Knowledge and justification
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Rationalism, Mathematics and Logic, Innateness
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Rationalism is the attempt to arrive at objective knowledge through an examination of the ideas that are innate in us. For an idea to be innate means that it could not be derived from sense-experience. It must come from some other faculty or power of the mind. Many rationalists believe that innate ideas have in fact been placed in their mind by God. This is the view of Descartes. The first and foremost rationalist is Plato. He believed that the soul is immortal and predates our birth. In other words, we existed in another form before we were born. Prior to birth we go through a process of amnesia and forget our previous existence. However, our capacity to know anything depends on the knowledge we acquired in our former existence. Whenever we learn something we are really only recollecting it. Descartes merely asserts that we have innate ideas and does not discuss the doctrine of recollection. It is sufficient for him that God has placed innate ideas directly into our minds. In order to demonstrate the existence of innate ideas rationalists must find some branch of knowledge that accepted as being knowledge and also cannot be derived from sense-experience. Knowledge of mathematics and logic are the prime candidates.
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Contents of
Knowledge and justification
1 The distinction between knowledge and belief
2 Unsound, invalid, possible world and fallacy
3 Counterexample, exposing a fallacy
4 Belief and doubt
5 Believing that and knowing that
6 Knowledge and certainty - the tripartite definition of knowledge
7 True, justified belief
8 Plato: The Theaetetus
9 Plato: Forms
10 The possibility of scepticism and categories of belief
11 Global scepticism
12 The Argument from Authority
13 Valid argument, inference and justification
14 Chain of deductive inferences, self-evident truths
15 Sense experience, empiricism
16 The dialectic method, thesis and antithesis
17 Rationalism and empiricism; the Discourse on the Method
18 The Cogito, Reason and Rational Insight
19 Bertrand Russell, Acquaintance
20 Universals, Forms
21 Scepticism, Existentialism and Faith
22 The evil genius argument
23 Existentialism
24 Soren Kierkegaard - Fear and Trembling - the Absurd
25 Foundation for Knowledge
26 Theory of Knowledge, Epistemology and Metaphysics
27 Rationalism, Mathematics and Logic, Innateness
28 Innate Ideas
29 The a priori
30 Truth by convention, Hume and the Method of Doubt
31 Hume and the distinction between belief and knowledge
32 Hume and the definition of belief
33 Truth as a logical operator on sentences
34 The correspondence theory of truth
35 Wittgenstein: On Certainty
36 Wittgenstein and the coherence theory of truth
37 William James and Pragmatism
38 W.V.O. Quine, pragmatism and the Two Dogmas of Empiricism
39 Postivism and pragmatism
40 Pragmatism and utilitarianism
41 Pragmatism and religiion
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