PHL 708 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Undressed
25 Sep 2016
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Beliefs: may be true or false. Proposition/statement: something that is true or false. First stage of doubt: never place trust in something that has deceived you even once. It is a mark of prudence never to place our complete trust in those who have deceived us even once (at 18: reliability principle. If a belief p derives from a source s, and if s is not always reliable, withhold assent from p. This indicates that we should not trust our senses. If you don"t accept it, you don"t accept descartes conclusions. Descartes is interested in the foundations for science. The experience of being led into error by senses is a common one (ex: think you see a person in the distance, turns out to be a tree) Notice that descartes himself thinks the argument from the unreliability of the senses has limits: Ex: i am sitting here by the fire in my dressing gown
