AQA A LEVEL PHILOSOPHY Essay Plans - EPISTEMOLOGY
A* Level Essay Plans which are concise and easy to understand.
Written by a student predicted 4A*, with an offer to study Philosophy & Economics at the LSE.
Very helpful to write a top grade essay.
Define
Key Proponent: Locke
Thesis: cannot be successfully defended against objections
Explanation and strengths of theory:
- Arose from a critique of perceptual variation.
- Go into what sense data is – mental image caused by objective external physical objects which represents
mind independent world.
- We don’t perceive them directly: indirectly through sense-data (representation of reality)
- Primary qualities are correlated to reality and secondary qualities correlate to sense-data (our perception of
reality is sense data).
- Distinction of primary vs secondary qualities and how primary qualities are intrinsic to the object in the
external world, whereas secondary qualities are subjective and are each of our individual sense data.
- Strengths: deals with perceptual variation issue
- Directly accessible/ certain ideas
- Ideas are private.
Issue 1: Scepticism
- For indirect realism we must infer the existence of physical objects
- But there could be other things (e.g., ideas) which we are perceiving, and so don’t know if were perceiving
mind-independent objects.
- We don’t know if the mind-independent world exists at all.
- We know nothing about the nature of reality (if there even is a mind-independent world) beyond our veil of
perception.
Response:
- Locke says senses confirm each other (e.g., touch what you see)
- Backed up by Trotter Cockburn – fire example.
Response to response:
- This fails to defeat the sceptical challenge: all information you receive may be equally misrepresentative of
the external world and so you haven’t proven anything.
Further defense of Indirect Realism:
- Locke: involuntary nature.
Response:
- Proved something external exists, but not necessarily the mind independent world as we know it.
Final defense (Russell):
- Mind-independent world is the best hypothesis.
- Weak issue.
Issue 2: ideas can’t resemble reality.
- Ideas can only resemble other ideas, so we don’t know anything about the nature of reality.
- Colour example.
- If perceivable, ideas. If unperceivable, incoherent.
- Only ideas exist in the “external world”.
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