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    Philosophy 20150929

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    Alexandra Tumbas

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    Philosophy 20150929

    Uploaded by

    Alexandra Tumbas
    1 views2 pages

    Copyright

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    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as ODT, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as odt, pdf, or txt
    1 views2 pages

    Philosophy 20150929

    Uploaded by

    Alexandra Tumbas

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as ODT, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as odt, pdf, or txt
    of 2

    Contingent knowledge is a knowledge that has no axiomatic (self evident) guarantees

    Principle of empirical significance is common to classical and contemporary empiricism


    The Principle of empirical significance is useful but only to an extent, but has limitations.

    Empiricists say that our claims are empirically significant only if they have a testable empirical content
    such that the truth or the falsity of the claim does make a difference to what you will find in experience.

    What claims do classical empiricist and realists share?


    They share a lot, what is common to them is that they start with ideas when they give an account of
    knowledge. They both make distinctions between two types of knowledge one based on fact and the
    other based on relations of ideas.
    (ideas are different from platonic forms) Ideas are private mental items

    factual – this apple is red


    relations of ideas – red is a color word

    Apart form claims of empirical content they accept claims of logical content.

    2.4

    Ideas in classical British empiricism: Locke, Berkeley, Hume

    Ideas:
    -Bearers of experience based on sense perception (Locke: representationalism)

    -Mind dependent (psychological feature)


    Mental items are mind dependent. We have privileged access to our mental items.

    -Casually inert

    -In ontological interpretation they can represent: - things (e.g. the idea of a tree); properties of things
    (the idea of triangularity)
    - perceived qualities (the idea of hotness)

    -Ideas of Thinking

    -Ideas and theories of perception

    -Locke-ian idea: “what the mind applies when it's thinking”


    (an Essay Concerning Human Understanding)
    We form ideas of external things by putting together various sense perception
    External things are not part of the mind, they are ideas in the mind.
    False perceptual statements can be explained only with representationalism.
    Perceptual things can on be explained if the representationalism holds.
    -Berkeley-ian idea: “ any immediate object of either perception or understanding”
    (Principles of Human Knowledge)

    Berkeley says that the source of skepticism is the belief that there is a mind independent physical
    world. This belief is risky, we can never be sure of what the external world is, but we can be sure of our
    ideas.
    For Berkeley two things exist: the ideas and the mind that perceives them.

    Skepticism argues conditionally that we can never be sure weather our empirical knowledge is
    justified.
    We cannot exclude the possibility of perceptual error therefor we can never know or decide weather we
    know or not.

    -Difference between perception and thinking is a mater of degree in classical empiricism

    -Relative distance from immediate experience

    -To perceive an object → to have a bunch of ideas of it

    -Is there a gap between things and ideas?


    Skepticism?
    Berkeley: NO!

    B's argument:

    Things are bundles of properties

    properties – perceivable ideas

    perceivable ideas exist only in the mind

    therefore: to exist is to be perceived (esse est percipi)

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