Doubting Descartes’ Doubt
Meditations of Descartes presents a series of arguments about a thinking thing and a God’s existence. In this essay, I will doubt his reasoning by pointing out at some fallacies. In search of a foundation of knowledge, Descartes starts from the scratch by undermining everything that he knows. He asks himself what could ground his […]
Goldman and Dretske on knowledge
Alvin Goldman makes another hypothesis to the traditional account of knowledge for the fact that Smith cannot be said to know P. What makes P true is the fact that Brown is in Barcelona, but this fact has nothing to do with Smith’s believing P. That is, there is no causal connection between the fact […]
Gettier’s objection to traditional account of knowledge
The traditional account of knowledge is as follows: P is true (truth) S believes that P (belief) S is justified in believing that P (justification) For instance, we can say that I know that it snowed if and only if: It really snowed, and I believe that it snowed, and I am justified in believing […]
Russell’s account of knowledge
Bertrand Russell’s account of knowledge is one of the forms of Cartesian skepticism. Russell claims that we can never truly know the physical object itself without knowing all its relations and all its qualities. Knowing something would mean knowing all the facts of which a thing is a constituent. From which we would deduce that […]
Descartes’ necessary condition of knowledge
Descartes is skeptical about the truth of one’s beliefs. He develops the following argument: 1) If I am to know that I am sitting by the fire (P), then I must know that I am not dreaming that I am sitting by the fire (Q) P → Q 2) I cannot know that I am […]
Moore’s proof of an external world
Moore’s argument is a defense against radical skepticism of Descartes. Here is one hand. Here is another hand. Therefore, two human hands exist at this moment. Thus, external objects exist. Translating this reasoning by Descartes argument, we will get the following: If I know that I am sitting by the fire, then I know that […]