PHIL 100W Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Cartesian Doubt, Evil Demon, Descriptive Knowledge

• School: Simon Fraser University
• Department: Philosophy
• Course: PHIL 100W
• Professor: Michaela Lucas

Document Summary

Rene descartes (raionalist) just tried to ind beter, irmer understanding of universe; not the purpose/funcion of everything. Examples of proposiional knowledge: i know that bc is in canada ; i know that the sun will rise tomorrow . Scepicism: this is the view that we do not have any knowledge at all (phyrronian skepicism) or that the only thing that we know is that we know nothing (academic skepicism). To claim to know that p implies that one believes that p. Merely having true belief can just be a lucky guess, not really knowledge. Truth and belief alone though are not suicient for knowledge. It seems that something more is required for knowledge. Raionalism vs. empiricism: raionalism is the view that we can have knowledge through reason alone. Reason alone is suicient for discovering truth (knowledge is grounded in reason alone)