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academic skills summary
- Vak
- Academic skills
- Instelling
- Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam (EUR)
academic skills(philosophy) full summary i used to learn for the finals in the first year at erasmus
[Meer zien]Voorbeeld 2 van de 9 pagina's
Voorbeeld 2 van de 9 pagina's
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RATIONALISM AND EMPIRICISMRationalism
Plato
true knowledge depends on rationality. Our perception is misleading, human senses are limited.
Heraclitus said that the essence of reality is change (you cannot step twice in the same river)
Parmenides said reality is not changing, but it appears like this to us: the world for us changes basing on the
circumstances, but reality stays the same.
To know the real truth, we have to use rationality. Human experiences are misleading because everyone has
their own truth.
Everything that we perceive here is just a reflection of a realm with perfect forms and perfect ideas.
Ideas manifest themselves in the world we live and experience. There are universal concepts existing
outside of the world. Knowing and understanding is mostly remembering (we find out things we already
knew, because the soul is immortal)
Myth of the cave: the prisoners can only see the wall with the projections made from the fire's shadows.
Descartes (1600): knowledge needs to build up, and it needs true foundation. We can found knowledge in
ratinoality or in perception.
Our senses DO deceive us, therefore cannot provide a foundation of knowledge.
– he doubts everything, but the only think he's sure of is that HE IS DOUBTING
I think therefore I am: he knows he's real since he's thinking, doubting.
– Some ideas are innate, placed in us by God: since he exists for sure, and he believes in God, then
God exists. And since God is good and he will not deceive us, then the physical world really exists.
Empiricism
Aristotle
we can learn about life by observing the world. Everything lies on experiences.
If we want to do anything that is scientifically meaningful, we have to look at the world and make
experiments. We don't have to assume there's a second layer of reality that we have not access to.
When we are born, our mind is a tabula rasa. To learn we need to use our senses.
– induction = observation of phenomena translated into universal laws (every swan i have ever seen is
white, thus all swans are white)
– deduction = reasoning from universal laws to concrete observations (since all swans are white, i
predict that the next swan im gonna encounter is gonna be white)
universal laws should always follow from observation hence induction
Syllogisms: ways to find the causes of things → since all humans i've ever seen die, than all humans die.
But we can never be 100% sure.
Francis Bacon
knowledge and science are based on observation and experiences. Since our senses can deceive us and
make us jump to conclusions, we need to organize the observation.
Bacon's idols:
– idols of the tribe: jumping to premature conclusions and stick to them. Focus only on evidence
supporting out convictions
– idols of the cave: come from education, habits and accidents
– idols of the marketplace: distorted beliefs stemming from “abstract words” we use. Disconnected
from reality
– idols of the theatre: accepted dogmas and methods of old schools of thought. (example: Aristotle's
philosophy and its medieval interpretations)
Getting rid of idols in order to be as empirical as possible, not to be biased when we observe the world.
We cannot make universal statements in science cause we'll never have a 100% correct answer.
Scientific revolution: new ideas in astronomy, with Kepler (planets do not orbit the Sun in perfect circles),
Galilei (the surfaces of the sun and moon are not smooth, thus not “that perfect”) and Newton (natural laws
of mechanics).
– commitment to observation and experiments → use of our senses
– application of universal mechanics. Univese is mechanical and we don't need God to make it work.
We can understand it through maths and physics
– application of universal mathematics (for detailed description and prediction of the regular mechaical
principles like laws and forces)
Demystification of the world. There's no higher goal for humanity, no mysterious forces, no God.
John Locke
tabula rasa: no innate ideas
, All our ideas come from sensations, impressions we have, and the reflections we make upon them
Objects can have:
– Primary properties (size, weight, shape) existing independently of our mind or perception. Not
depending on who's looking (the shape doesn't change basing on the viewer).
– Secondary properties (color, smell, sound, taste, temperature): change basing on the experience
someone has on them. They exist only when the object is perceived, they are mind-dependent.
George Berkley
didn't accept Locke. Even those primary properties are only known to us through our perceptions.
To be is to be perceived: IDEALISM. That's the only way in which the world can manifest itself.
Everything that cannot be perceived is just not there. If it's not recognizable for us, it does not exist.
David Hume (1700)
All science is tied up with human nature: if we can only know the world through representations in our
mind, then we can only know about the world in the way it is perceived by our head.
Science is base on experience and observation. We must understand the human mind in order to move
forward with science in general.
Experience + observation + ideas on what we just witnessed.
– impressions = immediate data that we have
– ideas = stuck in our head for us to use them. They're copies of our impressions.
Abstract idea → break it into multiple things that fuel this idea, so we can make it correspond to an
impression of the world. These multiple things we know about, become alltogether our idea and concept of
the bigger abstract idea.
We use past experiences to come up with basic expectations:
– the operation of the mind is a learned habit steered by passion rather than reason. (passion = habit)
– such habits (human nature!) keep us from falling into the skeptical apathy that would result from
believing nothing. We DO work with those expectations and that makes us navigate our life.
It's not science but it helps to live and feel the world. Allow us to categorize the world aroung us.
“Working hypotheses”
Hume's philosophy → linked to human nature (habits and passions). We observe, reflect, build ideas.
We cannot observe directly the forces determining the world, we can only apply our habitual passions. We
have nothing left than beliefs and guesses, knowledge is an “illusion of the imagination”.
Immanuel Kant
instead, we DO have that kind of knowledge. Real knowledge of the world is possible.
Different kinds of judgments:
– general form of judgments about the world: a predicate is assigned to a subject, not adding
anything to the subject. It's just about defining things. The subject already contains this kind of
definition (a bachelor is an unmarried person. We don't have to observe a bachelor to know he's
unmarried cause it's part of the definition)
– synthetic judgments: if the predicate is not already contained in the subject. We need to know the
subject to know this judgment. It's added to it. We know about it through empirical investigation. (the
man is stupid. It's not inherent part of being a man, we need to investigate if this statement is true)
– a priori judgments: independent of sense experience. Their source is reason. Empirical experience
not required
– a posteriori judgments: dependent of sense experience.
For universal laws: we need synthetic a priori judgment. If science wants to teach us something, it needs
to add something to what we already know.
An example is maths: 2+3=5 it contains both observation and a general statement.
– noumenal world (things as they are themselves) and phenomenal world (as they appear to us)
– knowledge of phenomenal world is possible → result of a synthesis on input from the noumenal
world and input from reason. We might not know the noumenal, but the phenomenal yes.
This knowledge is processed by us. We need to understand perception:
1. the person passively receives informations from the noumenal. I still don't know how to process all
these physical sensations and i'm disconnected from reality. I dont know how to make sense of what
i'm seeing.
2. The input is ordered into appearances or intuitions by the subject. Using categories of time and
space: formal and necessary preconditions of our senses without which we could never make sense
of all the world.
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