary comments

• Descartes is not an epistemological skeptic of
  our knowledge of ourselves, the world or the
  nature and existence of God.

27
René Descartes Synposis of the following six
Meditations

• Some things to note in this synopsis.
• (1) The First Meditation proffers a method of
  doubt which is to be used to help us abstract
  ourselves away from our many preconceptions about
  ourselves and the world, and to break our
  dependence on the senses when talking of truths
  about ourselves and the world (FP, p.145).

28
René Descartes Synposis of the following six
Meditations

• (2) In the Second Meditation Descartes hopes to
  show that (i) our most certain knowledge is not
  derived from the senses (ii) and involves our own
  existence.
• Note that his discussion of the distinction
  between the soul or mind and the body in this
  Meditation is conceptual rather than
  metaphysical. It is not until later (the Sixth
  Meditation) that Descartes is going to suggest
  that the mind is, actually, a distinct thing from
  the body (FP, p.146).

29
René Descartes Synposis of the following six
Meditations

• It is also important to note that Descartes does
  not merely assume that what we can clearly and
  distinctly conceive is true. This is a claim for
  which he will argue (though not in the First or
  Second Meditations).
• This claim will be predicated, in large part,
  upon the facts that God exists, is
  omnibenevolent, omniscient and omnipotent and has
  created us such that if we use our sense
  faculties and faculty of reason carefully (i.e.
  reflectively) we can acquire clear and distinct
  ideas, which are, in turn, true.

30
René Descartes The First Meditation

• There are two motivations for his method of doubt
  that Descartes mentions in the first paragraph of
  this Meditation (FP, p.147).
• (1) He had believed many falsehoods in his
  childhood, and this raised legitimate doubts
  about the truth of the beliefs he now held (as
  they were acquired cumulatively and taken to be
  true in part because of their relation to his
  earlier beliefs), and
• (2) a stable and lasting science requires
  foundations that are free of reasonable doubt.