Philosophical foundations

(Descartes) aims to eliminate all belief that it is possible to doubt, thus leaving only basic beliefs. Don’t really doubt beliefs about external world etc, but philosophical question of how they can be justified

There are thinking things (human minds - res cogitans) and extending things (everything else - res extensa)

Knowledge comes primarily from the senses

Thoughts ≈ mental imagery. Derived

Senses ≈ perception. Primary

Cannot be separated further. Both idea and impressions

Can be divided into underlying simple perceptions

True by their meaning (it’s contained in the subject itself) (e.g. “All bachelors are unmarried”)

How the meaning relates to the world (it’s not contained in the subject itself). Adds new information

Analyzing concepts without experience. What is left when ‘one removes from our experience everything that belongs to the senses’

Gained through experience

Kant suggests that we must shift our perspective to consider that objects conform to our knowledge rather than our knowledge conforming to objects. This means that the way we perceive and understand the world is shaped by the inherent structures of the human mind. “If intuition has to conform to the constitution of the objects, then I do not see how we can know anything of them a priori, but if the object (as the object of the senses) conforms to the constitution of our faculty of intuition, then I can very well represent this possibility to myself

Studies what reality is. A wholly isolated speculative cognition of reason that elevates itself entirely above all instruction from experience. Our mind shaping our perception of the world rather than the world directly shaping our mind.

Space and time shape our intuition. We cannot abstract from them.

Things-as-they-appear-to-us: Includes all the usual objects of our everyday world, e.g. persons, animals, material things

Things-in-themselves: Allows for imperceptible entities that explain the perceptible (manifest) qualities

S knows P iff: (i) P is true (ii) S believes P (iii) S is justified in believing P S = subject P = proposition

Is JTB knowledge? Gettier argues no with the example with Smith and Jones and the man who has 10 coins in his pocket will get the job

The view that only ideas exist, there is no external world beyond ideas. The metaphysical view that associates reality to ideas in the mind rather than to material objects (Kant - he soon changed)

Knowledge about the world comes primarily from knowledge of the mind (Kant)

The world as we experience it

The world as it is in itself, independent of our perceptions

The effect of an object on the capacity for representations, insofar as we are affected by it

The capacity of applying logic consciously by drawing conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth