Unit 3 Philosophy

What is Epistemology?

The study of knowledge

What are some questions it typically addresses?

1. What if anything can we know?

2. What is knowledge?

3. What are the best or legitimate ways to acquire it?

4. What is involved in the act of knowing?

What is philosophical skepticism? 

The belief that we cannot know anything at all about reality

What are the arguments I offer against it.

1. He uses words to assert the claim so he does know something and he can understand the difference between I and we

2. Every affirmation or negation is a claim to knowledge

3. You have to doubt your sensory and intellectual faculties however you must use those to doubt it all together

4. Does not live their life in accordance of the belief

5. Uses the implicit of the PNC and the PI (Principles of reality)

PI

Principle of Identity: A chicken is a chicken, a being is what it is

PNC Metaphysic

Principle of non-contridiction: something cannot be and not be at the same time and in the same respect.

PNC Logical

Two contradictory propositions cannot both be true simultaneously and in the same sense. (a sentence cannot be true and false at the same time and in the same sense)

Why does G.K. Chesterton think that skepticism is "a thought that stops thought"? 

This is the thought that kills itself. As once you believe that nothing exists then we could never use reason as you then stop thinking as there is no reason.

 Why does he think reason is a matter of faith?

Reason is a matter of faith so without it our reason we cannot have thought and intellect. Proving reason with reason is begging the question so logically flawed.

Principle of causality (PC)

something cannot be reduced from potentiality to actuality except by something else in act.

Principle of unity (PU)

each being is one; insofar as a being is, it is one.

Principle of substance and accident (PSA)

each being is either a substance or accident.

Principle of double dimension (PDD)

each being has the dimensions of existence and essence.

Principle of Nothing (PN)

From nothing comes nothing; something cannot give what it does not have.

Principle of change and subject (PCS)

every change presupposes a subject.

What problem grounds and motivates Plato’s entire epistemology?

The one and the many. How can there be 1 kind and the same but many different things around the world. (ie. many humans but what unites them?)

What can be seen but not known

The many, the things, the particulars

what can be known but not seen

the forms

Why does Plato think forms cannot be reduced to matter?  

They are immaterial as they cannot change and there are always in many locations.

How are particulars and forms related?

They participate in the forms so (ie. We are participating in humanity but we are not humanity itself)

How does nominalism fit in here?

Nominalism: The belief that there are no forms nit they are just words that we make up.

Where, accordingly, does Plato think the forms reside

In another dimension

How does Plato think we come to know the forms? 

The forms are innate so we must have had access to them in a past life so through deep thought we can access them again.

What is the meaning of Plato’s allegory of the cave?

That we are in the dark and only really looking at the shadow of a thing and not even the puppet of the thing but if we work hard through philosophy and deep thought we can get to the sunny place and see the thing correctly for the first time ever.

Does reference to Parmenides help with the latter question? 

Parmenides could not figure out how there is difference as he believed that there was full unity in everything that could not change be created or be destroyed. Thus, you need to subtract something to get this and that is the form is what is subtracted.

Hylomorphism

The form and matter of an object is united

Scientia

Unchanging knowledge though causes

the gateway principle

All human knowledge and intellectual reasoning must first originate through sensory experience.

foundationalism

Your beliefs are based on main core beliefs. (First Principles)

Foundationalism and the Agrippan Trilemma

The Agrippan trilemma was the skeptics attempt to say that foundationalism does not work.

1. Circular Thinking: Claim relays on the same claim that it was trying to argue from

2. Infinite regression: The why was never truly answered and you have to keep going back and back

3. Halt at a point and say no more: The skeptics don’t believe

According to Aristotle, how are the following related in human beings: sense-perception, memory, and experience?

We need sense perception to have a starting point then we can build up memories of a thing to get the experience and then finally abstract the form and leave behind the particular

And what is this logos we abstract from experience? 

The understanding of the forms and the Forms themselves

According to St. Thomas, what is the difference between a knower and a non-knower? 

Knowers: are things with senses that can draw out the forms of things

Non-Knowers: no sense only possesses its own form

 

Finally, what are the three operations of the intellect and how are they related. 

1. Understand of the Indivisible: Know forms and essences and can’t decide between them yet

2. Combining and distinguishing: Declaring forms exist or related to another form

3. Reasoning: Going from what you know to what you don’t know, this allowed to draw judgements