THE SEARCH

FOR KNOWLEDGE
By
David Benjamin

Brain in a Vat
Imagine that todays technology allows
us to keep a brain alive while separated
from a body by placing it in a vat of fluid
and connecting it to electrodes that will
stimulate it and cause it to have
experiences and sensations as though
living a normal human life.
The mind within the brain thinks it is
walking outside in the sun due to the
electrical signals sent to the brain
externally.
The electrical signals make it such that
the mind within the brain thinks it is
living what we consider a normal human
life, with all of the relationships and
experiences occurring electrically.
Can we
really
Brain
in a
vat know anything?

What is knowledge?
The area of philosophy that deals with
questions concerning knowledge is called
epistemology.
The Greek word episteme means knowledge
and logos means rational discourse, hence
philosophy of knowledge.
Going back as far as Plato, philosophers have
traditionally defined knowledge as true
justified belief.

Reason Vs Experience
One of the most important issues in the theory of
knowledge is the relationship between reason and
experience.
A priori knowledge = knowledge that is justified
independently of (or prior to) experience.
Examples: definitions, logical truths
All unicorns are one-horned creatures is true by definition.
Either my football team will win or they wont. Even if they
tie they still wont win and so it is logically true.

Reason vs Experience
A posteriori knowledge = knowledge that is based
on (or posterior to) experience.
Empirical = anything based on experience
Examples:
Water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit.
Tadpoles become frogs.
We can verify the freezing point and life cycle of
frogs through experience.

Reason vs Experience
Is there any a priori knowledge that does give us knowledge
about the real world?
What would that be like?
It would be knowledge expressible in a statement such that
(a) its truth is not determined solely by the meaning of its
terms.
(b) it does provide information about the way the world is.
Furthermore, since it is a priori, it would be knowledge that
we could justify through reason, independently of
experience.

Three Epistemological
Questions
1.

Is it possible to have knowledge at all?

2.

Does reason provide us with knowledge of the

world independently of experience?

3.

Does our knowledge represent reality as it

really is?

Options Concerning Knowledge

1.

Skepticism

2.

Rationalism

3.

Empiricism

4.

Constructivism

5.

Epistemological relativism

Skepticism
Skepticism = the claim that we do not have
knowledge.
It is impossible to have justified beliefs.
No one has provided any reasons to think that
our beliefs are capable of being justified.
The skeptics answer no to question #1 and the
other 2 questions are thought irrelevant.

Rationalism
Rationalism = claims that reason or the intellect is the primary source
of our fundamental knowledge about reality.
Rationalists claim reason can give us knowledge apart from experience.
Example:
We can arrive at mathematical truths about circles or triangles without
having to measure, experiment with, or experience circular or
triangular objects.
We do so by constructing rational, deductive proofs that lead to
absolutely indubitable conclusions that are always universally true of
the world outside our minds (a priori knowledge about the world)
Rationalists think question #2 is true.

Empiricism
Empiricism = the claim that sense experience is the sole
source of our knowledge about the world.
When we start life, our intellect is a blank slate.
Only through experience does that empty mind become
filled with content.
Mathematical truths are not already in the mind before we
discover them and there is no genuine a priori knowledge
about the nature of reality.
Empiricist answer no to question #2.

Constructivism
Constructivism = refers to the claim that
knowledge is neither already in the mind nor
passively received from experience, but that the
mind constructs knowledge out of the materials
of experience.
Immanuel Kant introduced this view due to trying
to reach a compromise between both rationalists
and empiricists.
Kant answers no to question #3

Skepticism
Right now, as you read this sentence, you believe that you are
awake and not dreaming.
But isnt it usually the case that when we are dreaming we also
think that we are awake and actually experiencing the events in
the dream?
In our waking experience we believe that we are awake, but when
we dream we also believe we are awake.
So how do we tell the difference?
How do you know that right now you are not dreaming that you
are reading about dreaming while you are really sleeping soundly
in your own bed?

Surveying the case for

skepticism
Skepticism is the claim that we do not have knowledge.
If skepticism is correct, there is no point in further examining all of
the other approaches to knowledge.
Universal skeptics claim that we have no knowledge whatsoever.
The think that every knowledge claim is unjustified and subject to
doubt.
Limited skeptics allow that we may have some knowledge but focus
their doubt on particular types of knowledge claims.
Example: mathematical or scientific knowledge may exist while
others do not.

Skepticism
One strategy of the skeptic is to point to the possibility that our
apprehension of reality could be systematically flawed in some
way.
The brain is the vat story would be an example of this strategy.
The skeptic does not need to prove that we really are brains in
a vat but merely that is could be possible that we are.
The skeptic believes that nothing is beyond doubt, that for any
one of our beliefs we can imagine a scenario in which they
would be false.
Example: santa clause

Generic Skeptical
Argument
1.

2.
3.

4.

5.

We can find reason for doubting any one of

our beliefs.
It follows that we can doubt all of our beliefs
If we can doubt all of our beliefs, then we
cannot be certain of any of them.
If we do not have certainty about any of our
beliefs, then we do not have knowledge.
Therefore, we do not have knowledge.

Rene Descartes (1596

1650)
Some of the best known arguments for skepticism were
produced by the French philosopher Rene Descartes.
Descartes life long passion was to find certainty.
Although Descartes did not end up a skeptic, he initially used
skeptical doubt as a test to decide which beliefs were
absolutely certain.
Descartes carried out his project of philosophical demolition and
reconstruction in a work called Meditations of First Philosophy.
This works consisted of six meditations that traced his journey
from skeptical doubt to absolute certainty.

Meditations On First Philosophy

Descartes Meditations

Rationalim
Leading Questions:
1. How do mathematicians make their discoveries if not
by using a laboratory?
2. Why do we believe that every triangle has 180
degrees without testing this theory on every
triangle?
3. Why cant you touch your rights? Is there any other
alternative but to say that the truths about human
rights are discovered through some sort of rational
intuition?
4. If we have never experienced perfection by using
the five senses, how did we ever arrive at the idea of
perfection?

Surveying the Case for

Rationalism
David Copperfield Magician Example:
Throughout the magic show, objects appeared from
nowhere or disappeared before our eyes, people
magically changed places, and an assistant was sawed
in half and restored.
our reason tells us that something cannot come from
nothing and material objects do not vanish into thin air.
Our reason seems to have veto power over our sense
experiences.

Three Anchor Points of

Rationalism
1.

Reason is the primary or most superior source

of knowledge about reality.

2.

Sense experience is an unreliable and

inadequate route to knowledge.

3.

The fundamental truths about the world can

be known A Priori: They are innate or selfevident to our minds.

Three Anchor Points of

Rationalism
1. Reason is the primary or most superior source of
knowledge about reality.
According to the rationalist, it is through reason that we
understand the fundamental truths about reality.
For example, the truths about the following will never change
and represent A Priori knowledge (apart from experience):
1.
2.
3.
4.

Logical Truths
Mathematical Truths
Metaphysical Truths
Ethical Principles

1. Logical Truths
A and not A cannot both be true at the same
time (where A represents some proposition or
claim).
This truth is called the law of non contradiction.
(for example, the statement John is married and
John is not married is necessarily false.)
If the statement X is true and the statement If
X, then Y is true, then it necessarily follows that
the statement Y is true.

2. Mathematical Truths
The area of a triangle will always be one half the
length of the base times its height.
If X is larger than Y and Y is larger than Z, then X
is larger than Z.

3. Metaphysical Truths
Every event has a cause.
An object with contradictory properties cannot
exist. (No matter how long we search, we will
never find a round square.)

4. Ethical Principles
Some basic moral obligations are not optional.
It is morally wrong to maliciously torture
someone for the fun of it.

Three Anchor Points of

Rationalism
2. Sense experience is an unreliable and inadequate route to
knowledge.
Rationalists typically emphasize the fact that sense experience
is relative, changing, and often illusory.
Rationalists point out that we need our reason to sort out what
is appearance from what is reality.
Experience can only tell us about particular things in the world
rather than universal foundational truths about reality.
Examples: a ball vs properties of spheres, adding oranges vs
adding numbers.

Three Anchor Points of

Rationalism
3.

The fundamental truths about the world can be known A Priori: They
are either innate or self-evident to our minds.

Innate Ideas = ideas that are inborn. They are ideas or principles that
the mind already contains prior to experience.
The notion of innate ideas is found in rationalist philosophies but
rejected my empiricists.
The theory of innate ideas views the mind as that of a computer that
comes from the factory with numerous programs already installed on it,
waiting to be activated.
Rationalists say that such ideas as the laws of logic, the concept of
justice, or the idea of God are already contained deep within our mind
and only need to be brought to the level of conscious awareness.

Accounts of acquiring innate ideas:

Socrates and Plato believed that our souls
preexisted our current life and received
knowledge from a previous form of existence.
Descartes believed that God implanted these
ideas within us.

Rationalistic Answers to the

Three Epistemological Questions
All rationalist answer yes to all three questions.
1.

Is knowledge possible? Yes, mathematical

truths.

2.

Does reason provide us with knowledge of the

world independently of experience? Yes,
through math and logic we arrive at truths
with certainty.

3.

Does our knowledge represent reality as it

Socrates
Socrates believed in innate ideas, for he claimed
that true knowledge and wisdom lay buried within
the soul.
Meno: But how will you look for something
when you dont in the least know what it is? How
on earth are you going to set up something you
dont know as the object of your search? To put it
another way, even if you come right up against
it, how will you know that what you have found
is the thing you didnt know?

Socrates
Socrates answered that we can have knowledge deep within us
but not be aware of it.
Gaining knowledge is more like remembering something we had
forgotten than it is acquiring new and unfamiliar information.
To illustrate, Socrates questions an uneducated boy without
providing any answers until the boy arrives at the answer himself.
According to Socrates, the knowledge was written on the boys
soul in a previous life and lay there sleeping until Socrates
awakened it.
= Theory of recollection

Plato
Plato was an Athenian who was born into a
wealthy family and was educated by Socrates.
He wrote all of the dialogues of Socrates (as
Socrates did not write anything down) and
started his own school in Athens known as The
Academy which existed for 900 years before the
Christians shut it down in 529 C.E. as a
stronghold for pagan thought.

Plato on the Possibility of

Knowledge
Since the physical world is constantly changing, sense perception
gives us only relative and temporary information about changing
particular things.
Plato thought that ultimate knowledge must be objective (as
opposed to subjective), unchanging, and universal.
There is a difference between true opinions and knowledge for our
beliefs must be rationally justified to qualify as knowledge.
The object of knowledge must be something that really exists.
Because we can recognize that some opinions are false, we must
be capable of having knowledge. Therefore, reason must be able
to provide us with knowledge we seek.

Plato and the Role of

Reason
We cannot make up rules for the properties of numbers,
we do not create them, we discover them.
Plato would argue that these truths are objective and
independent of our minds.
We do not learn the truths about numbers by seeing,
tasting, hearing, smelling, or touching them.
Plato concludes that the world of mathematics consists
of a set of objective, mind-independent truths and a
domain of non physical reality that we know only through
reason.

Plato and the Role of

Reason
What about justice? What color is it? How much does it weigh?
These questions may apply to physical things but it is
meaningless to describe justice in terms of observable
properties.
Furthermore, no society is perfectly just, we have never seen an
example of perfect justice in human history, only attempts to
approximate it.
Particular nations come and go and the degree of justice they
manifest may rise and fall, but the objects of genuine
knowledge such as true justice are eternal and unchanging
standards and objects of knowledge.

theory of recollection
Plato argues that knowledge of perfect things,
such as perfect justice or absolute equality, must
be innate for what we find in experience are only
imperfect copies of these ideas.
Plato believed that the knowledge of these perfect
ideals was written on the soul in a previous
existence.
Though it is there within us, we do not apprehend
this knowledge clearly, because it is as though we
have forgotten it.

theory of recollection
Coming to know for Plato is a process of
recollection in which we realize at the level of
full, conscious awareness what we already
possessed in a hazy, tacit manner.
Have you ever had the experience of coming to
know something for the first time although you
felt as though you were unpacking and making
explicit something you already understood albeit
in a vague and implicit way?

Plato on Universals and

the Knowledge of Reality
Plato has argued that there are some things we could not know
about (Justice, Goodness, Equality) if experience was our only
source of knowledge.
The soul must have somehow acquired knowledge without the
senses.
In the world of sense experience we find that particulars fall into a
number of stable, universal categories. Without these categories,
we could not identify anything or talk about particulars at all.
Example: Tom, Andre, Maria, and Lakatria are all distinct
individuals, yet we can use the universal term human being to
refer to each of them. In spite of their differences, something
about them is the same.

Plato on Universals and the

Knowledge of Reality
Corresponding to each common name (human,
dog, justice) is a universal that consists of the
essential, common properties of anything within
that category.
Particulars come into being, change, and pass away
but universals reside in an eternal, unchanging
world.
Plato believes that universals are more than
concepts, they are actually the constituents of
reality, referred to as forms.

Rene Descartes
Descartes is considered the founder of modern rationalism because of his
arguments that reason could unlock all of the secrets of reality.
Descartes began his philosophical journey with the attempt to doubt every
one of his beliefs to see if he could find any that were certain beyond any
possible doubt.
Consequently, he discovered that the one thing he could not doubt was his
existence.
I am, then, in the strict sense only a thing that thinks; that is, I am a mind,
or intelligence, or intellect, or reason.
In our dreams we have the experience of running, eating, swimming, and
engaging in all sorts of bodily activities, but are illusory and so body-like
experiences or physical experiences cannot be known with certainty as true
reality.

Descartes on the Possibility of

Knowledge
Descartes sought the guarantee that the contents of his mind
represented reality in an all powerful good God.
As soon as the opportunity arises I must examine whether
there is a God, and, if there is, whether he can be a deceiver.
For if I do not know this, it seems that I can never be certain
about anything else.
By proving such a God exists, he may know that knowledge is
possible.
He cannot determine the existence of God using the material
world since that may be doubted but only with rationalistic
argument that reasons only from the contents of his own mind.

Descartes on the Role of Reason

In Meditations III, Descartes says the natural light of reason shows him
that
1. Something cannot arise from nothing
2. There must be at least as much reality in the cause as there is in the
effect.
Descartes does not think that he could have created the idea of an
infinite and perfect God.
The ideas of perfect and infinite could not have come from himself or his
experience because neither he nor anything in his experience is infinite
or perfect.
They must have come from a being who has these qualities, namely God.
If I could not have produced the idea of perfection myself, then I must
not be alone in the world, but that some other thing which is the cause of
this idea also exists.

Descartes illustrates the basic principle of rationalism, which is that an

idea must be innate or already in the mind if it cannot be based on
anything we have experienced.
1.

2.

3.
4.

5.

6.

7.

Something cannot be derived from nothing. (In other words, all

effects, including ideas, are caused by something)
There must be at least as much reality in the cause as there is in the
effect.
I have an idea of God (as an infinite and perfect being).
The idea of God in my mind is an effect that was caused by
something.
I am finite and imperfect, and thus I could not be the cause of the
idea of an infinite and perfect God.
Only an infinite and perfect being could be the cause of such an
idea.
Therefore, God exists. (an infinite and perfect being).

Descartes on the
Representation of Reality
Having satisfied himself that a perfect God exists, Descartes also
knows that this God would not deceive him, for such an action
would make God morally imperfect.
In Meditation IV, Descartes considers what progress this knowledge
offers him in the area of epistemology.
Since God is not malicious or deceptive and has created our
cognitive faculties, Descartes is confident that when he uses his
reason properly, it cannot fail to lead him to the truth about reality.
Having found a rational ground for trusting his sense experience,
Descartes is now confident that he can have knowledge of the
existence and nature of his body and the external world.

Empiricism
Leading Questions:
What does rattlesnake, squid, turtle, or ostrich
meat taste like?
Is there any way to answer this if you have never
eaten the meat in question?
To what degree does this example suggest that
experience is the source of all our knowledge
about the world?

Leading Questions:
Suppose you were created just a minute ago (Dr.
Frankenstein brought you into existence).
In looking at a fire would you have any idea of
the pain it caused when you touch it?
Without previous experience, could you look at
an ice cube and know it was cold?

Leading Questions:
Think about the Eiffel Tower, apples, or Abraham Lincoln.
Can you imagine the world without them?
Since the non-existence of these things is possible, how do you know
they exist?
Could we know something did or did not exist apart from experience?
By simply sitting at our desk and reasoning about the world, would we
ever know what it contains?
Isn't it experience and not reason that tells us about reality?

Three Anchor Points of

Empiricism
1.

The only source of genuine knowledge is

sense experience.

2.

Reason is an unreliable and inadequate route

to knowledge unless it is grounded in the solid
bedrock of sense experience.

3.

There is no evidence of innate ideas within

the mind that are known apart from
experience.

1. The only source of genuine knowledge is sense

experience.
The empiricists compare the mind to a blank tablet upon
which experience makes it marks.
Without experience we would lack not only knowledge of
the specific features of the world but also the ability
even to conceive of qualities such as colors, odors,
textures, sounds, and tastes.
For example, if you had no eyes, the notion of color
would be without content.

In saying that our experience is the source of our

knowledge, the empiricist believes we have to be
content with conclusions that are probable rather
than absolutely certain, because most reasoning
that is based on some experience takes the form
of inductive arguments.
Sense experience may be incapable of providing
the absolute certainty that rationalists demand
but it is all we have to go on.

Why not be content with knowledge that is probable and

that leads us to successful engagements with the
external world?
We may wish for the full light of the sun (absolute
certainty) by which to see but we must be content with
what we have.
The candle that is set up in us shines bright enough for
our purposes.
The discoveries we can make with this ought to satisfy
us.

2. Reason is an unreliable and inadequate route

to knowledge unless it is grounded in the solid
bedrock of sense experience.
The empiricists accuse the rationalists of taking
fanciful flights of speculation without any
empirical data to anchor them to reality.
According to empiricists, every idea, concept, or
term must be tested by tracing it back to an
original experience from which it was derived.

So the empiricists insist that both the meaning of

our terms as well as the credibility of our beliefs
must be subjected to a reality-based empirical
test.
It is possible to have a completely coherent but
false system of ideas.
For example, Star Wars may be a coherent story
but does not describe anything real.

Because reason is not a sufficient guide to truth

it is not surprising that the various rationalists
offer different and conflicting accounts of the
nature of reality, God, and ethics.
For example, Descartes = free will, Spinoza =
pre-determined, loving God vs emotionless God.
Empiricists recognize the importance of reason in
making our experience intelligible.

They believe that the primary role that reason

plays in the acquisition of knowledge is to
organize the data of experience and draw
conclusions from it.
Reason without experience is like a potter
without clay or a computer without data.
The mind needs something to reason about and
where would it get this but from experience?

3. There is no evidence of innate ideas within

the mind that are known apart from experience.
Not everyone possesses so-called self evident
truths.
When we come into the world as infants the
mind is a blank tablet, and experience must
teach us what we need to know.

Even if we discover truths that seem to be

universally known and that always hold true, these
truths can be explained without positing innate
ideas.
Such truths are either 1. expressions of the
relations of our ideas or 2 generalizations from
experience.
In no case are there a priori truths that both tell us
about the world and are known apart from
experience.

According to empiricists, mathematical, logical,

or metaphysical statements are based on
definitions or linguistic conventions.
Universal truths are really highly probable
generalizations from experience.
Every event has a cause is considered a
methodological principle

Empiricist Answers to Three

Epistemological Questions
1.
2.

3.

Is knowledge possible?
Does reason provide us with knowledge of the
world independent of experience?
Does our knowledge represent reality as it
really is?

The four empiricists we examine will provide

different answers to each question (Aristotle,
John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume).

Aristotle
Aristotle (3884-322 BCE) was
a Greek philosopher who
made experience the
beginning point of knowledge
and took issue with the
rationalism of his teacher
Plato.
Aristotle was born in
Macedonia and grew up there.
Following a long family
tradition, Aristotles father
was a physician to the king.

Around age 18 Aristotle became a

student of Platos Academy in Athens.
He studied there for 20 years until Plato
died around 348 BCE.
In 342 BCE he was summoned by the
Macedonian King Philip who asked him
to tutor his 13 year old son Alexander,
the royal heir, who would later be known
as Alexander the Great.
In 335 BCE Aristotle returned to Athens
and founded his school The Lyceum,
which was located near the temple of
the god Apollo Lyceus, where most of his
writings were composed.

Aristotle on the Possibility of

Knowledge
In answer to question 1 Is knowledge possible?
Aristotle would answer yes.
Aristotle raised several arguments against the skeptics who
claimed that knowledge was impossible.
For example, Aristotle said that we can know the laws of logic.
(Aristotle was the first to set out the basic laws of logic).
One such principle being the law of non-contradiction, which
states that it is impossible for something to be both A and not A at
the same time.
The skeptic is either resigned to silence or else must acknowledge
that we can know logical truths.

Aristotles scientific research demonstrated that with

careful observation and a methodical collecting of facts,
we can acquire knowledge about the world.
Aristotle not only says that knowledge is possible but
that the pursuit of knowledge is intrinsic to our humanity.

All human beings by nature desire to know

By utilizing the correct method we will rise from the level
of merely raw sense data to the more refined level of
theoretical or scientific knowledge.

Aristotle and the Role of Reason

Question 2 asked: Does reason alone provide us
with knowledge of the world?
Aristotle says no.
He says that prior to experience the mind is like
a blank tablet (tabula rasa).
There is nothing there until experience makes its
mark on the tablet of the mind.

This idea of the mind being a blank tablet is

repeated by John Locke 2,000 years later and
becomes the iconic image of empiricism
thereafter.
Obviously, if the mind is like a blank tablet apart
from experience, this rules out the possibility of
there being any innate knowledge, contrary to
what Plato, Socrates and the other rationalists
claimed.

Aristotle and the Role of Reason

Our knowledge begins with concrete experiences
but we need more than sensations and individual
facts.
the dog experiences the smells, textures, and
tastes of things (such as a stash of bones) but
does not have genuine knowledge.
Science goes beyond knowledge of particular
facts in arriving at general conclusions about the
world.

Aristotle says we arrive at general knowledge

through a twofold process of induction and
intuition.
Through induction we become aware of
universals and necessary features within the
changing world of particulars.
Most of our knowledge comes from making
inductive generalizations from particulars.

Aristotle and the Role of Reason

Intuition refers to knowledge which is obtained
by first principles, including fundamental
principles of each of the sciences as well as
mathematical and logical truths.
Aristotle is convinced that the world consists of a
rational order that experience alone cannot
demonstrate but only acquaint us with.

Only through intellectual intuition may we come

to know the truths within experience.
For example, 2 + 2 = 4 is understood when
adding 2 apples to 2 apples.

Aristotle on the Representation

of Reality
Question 3: Does our knowledge represent
reality as it really is? Yes.
Aristotle thinks that because language, thought,
and reality seem to fit together they must share
the same structure.
First, thought and reality must be related. When
we reason from one proposition to another we
are going from one piece about the world to
other facts that are true of the world.

Second, language and reality must share the

same structure or else we could not speak of the
world.
Finally, language must have the same structure
as thought for us to put our thoughts into words.

John Locke
(1632-1704 CE)
Although the roots of empiricism go
back to ancient Greece, it was
English philosopher John Locke who
laid the foundations of modern
empiricism.
Locke studied theology, natural
science, philosophy, and medicine at
Oxford University.
Locke was active in political affairs,
and in addition to holding a number
of public offices, he helped draft the
Constitution for the American
Carolinas in 1669.

It is commonly held that the

Age of Enlightenment was
ushered in with the
publication of Lockes
seminal work An Essay
Concerning Human
Understanding in 1690.
With the exception of the
Bible, no book was more
influential than Lockes
essay in the 18th century.

Locke on the Possibility of

Knowledge
Question 1: Is knowledge possible? Yes.
Locke thought that experience gives us
knowledge that enables us to deal with the
external world.
The building blocks of all knowledge are what he
calls ideas.

He says that an idea is anything that is the

immediate object of perception, thought, or
understanding.
Examples: whiteness, hardness, sweetness,
thinking, motion, man, elephant, army,
drunkenness, and others.

7
The most fundamental and original atoms of
thought are simple ideas.
Simple ideas come in two varieties, ideas of
sensation and ideas of reflection.
Ideas of sensation are those such as yellow,
white, heat, cold, soft, hard, bitter, and sweet.

Ideas of reflection are gained from our

experience of our own mental operations, also
known as introspection, includes perceptions,
thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning,
knowing, and willing, and others.

Like the camera film that receives and records

the light that enters through its lens, so the
human mind passively receives simple ideas
through experience.
Although the mind cannot originate simple ideas
it can process them into more complex ideas.

Complex ideas are combinations of simple ideas that can

be treated as unified objects and given their own names,
according to three mental activities which produce them:
compounding (uniting together two or more simple
ideas),
relating (deriving complex ideas by relationships or
comparison), and
abstracting (common properties found in our experiences
of particulars, books, buildings, dogs, people).

Locke and the Role of

Reason
Question 2: Does reason alone provide us with
knowledge of the world? No.
Locke attacked the notion of innate ideas.
The idea that we could have innate ideas that we
were unaware of is rubbish because no
proposition can be said to be in the mind which it
never yet knew, which it was never yet
conscious of.

Without experience the mind would have no

content.
Once we have some experiences, then reason
can process these materials by compounding,
relating, and abstracting our ideas to produce
more complex ideas.
So reason alone cannot give us knowledge apart
from experience.

Locke says we first arrive at the concept of

imperfection from the things we experience and
then imaginatively remove these imperfections
until we form the concept of perfection.

For example, I can imagine a being that does not

have the gaps or faults that I have, which would
be a perfect being or idea.
From within our experience we can reason about
things that we do not experience.

Likewise, our ideas of infinity can be derived

from our ideas of the finite and our own limited
experience.
We can derive our idea of God by imagining
ourselves repeating and endlessly compounding
our finite experiences of existence, duration,
knowledge, power, wisdom, and all other
positive qualities until we arrive at our complex
idea of God.

Locke on the Representation

of Reality
Question 3: Does our knowledge represent
reality as it really is? Yes.
We must clarify what parts of our experience
objectively represent reality and what parts only
reflect our own subjectivity.

Properties are objective that are independent of us

and that are part of the makeup of the object itself
are called primary qualities.
The primary qualities of an object are its properties
of solidity, extension, shape, motion or rest, and
number.
In other words, they are the properties that can be
mathematically expressed and scientifically studied.

Properties that are subjectively perceived, that

are the effects the subject has on our sense
organs, and whose appearances are different
from the object that produces them are
secondary qualities.
Secondary qualities are properties of color,
sound, taste, smell, and texture.

Our experience of primary qualities gives us

knowledge of reality as it really is.
But our experience of secondary qualities
registers how the objective world effects our
particular sense organs.
We find it easy to agree on the size, shape,
number, and position of a glass of iced tea
because these are its objective, or primary,
qualities.

We might disagree on whether the tea is too

sweet .
This disagreement is because sweetness is a
secondary quality that is not really in the tea but
reflects the subjective ways that the tea affects
different taste buds.

George Berkeley
George Berkeley studied
at Trinity College in
Dublin, and is considered
Irelands most famous
philosopher.
In 1710 he was ordained
as a priest in the Anglican
Church where he later
became a bishop.

He donated books to
Harvard college, founded
the library at Yale, and
influenced the
establishment of kings
college known as Columbia
today.
He predicted that American
civilization would expand all
the way to the western
coast, where the State of
California established a
university after his name.

We also have ideas of our own psychological states

because we experience our own willing, doubting, and
loving.
Thus, ideas are images, feelings, or sense data that are
directly present to the mind wither in vivid sensory or
psychological experiences or in less vivid presentations
of memory or imagination.
When Berkeley says we have an idea of an apple he is
referring to the experience or memory of the combined
ideas (experiences) of roundness, redness, hardness,
and sweetness.

Berkeley on the Possibility of

Knowledge and Role of Reason
With Locke, Berkeley gave affirmative answers to the first two
basic questions of epistemology.
He believed that we do have knowledge, and that it was only
through experience and not reason that we have any
knowledge of reality.
Berkeley began his philosophy with an analysis of experience.
Following Locke, he refers to the concrete contents of our
experience as ideas.
Ideas = redness of a rose, coldness of ice, smell of freshly
mown grass, the taste of honey, and the sound of a flute.

Berkeleys Theory of Experience

Berkeley did not think that Locke went far enough as an
empiricist and so he carried to theory of empiricism further to
its logical conclusions.
Berkeley concluded that because all we know is what we find
in experience, it follows that we can never know or even
make sense of a material world that allegedly lies outside of
our own, private experiences.
Berkeleys philosophy is commonly referred to as subjective
idealism, although he himself called it immaterialism.
Idealism is a position that maintains that ultimate reality is
mental or spiritual in nature.

Berkeleys position is known as subjective idealism

because he believes reality is made up of many
individual minds rather than one cosmic mind.
According to Berkeley, reality is non-physical and
everything that exists falls into one of two categories,
minds (or spirits) and the ideas they perceive.
Berkeley claims that all the objects we encounter in
experience (books, apples, rocks) fall into category 2
and are nothing more than mind dependent collections
of ideas.

Berkeleys goal was made clear in the title of his

1710 work A Treatise concerning the Principles
of Human Knowledge wherein the chief causes of
error and difficulty in the sciences, with the
grounds of skepticism, Atheism, and Irreligion,
are inquired into.
Berkeley complained that the science and
philosophy of Locke and Newton paved the way
for atheism and skepticism.

In contrast with Locke and Newton, he argued

that our experiences of objects in our
environment necessarily come from God and not
from matter, thus eliminating atheism.
Also, he argues that there is no external,
material reality beyond our ideas, then we are
always in direct contact with reality (the contents
of our experience) and skepticism is refuted.

The Argument from the Mental

Dependency of Ideas
Berkeleys argument is formulated as follows:
1.

2.

3.
4.

Sensory objects (houses, mountains, rivers)

are things present to us in sense experience.
What is presented to us in sense experience
consists solely of our ideas (or sensations).
Ideas exist solely in our minds.
Therefore, sensible objects exist solely in our
minds.

Berkeley on the Ideas of Matter

Berkeley argued that matter is unintelligible and empty of
content.
Matter is a misleading term for the collection of sensory
experiences we have, such as texture and hardness (in which
case it is internal to the mind) or something external to the
mind that is without shape, color, odor, taste, or texture.
A mind independent object could not have these qualities
because these kinds of sensations are experienced within the
mind.
If an object did not have such qualities it would be a kind of
nothingness that we can never experience, know, or imagine.

Berkeley on the Representation

of Reality
Berkeley and Locke disagree on the answer to
the third epistemological question concerning
knowledge representing reality as it really is.
Lockes view is known as representative
realism = the view that we do not directly
experience external objects, but their primary
qualities (such as shape and size) produce ideas
in us that accurately represent these real
properties of the objects.

Berkeleys position is that we can only know

what reality is like if our ideas (the contents of
our experience) are the only reality there is to be
known.
Lockes distinction between objective and
subjective qualities cannot be made since all the
qualities of objects are within our experience and
equally objective.

For example, how do you know an apple is

round?
You know this because the experience of an
apple is always the experience of a round, red,
patch in your visual field.
Its roundness and redness always go together in
our experience.

Hence Berkeley argues, our experience of the

primary qualities is always inseparable from our
experience of the secondary qualities.
Since the latter are subjective and mind
dependent it follows that the primary qualities
are also.

The Cause of Our Ideas

According to Berkeley, only a mind can produce ideas.
If our minds did not produce the ideas or experiences we
encounter, then Gods mind must have created them within us.
God directly gives us the world of our experience without the
intermediate step of external physical matter.
God continuously maintains the world in existence, for even if we
are not experiencing a particular object, it still exists within Gods
mind.
Contrary to Descartes evil genius, Berkeley believed that a
benevolent God was producing experiences within our minds and
that these experiences are the only reality.

We can still enjoy the coolness of water and the warmth of a

fire.
The only difference is that we will realize that these
experiences are in the form of mental events provided us by
God.
According to Berkeley, you can reject the theory of an
external, mind independent, physical world and still have a
world of real objects within your experience.
Furthermore, science is still possible as long as we review it as
the recording of regularities within our experiences and the
predicting of future experiences based on this view.

David Hume
David Hume was born in
Edinburgh Scotland into
a Calvinist family and he
attended Edinburgh
University.
He published a number
of important works on
human nature, the
theory of knowledge,
religion, and morality.

Hume had a scandalous reputation in his time

due to his controversial beliefs about skepticism
and religion.
His reputation was enhanced by his 1757 work
Natural History of Religion which was a less
than sympathetic account of the origin of
religious impulse in human experience.

Due to a desire to live quietly and removed from

all clamor, he requested his book Dialogues
Concerning Natural Religion be published after
his death.
It has since become a classic in the philosophy of
religion.

Humes Empiricism
Hume was an empiricist, for he believed that all knowledge
of the world comes through experience.
The contents of consciousness are what he calls perceptions.
Perceptions include our original experiences, which he labels
impressions.
There are two kinds of impressions:
1. Sense date (visual data, sounds, odors, tastes, tactile
data)
2. Internal impressions (composed of contents of
psychological experiences)

Hume defines impressions as all our more lively

perceptions, when we hear, or see, or feel, or
love, or hate, or desire, or will.
Perceptions also include what he calls ideas, or
the contents of our memories and imagination.
Our impressions are more vivid and trustworthy
than the copies we find of them in our ideas, for
an idea to have legitimacy it must be traceable
to original impressions.

In addition to arguing that all our knowledge

about the world comes through experience,
Hume adds that none of our knowledge about
the world comes through reason.
Reason can only tell us about the relationships
between our own ideas, it can map the
connections between the ideas in our minds, but
it cannot establish connections between those
ideas and the external world.

Hume on Causality
Hume examines what we can know about the
world.
Hume contends that we can learn nothing about
what lies outside the subjective contents found
within our experiences.
According to Hume, most of our judgments about
the world are based upon our inferences from
causes and effects, which assumes the principle
of induction.

Principle of Induction could be summarized as

the assumption that the future will be like the
past.
This principle requires the belief in the uniformity
of nature = the thesis that the laws of nature
that have been true thus far will continue to be
true tomorrow.
Hume argues that just because we have
discovered certain things hold true in the past

Hume argued that causes and effects are distinct

events and the only reason we connect a
particular cause with a particular effect is
because the two have been constantly conjoined
in our experience.

For example, in our past experience whenever a

flame touched gunpowder, an explosion resulted.
We expect that this result will be true in the
future because we trust the principle of induction
and believe that the future will be like the past.

How do you know that if you touch a flame right now you will feel
pain?
How do you know that if you taste sugar it will be sweet?
You probably are reasoning in this way:
1.
2.

In the past I have found that fire causes pain and sugar is sweet
Therefore, when I encounter similar examples of fire and sugar,
their effects will be similar to the past cases.

Statement 1 is certainly true but you need an intermediate step to

get from 1 to 2:
1a. The future will always be like the past.

Hume on Knowledge about the

External World
The problem that Hume raises is that
impressions are always data that are internal to
our subjective experience, and, hence, we have
no idea about what is external to our experience.
We tend to believe in a world that continues to
exist apart from our experience because of the
repeated experiences of similar impressions
throughout time.

For example, you believe that this book is the same one
that you held yesterday because it looks the same as
the previous one and you found it exactly where you
left it.
But all we can say, based on our experience, is that the
impressions you are having now are similar to the
impressions you had yesterday.
To this data, the mind adds the ungrounded hypothesis
that even when you were not having impressions of this
book, the same entity existed continuously between
yesterday and today.

Hume argues that we cannot make causal

judgments about what lies outside
experience.
Hume does not deny that the external world
exists, he agrees that it is a natural and
almost unavoidable belief that we have, but
our fundamental beliefs are based on
psychological habits that carry us far
beyond what logic and experience could
ever prove to us.

Hume on the Self

In our experience we find only a flow of psychological contents, but
we do not find any metal container (the mind) that persists apart
from them.
Humes skeptical conclusion concerning the self is based on the
following argument:
If all we can know are sensory impressions or our internal
psychological states, then we can never experience the self.
We cannot experience a self because it is not something that has a
color, shape, sound, odor, taste, or texture.
We cannot experience a continually existing substantial self,
because our psychological states are only momentary phenomena.

Reason cannot demonstrate even our most fundamental

beliefs, but there is no need to rationally demonstrate our
fundamental beliefs for them to be practically useful.
For Hume, skepticism is a theoretical position that reminds
us to be less dogmatic and more modest and reserved
about our beliefs, realizing that they are never completely
justified.
What saves us from the harsh implications of skepticism
and returns us to life is the combination of nature, out gutlevel instincts, the powerful demands of practical necessity,
and even the distractions of our non-philosophical life.

Hume on the Three Questions

About Knowledge
1. Is it possible to have knowledge? Hume
pointed out that if all we can know is the sensory
contents of experience, how can we have
knowledge of an external world, our own minds,
or God?
Hume believes he is more consistent than Locke
or Berkeley, for he stays strictly within the
bounds of experience.
All we are left with is the flow of sensory data.

It is ironic that Locke, Berkeley, and Hume

started out trying to avoid the ethereal
speculation of the rationalists by grounding
knowledge in the rock solid foundation of
experience.
Instead, Hume showed that a rigorous
empiricism merely leaves us with a stream of
consciousness and does not allow us to draw any
inferences about what lies beyond that limited
domain.

Hence, all that we can know are subjective

contents of our individual minds, but this
conclusion means that it is impossible to
distinguish between the way things appear to us
and the way things really are.
Thus, we lack a necessary condition for having
knowledge, according to Hume.

2.

Does reason alone tell us about reality?

Humes answer is that not only can experience

not tell us about reality, but reason cannot either.
Reason can tell us about the relationship
between our ideas but it gives us no information
about the world.
For example, logic can tell us that all unicorns
have one horn but cannot tell us if unicorns exist.

3.

Does our knowledge represent reality as it really

is?

The only certainty that we can have concerns the

relationships of our own ideas.
But since these judgments concern only the realm of
ideas, they do not tell us about the external world.
Such judgments are never certain and merely give us
information about what has been true in past
experience.

Immanuel Kant
(1724-1804)
Immanuel Kant was born in
Konigsberg in what was
then known as East Prussia
(now Kaliningrad Russia),
and he lived there all of his
life.

Kants theory of knowledge was revolutionary.

It began with a devastating critique of the
dominant philosophical traditions (rationalism
and empiricism) and ended by radically revising
how we think about knowledge.
As a result, we know categorize philosophy as
either pre-Kantian or post-Kantian.

Kants Agenda
Kant believed that we do have knowledge and
that it was undeniable that arithmetic, geometry,
and physics provide us with information about
our world.
He also believed that these disciplines involve
universal and necessary principles such that no
future discoveries will ever shake our conviction
of their truth.

For example, it seems to be the case that

anything we experience will conform to the
following rules:
1.

The shortest distance between two lines

will always be a straight line.

2.

All events will have a cause.

The question for Kant was How is such universal

and necessary knowledge possible?
He thought that the rationalists and empiricists
each provided us with one half of the answer and
that a compromise between them was required.

Kant concluded that both reason and experience

play a role in constructing our knowledge.
Accordingly, Kants epistemology could be
referred to as rational-empiricism or
empirical-rationalism, though he himself called
it critical philosophy as he wanted to critique
reason.

Synthetic a posteriori knowledge- knowledge

that is based on experience and that adds new
information to the subject. (lemon juice is acidic)
Synthetic a priori knowledge- knowledge that is
acquired through reason, independently of
experience, that is universal and necessary, and
that provides information about the way the
world is. (all events have a cause)

Kant believed with the empiricists that all

knowledge began with experience.
He accused the rationalists of attempting to fly
above experience to know what reality is like
beyond our experience.
He agreed that this stepping out of experience
cannot be done.

Kant begins his major work The Critique of Pure

Reason with a discussion of the sources of our
knowledge.
All our knowledge begins with experience.
But though all our knowledge begins with
experience, it does not follow that it all arises out of
experience
, indicating that some of the rationalists
assumptions were still needed.

He cautions that reason operating apart from

experience is like the dove flapping its wings in
empty space.
In both cases, reason and the doves wings need
something (experience or air) to work with or
against to be effective.

Kant agreed with the empiricists that our

knowledge could not soar beyond the limits of
experience, that the contents of experience
provided the materials for all knowledge.
Hence, any metaphysical conclusions about what
reality is like beyond the limits of experience had
to be ruled out as ungrounded.

This conclusion meant that a nonphysical self,

the infinity of the universe, or God, could not be
objects of human knowledge.
Notice that he did not say that such things could
not exist but merely that we could not have
knowledge of them.
Kant wanted to start where Hume started (in
experience), without ending up where Hume
ended up (in skepticism).

Kants Revolution
Copernicus rejected the theory that sun revolves around the
earth but rather the earth revolves around the sun.
Similarly, Kant proposed a Copernican revolution in
epistemology.
Kant asks us to consider the possibility that objects conform
to our knowledge rather than our knowledge conforms to
objects.
The only way the fluctuating, fragmented assortment of
sense data can provide us with the experience of sense
objects is if the mind imposes a certain rational structure on
it.

Kant says the world that science studies is not

something beyond experience but is a world of
experience that the mind has actively filtered,
digested, shaped, and organized according to
the minds own structure.
According to Kant, we can find certainty and
universal knowledge within experience if the
mind organizes experience in a necessary and
universal way.

In this way, the mind does not conform to the

external world but the contents found in
experience do conform to the structure of the
mind.
The mind constructs is objects out of the raw
materials provided by the senses, hence the
name constructivism.

The way in which reality appears to us depends on the

contribution of both the senses and the intellect.
The only world we can know is the world of our
experience which is partially constructed by the mind.
This world consists of things as they appear to us, which
Kant refers to as phenomena.
Outside our experience are the things in themselves
known as noumena, which we cannot assign any positive
content to, it lies beyond any possible experience.

Phenomena = in Kants theory, the things as

they appear to us that exist in the world of our
experience, which is partially constructed by the
mind.
Noumena = in Kants theory, the things in
themselves that exist outside our experience.
It is impossible for us to leap outside experience
to compare our view of the world as structured
by the mind with the way reality is in itself.

Our Experience of Space and

Time
Kant says that the mind imposes a spatial and
temporal form on experience.
Space and time are not mysterious things that
appear within experience: instead they are
fundamental frames of reference within which
objects appear to us.
It is meaningless to talk about space apart from
spatial perspective found within experience.

Likewise, time is not an entity existing in itself out there is the

world.
It is a framework within which objects are presented to us.
Kant says our experience of space and time is not the only one but
are uniquely human as they would be different for a fly and for
God.
The flys experience of space is one in which every object appears
hundreds of times.
God might experience reality without our spatial limitations and
might be able to know the past, present, and future in one,
simultaneous experience.

Again, our spatially and temporally formed

experience is not the only way that reality could
be known.
Even though we can suppose that reality could
be experienced in radically different ways by
God, our experience will always have a particular
kind of spatial and temporal dimension.

The Categories of
Understanding
Kant refers to the raw data of sense perceptions
as intuitions
Intuition to Kant means the object of the minds
direct awareness, such as the redness of a rose
being sensory intuition.

Two powers of the mind are at work in experience,

sensibility and understanding.
Sensibility = a passive power, it is the ability of the
mind to receive sensory intuitions.
Understanding = an active power, enables us to
organize the intuitions we receive into meaningful
objects by applying concepts to our experience.
Examples of categories of understanding = substance,
causality, unity, plurality, possibility, necessity,

What is Reality Like?

The good news of Kant's epistemology is that we
can have objective, universal, and necessary
knowledge of the world, since the world we know is
always the world of experience and the world of
experience will always have a certain structure.
Because of this structure, synthetic a priori
judgments are possible.
What is crucial for Kant is that every human mind
will structure experience in the same universal and
necessary way.

The bad news of Kants position is that we can

never know reality in itself because we can never
jump outside our minds and see what reality is
like before the minds have done their job of
processing and filtering it.
The world we know is the world that appears to
us in experience (phenomena).
But because experience is structured by the mid,
we can never know reality in itself (noumena).

Self, Cosmos, and God

Kants epistemology implies that we cannot know such
things as the self, the world as a whole, or God, for these
things are outside the bounds of any possible
experience.
Attempts to reason about these topics are transcendent
illusions.
Metaphysical illusion is the assumption that we can
reason about the cosmos, or the world as a totality.
All we can know are bits and pieces of experience but
the totality is never experienced.

If our knowledge is limited to only what we can

experience, then we are prevented from reasoning about
God.
We cannot reason about the cause of the world because
causality is only a way of relating the items within our
experience.
But if the limits of reason prevent us from proving Gods
existence, they also prevent us from disproving it as
well.
The theist and atheist are in the same boat.

In the final analysis, the notions of the self, cosmos, and God
are illusory if we think we can have knowledge of their objects,
but Kant considers them important and irresistible notions.
Though the ideas lack empirical content, they do serve the
useful function of regulating our thought.
They provide us with an ideal toward which we will always
strive: knowledge that is a complete, unified, and systematic
whole.
Though we cannot have rational knowledge of God, we might
still find the idea indispensable to make sense of morality.

To Summarize, Kant believed:

1.

We can never know reality as is it in itself

2.

Our minds structure our experience of reality

3.

4.

There is a single set of forms and categories by

which this structure is done, which is universal
to every human knower
This process is fundamentally rational