Why is Socrates’ life important?

How do I Know?

Love of Wisdom: Triple A Set of Tools

• Analysis– Break down

• Assessment:– Coherent, Complete, Correct?

• Argument– The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not

be victory, but progress.” – Joseph Joubert

How many beliefs do you hold?

“Man is what he believes.”-- Anton Chekov

Two parts of a Belief

Objective : Content of the Proposition

Subjective: the mental state holding a Proposition

Belief+Desire = Action

I believe someone …

I desire that… I spend time editing this slide

Belief leads to action

How do we know?

Why do we try to know…?

Believing is an Activity

• Subject• Object

• What is the goal of a belief? What are you trying to attain?

We want our beliefs to be True

• Belief => Knowledge (or a properly justified true belief)

• Knowledge => Truth

“To know something is to know it is true”

Skepticism

Role of Skepticism: Why do we have the beliefs that we hold?

By doubting we come at truth.

Mmmmm?• We can never know.

OR • True knowledge is

impossible.

But how can you say that?

Source Skepticism Beliefs

• Why do we have any beliefs that we hold?

• Beliefs about:– The past– The present– The future

• I believe that Plato taught Aristotle

• I believe that my Mom is at home while I’m at school.

• I believe that America will remain a democracy.

Sources of Belief

– How do we know that sense experience is ever reliable?

• Circular Reasoning!

• My Memory• Testimony of others• My sense experience

• Skeptic asks:– How do you know that

human memory is ever reliable?

– How do you know that others’ testimonies are reliable

How do we know?

• Epistemology: the study of how we know what we know

• Empiricism–Locke, Hume

“No man’s knowledge here can go beyond his experience” – John Locke

Rationalism:

• Cause and effect• Passage of time• Spatial awareness

• If A is greater than B and B is greater than C, then A is greater than C.

• Descartes

What is rational?

Evidentialism

“It is wrong for anyone, anywhere, to believe anything without sufficient evidence. This is literally true always.”

?

Belief Conservation Principle

• For any proposition P:1. If taking a certain cognitive stance toward P would

require rejecting or doubting a vast number of current beliefs, and

2. You have no independent reason to reject or doubt all those other beliefs, and

3. You have no compelling reason to take up that cognitive stance toward P…

• Then it is more rational for you not to take that cognitive stance toward P.

Philosophy is the love of wisdom and the endeavor to attain it

• You are as much a real person as you are deep. As with the depths of a diamond, the interior is twice as important as the surface. There are people who are all façade, like a house left unfinished when the funds run out. They have the entrance of a palace but the inner rooms of a cottage.

• The Art of Worldly Wisdom, Balthasar Gracian, 17th c