Henry Allison 's Two Aspect View

Berkeley's attempt to popularize his pro-mind conception of the external world, Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, serves to undermine Locke's distinctions between primary and secondary qualities of the external world. In his publication, Berkeley uses dialogue between Hylas and Philnous, which consists of a series of arguments, to determine the most sound theory. Ground rules of the debate consists of: whoever of the two's position avoids skepticism about knowledge of physical objects wins and that if one position can be shown to entail that we cannot know anything about physical objects, consequently that position should be dismissed as absurd (Kelly, 2013). Throughout the arguments, Berkeley weakens Locke's theory of Limited Representationalism by counteracting Locke's with the possibility that instead of “matter” that comprises physical objects in the external world, these objects are simply ideas. Drawing back on Berkeley's catchy motto, “to be is to be perceived”, he proposes three arguments that support his idealist view that the motto encapsulates. The three pieces of support also importantly shed skepticism upon Lockes primary and secondary distinctions involving “matter”. The three statements of support include: The argument that physical

Indirect realists often ask us to consider hallucination and perceptual illusions. In hallucinations, you see something, but nothing which exists. In illusions, you see something, but not as it really is e.g. a straight stick in water appears bent. In each case, what you see, they claim, is a mental thing, an appearance, a ‘sense-datum’. We can then say that what we perceive ‘immediately’ is the appearance, which has secondary qualities; and that it is by enquiries@alevelphilosophy.co.uk © Michael Lacewing perceiving the appearance that we perceive the physical object, which has only primary qualities. So we see the appearance of the vase, which is a mental thing which really is red; and this way, we indirectly see the vase, which is a physical

The topic of knowledge and belief has been a subject of investigation and a primary field in philosophical research for centuries. Whether it was Aristotle or Descartes, multiple ideas on knowledge and belief arise, such as the epistemological theories of foundationalism or coherentism, which provide philosophical explanations to this debate. For the sake of this essay, and in my own opinion, knowledge should be distinguished from belief. Everyone is subject to different types of beliefs based on upbringing, however knowledge of basic items is universal, therefore it immediately becomes apparent that there is a clear distinction between the two concepts.

By chiefly drawing on part II of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (PI), I will advance the claim that his concepts of aspect perception and aspect dawning have ethical implications. These ethical implications are minimally worth considering, or maximally something that holds value. This paper is divided into three sections. Section one begins by defining aspect-perception and aspect-dawning, and then proceeds to distinguish ordinary perceptions of ‘seeing’ from visual perceptions of ‘seeing-as’. Section two starts by citing relevant passages where Wittgenstein alludes to possible examples of aspect perception and aspect dawning. By building on these

Through the course of this paper, I began to wonder if it was even worth finishing. Thoughts rushed through my head on whether this Word document I was typing on even really existed. My reality as I presumed it to be may actually be thoughts in my head, and this philosophy assignment may have just been some weird way my own mind decided to entertain me. Perhaps yet, it may have been the work of a divine mind, taking helm of the way my thoughts flowed. These were all questions that came up as I read through George Berkeley 's, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. For in his manuscript, he addresses skepticism about the physical world, that is the ambiguity humans have in how a physical world outside of our minds is like. Berkeley has a simple solution to this. Through his interpretations of ideas, Berkeley comes to the conclusion that there should not be any skepticism surrounding the physical world because the physical world simply does not exist.

2.) Theories as lenses: our perception is shaped by the way we want to see things. Thus, we

Materialism, also known as physicalism, can be defined as the belief that physical matter (material objects) is the only substance to our world; every being and phenomena are rooted purely in physical matter and nothing else. In an attempt to refute the argument for materialism, Frank Jackson proposed what is known as the knowledge argument. The argument states that one can know all the material facts about human experiences and phenomena, but it is impossible to know these experiences subjectively, how they actually feel, just through the facts. Consequently, there are other facts than just the purely physical ones (Jackson 1982, 1986). While this argument brings about good, conceivable points, this essay will attempt to point out the shortcomings

McPherson, James M. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society.Vol. 139, No. 1. (Mar., 1995), pp. 1-10.

The Knowledge Argument by Jackson is one of the main threats to Physicalism. Physicalism says that everything that is or could ever exist is ultimately physical in nature. The Knowledge Argument claims that there are truths about consciousness that cannot be deduced from the complete physical truth. Lewis’ response on the other hand, disagrees with the Knowledge Argument. In this paper I will address the Knowledge Argument and Lewis’ response to it.

Immanuel Kant claims that our concepts of space and time are transcendent and provide a framework for cognition to begin to understand raw sensory input from the outside world. For Kant, space and time are a priori pure intuitions, knowledge existing outside of sensory experience. This paper will further dissect Kant’s arguments for space and time as pure intuitions before making an argument in favor of Kant’s understanding of space and time.

G.E Moore, in his “Proof of an External World” attempts to offer the sceptics evidence for the existence of the external world. His evidence was simple, namely that of him having hands. In this essay, I will present Moore’s argument, and offer a critique, based on the Cartesian sceptic view.

Contextualism today, is defined as the truth of a particular knowledge ascription dependent on the context in which that truth is uttered. Over the past century and decades there have been many great debates between philosopher’s over contextualism and how it can be used to disregard Skepticism. I agree with Cohen’s defense of Contextualism in regard’s to both how he answers Skepticism and Conee’s objections.

In respect of the theory of cognition, where Duns Scotus had placed between the perceiving subject and the object perceived a "sensible species" and an "intelligible species," Ockham considers these as superfluous machinery. Objects call forth sense-impressions in us, which are transmuted by the active intellect into mental images. These images are thus a product of the intellect, not species which flow from the object into the intellectus possibilis. The reality of these images is thus, in the modern use of the terms, not objective but subjective. This is true not merely of the "terms of first intention" formed directly from sense-impression, but also of the "terms of second intention," i.e., the abstract terms which take note of common attributes, or universals. These latter correspond to a tendency of the human mind, which can not perceive individuals without at the same time attempting to form a general concept. A white object simultaneously suggests abstract whiteness; an extended, related, enduring object forces the conception of extension, relation, duration. The result of this line of reasoning is the absolute subjectivity of all concepts and universals and the limitation of knowledge to the mind and its concepts-although these are real entities because of their subjective existence in the mind, reproducing the actual according to the constitution of the mind. Thus Ockham is really the pioneer of modern epistemology. The

Some examples are belief, desire, ideas and motivation. Next, cognitive psychologists think memory structures determine how information is perceived, processed, stored, retrieved and forgotten. Cognitive psychology include perception, categorization, memory, knowledge representation, language and thinking processes. “The relationship of cognitive psychology to classroom is like the relationship of physics to engineering. Knowledge of the mind gleaned from cognitive psychology experiments will not tell teachers how to teach children, any more than knowledge of physics can prescribe what a bridge should look like” (Willingham, 2009)

As with many philosophers worth studying, a common theme present amongst René Descartes, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant is the fact that all three philosophers challenged the traditional ways of thinking about philosophy respective to their eras. In certain aspects, all three of these philosophers also grappled with understanding, discovering, and logically explaining the power of the mind to shape whole truths. From Descartes’ foundational work with methodological doubt to Kant’s contribution to previous philosophical concepts such as synthetic judgments, all three men made undeniably valuable advances in epistemological thought despite the occasional controversies associated with their forward thinking during their time.