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- In what sense can our authors be called empiricists? (Here, as in
the other topics below, you should most likely select two of them to
compare, not necessarily all three together). To what extent would
empiricism mean the same thing applied to each, and in what ways
would the meaning of the term have to differ? For example: what is
experience for each of them, and in what way does it form the sole
basis for our knowledge? As opposed to what? What makes anyone so much
as suppose there might be some other basis (i.e., against what
opponent is the empiricist arguing)? What else is there to our
knowledge besides experience? What is the difference between
sensation, imagination, and thought (if the last two are different)?
What role is played by space, time, body (solid extended substance),
spirit (incorporeal substance), or causation, in making experience
possible and/or how does experience form the basis for the
knowledge we have (if any) about those things?
- In what ways do our authors take themselves to be, or present themselves
as, partisans of common sense? What is common sense, and what
is good about it? What opposes it (e.g. absurd, wrangling philosophy,
superstition) and why? What forces tend to corrupt healthy common
sense? How can we tell the difference between what is really common
sense and what is merely received opinion or entrenched superstition?
When, if at all, is it possible or necessary for correct philosophy to
depart from common sense? By adding to it? By outright opposing it?
- What does or would it mean, according to our authors, for God to
exist? How could we know, or how do we know, whether he exists?
What possible role is there, for example, for revelation, for
tradition, for common sense, or for philosophical argument, in
establishing the right conclusion? How do our moral failings (e.g.,
greed, ambition, desire for power, laziness, desire to escape
responsibility) tend to distort our thought about this subject in
particular? Why should we care about getting the correct answer?
- What, according to our authors, is or should be the relationship
between our theoretical concerns (our concerns qua wanting to know the
truth) and our practical concerns (our concerns qua wanting to act
correctly)? What can or should or must we be satisfied as agents
(doers), and how different from what we could be satisfied with as
knowers? Is there a kind of knowledge or justified faith that is based
on practical principles (i.e., moral principles)? Or must it always be
the other way around (practical conclusions must be based on
theoretical principles)? Or could it go both ways? Consider relating
these questions specifically to our knowledge of and/or reliance
on the existence of external world, the predictability of the future,
the existence of others (other minds = finite spirits), or the
existence of God.
- What, according to our authors, is the meaning of personal
identity: in what sense can we say that the same person exists at
different times? Why do we or should we think that there are such
continuing, identical persons (including ourselves)? Do we know
that there are? What, if any, is the role of experience (including
inner sense) in establishing that conclusion, if there is such a
conclusion? Why, if at all, does it matter whether the conclusion is
correct? What would be the epistemological and/or moral
implications of deciding that there are no such continuing, identical
persons (persons who are the same person at different times)?
Or is that suppositions just absurd?
- What, according to our authors, is the basis of, and the content of,
mathematics (i.e., arithmetic and geometry though you might want
to focus on just one of the two)? In what sense, if at all, is
mathematical knowledge better (more certain, more precise, more
universal, more reliable, more useful) than other types of knowledge,
and why? What are the limits of mathematical knowledge? In what ways
do mathematicians tend to claim more than they are really justified in
claiming, and why? What, if anything, makes mathematics especially
important in physical science? In mechanics (or say, roughly, in
engineering)? How is moral knowledge similar to or different from
mathematics?
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Up: Phil. 100Cfinal_paper, Spring 14
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Abe Stone
2014-05-19