PHLA10H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 13: Foundationalism, Parallel Postulate, Senses Fail
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Foundationalism: think of a building, has two parts; a strong foundation and the superstructure (the rest of the building, descartes divided beliefs into two parts, foundational beliefs. Built on a foundational belief: can also be called euclidean theory of knowledge, functionalist ideas are formed like this, first identify the beliefs that the provide the foundation of knowledge. Said beliefs must have special properties (eg. must be past doubt: then once the foundation is established, other ideas can be linked to it. Descartes method of doubt: descartes said for beliefs to be foundational, there can be no doubt formed around them (are indubitable) If it is dubitable it is not functionalist. If something is dubitable it is not false, it"s just not absolutely certain. The method applied to: an a posteriori belief is one that requires expriance to be know (eg. youch, vision, smell etc. , descartes says these can be doubted as your senses can be false, eg.