november mock

what does descartes mean by ‘clear and distinct ideas’? (3 marks)

• clear - self-evident or immediately accessible to the mind

• distinct - separated or distinguishable from other ideas

• known a priori through intuition - can be used to deduce other ideas

explain why there might be a problem with the role played by god in berkeley’s idealism. (5 marks)

• berkeley’s idealism - immediate objects of perception are mind-dependent ideas

• these ideas cannot be caused by me (as some of my ideas are involuntary)

• cannot be caused by other ideas (as ideas have no causal power)

• due to the complexity and regularity of my ideas they must come from a mind far greater than my own - god

• however if my ideas are continually maintained in the mind of god, it follows that god is also subject to sensations i experience such as pain

• god is defined as a perfect being

• but if god experiences pain then he must be imperfect

• therefore the role of god proposed by berkeley leads to a contradiction

explain the view that belief is not a necessary condition for knowledge. (5 marks)

• necessary condition - must be satisfied for something to be the case/to be part of a concept

• e.g. being unmarried is a necessary condition for being a bachelor - being a married bachelor would be a logical contradiction

• belief is traditionally considered a condition for knowledge under the tripartite (JTB)

• however we can imagine a situation in which a person can have knowledge without belief

• e.g. imagine you have learnt about a particular topic but have forgotten doing so

• in a quiz you are able to answer many questions on this topic correctly even though you feel you are simply guessing the answers

• in this case we would be inclined to say that you did know the answer in some sense, even though you did not really believe it to be true at the time

outline philosophical scepticism and explain how reliabilism responds to it. (12 marks) [1]

• philosophical scepticism - view that all propositions can be doubted

• often involves considering a possible situation which we cannot definitively prove to be false

• e.g. descartes’ suggestion that he may be constantly deceived by an evil demon into holding false beliefs

• this means that our usual methods of justifying our beliefs as knowledge are inadequate

• in its more extreme forms philosophical scepticism may result in the claim that we have no knowledge, and no knowledge is even possible

• e.g. i cannot know that mind-independent objects exist, or that minds other than my own exist

outline philosophical scepticism and explain how reliabilism responds to it. (12 marks) [2]

• reliabilism amends the JTB account by replacing the ‘justified’ condition with ‘reliably formed’

• S knows p iff:
  p is true
  S believes p
  S’s belief p was formed by a reliable cognitive process

• we can determine what is an adequately reliable process by its tendency to produce true beliefs e.g. memory and perception

• however these processes are not infallible and can be reasonably doubted

outline philosophical scepticism and explain how reliabilism responds to it. (12 marks) [3]

• philosophical scepticism aims to show that we cannot adequately justify our beliefs for them to constitute knowledge

• e.g. i cannot know that i am not being deceived by an evil demon because i cannot adequately justify its truth

• however by