intuition and deduction.

-a) refers to knowledge ‘of’ something or somebody. b) refers to knowledge ‘how’ to do something. c) also known as factual knowledge, refers to knowledge ‘that’

-argument from innatism

-Socrates depicts a story of Meno’s slave having no education in maths. Socrates asks maths question whilst he draws on sand, and the slave boy was able to show knowledge of pythagoras theorem despite having no education experience.

-Socrates says the boy had knowledge at birth because the soul is immortal and already unlocked many experiences of the world, but gets reborn.

-necessary truths= a priori, cannot be denied without contradiction

-Leibniz says necessary truths must be innate rather than known through experiences. If 2+2=4 is known through experience, this would mean we would need to someday revisit our knowledge as experience only explain certain instances. But 2+2=4 or triangles being 180degrees in all 3 sides must be true in all instances, otherwise this rational knowledge is questioned.

P1=If we have innate knowledge, it is universal

P2=For an idea to be part of the mind, we must be conscious of it

C1=Therefore, innate knowledge is knowledge everyone is aware of

P3=Children and idiots don’t understand concepts such as maths and geometry

C2=Therefore we do not have innate knowledge, nor is it universally accepted especially by children and idiots

C3=Therefore, Innate knowledge is false.

-intuition is simply grasped/ ‘seen’ rationally

-not worked out through stages as it is inexplainable to someone who does not ‘see’ it

-non inferential (not based on inference)

-contains at least 2 premises and one conclusion

P1=All men are mortal

P2=Socrates is a man

C1=Socrates is a mortal

-worked out through stages and can be explained

-conclusion is included within premises

-a priori intuition, needs no further explanation as it the cogito is simply grasped, not worked through stages. The cogito is clear and distinct.

-Descartes after concluding the 3 waves of doubt found himself ‘drowning in doubt’. He was able to doubt his senses, and even doubted having a body and was convinced an evil demon was deceiving him. However, he was able to conclude that the one thing he couldn’t doubt was the fact he was a thinking being, for even the action of doubting requires thinking- Ego sum Ego existo. Even if the evil demon is deceiving him, that requires something to doubt. This is necessarily true every time he expresses it or conceives it.

-Descartes used global, philosophical scepticism in order to find certainty. He believed his past beliefs were built on a house with rotten foundations. Everything he has believed up until now has been through the senses, but he found this to be unreliable, making his whole belief system unstable. If he found one reason to doubt something, he would doubt the whole category; Descartes generalised his doubts. Just the same way, if we find one apple is rotten, we would need to empty the whole barrel and separate the good ones from the bad ones to prevent contamination. The same is applied to his beliefs.

Senses, dreaming, evil demon

-The first wave of doubt is sensory experience. He knows his senses have deceived when, for example, seeing a building from far away appearing rectangular when it is really round upon closer inspection.

-Although it is easy to doubt far-off objects, it wasn’t as easy when object are in close proximity, or even his own body.

-Descartes decided to push his doubts even deeper, therefore introduced his 2nd wave. He had a thought about him sitting by the fire in a dressing gown reading, when in reality he was in bed having these thoughts as dreams. Descartes was not aware he was drwaming until he has woken up as there are no signs to show a distinction between dreaming vs. reality. Therefore, he was able to doubt all

-Despite dreams not being reality, real concepts such as maths and logic were still present within the dream. 2+2 still equals 4. Even in the most fictitious things there are colours and shapes just as much as reality does aswell. Which made it not all fictitious. Due to this, he wanted to push his doubts even further and introduced the concept of an evil demon. This demon deceives Descartes of all things including his senses, his body, maths and logic. This is hyperbolic doubt which he found himself ‘drowning in doubt'. This is an example of global and philosophical scepticism

-Hume believed that the cogito is not clear and distinct. We cannot experience ourselves, rather, our sensations and thoughts of self. Using ‘I exits’ is not enough reason to be self-evident. According to Hume’s fork, all ideas are a matter of fact, so if we cannot retrace an idea to an impression,then that idea is confused.

-We cannot have impressions of self, we can never ‘catch’ ourselves without some perceptions, we can only experience the perceptions themselves. As there is no impression, there is no clear & distinct idea, there is no knowledge of self. ‘Self’ is an illusion and we are a bunch of perceptions

P1=I have the involuntary perceptual experiences of physical objects

P2=Every experience has a cause and the cause must have as much reality as its effects

P3=The cause of my experience could be God, myself (fictitious) or the external world (adventitious)

P4=I cannot be the cause of my perceptions as they would be voluntary, which they’re not (they come to me against my will)

P5=God cannot be the cause as that means I’d be more inclined to believe in false perceptions, which counts as deceit and goes against his character (supremely perfect being)

C1=Therefore, the cause of my perceptions must be the external world and it exists.

-Descartes’ attempted to make a priori claims that causation, stating every idea requires a cause and it must have as much reality as its effect. However, according Hume’s fork, causation falls under ‘matters of fact’ which means that doubting causation does not lead to a logical contradiction- we can conceive of objects that do not have a cause for their existence, it can always be otherwise. There is no necessity contained within causation as it is known through the senses.

P1=I have the clear and distinct idea of a supremely perfect being

P2=Existence is perfection

P3=It is a logical contradiction to think a supremely perfect being lacks some perfection

P4=Therefore, the supremely perfect being exists

-Hume denied such thing as ‘necessary existence’ as we can conceive anything to exist or not exist.

-He claims that for something to be a priori, it must be a relation of ideas and therefore cannot be denied without contradiction, and in this case, denying God’s existence is not a logical contradiction. Additionally, it is not true by definition nor is it a priori.

-Hume also adds ‘God exists’ is not known through the senses, so it is neither a matters of fact.

-’God exists’ is not a meaningful, factual statement, so it is not knowledge.