philosophy questions and summary 1 page

Example Summary.

This week we learned about the two trends in epistemology (or the theory of knowledge that inquires into how we know), rationalism and empiricism. According to rationalism all our knowledge come from reason, while according to empiricism all our knowledge come from senses. The first theorist we learned about is a rationalist, Rene Descartes. Descartes wanted to model metaphysical knowledge on natural sciences, for the latter is objective and universal. He thought that the reason for the objectivity in the sciences is due to its rigorous method, which is absent in metaphysical knowledge. So he proposed the methodological doubt by which he doubted everything till he reached an absolute truth that is indubitable from which he would build his entire metaphysical theories. Descartes doubted his senses, all that he learned so far, and even mathematical knowledge and reached the one thing that he could not doubt that he exists as a thinking being "Cogtio Ergo Sum". From his Descartes derived the existence of matter having extension as its essential attribute and mind. Next we studied the philosophies of two empiricist thinkers, John Locke and George Berkeley. According to Locke the mind at birth is a tabula rasa or clean slate and all our ideas come to us via experience, sensations, that give us ideas about the external world and reflection that give us ideas about our own mind. A child is not born with the idea that 2+2=4, but learns it, agrees with it, and stores it in his memory and it becomes part of his knowledge. According to Locke there are simple ideas (those that cannot be broken down further), and complex ideas (those which the mind forms from simple ideas). The mind is passive in receiving ideas but active in combining them and forming complex ideas. Further, matter has two types of qualities, primary and secondary. A primary quality is a permanent feature of matter like extension, solidity, motion, while a secondary quality is sometimes in matter and sometimes not there, depending on conditions. For example, color, taste, smell, etc. As an empiricist Locke could not accept the idea of "substance", nonetheless, he theorized that he has a vague idea of a substance as the unknown and unknowable support of primary qualities. Berkeley rejected Locke's idea of the substance as the support of primary qualities. For Berkeley, the question is what is the relationship between the primary quality extension and the underlying mysterious substance. If the relationship is one of spreadness (that is extension is spread on the substance), then Locke has to explain what is "spreadness", is it a quality or is it substance itself. If it is a quality then one needs to posit another spreadness to explain the relationship between substance and the underlying substance. If it is substance itself, then what is the relationship between extension and this substance called spreadness, either way the theory of substance does not hold. For Berkeley the essence of everything is perception, for example, a tree appears big if someone is standing beside it, small if one looks at it from the top of a mountain, which shows that even the sizes of things are not objective but depends on human perception. Further, when we experience something we experience them in a series, x, then y, and then Z and so on and store them in our memories, such that next time when we experience x, we expect y to come and so forth. A person born blind has no such memory as he has not experienced the series, so when he experience things, he will experience them in blotches and not as a series. This shows that the external world is not material but constructed by our perception. Although Berkeley did not agree with material substances of Locke, he agreed with mental substances as the support of mental qualities like thinking, doubting, believing, etc.