of Goal epistemology is to find out what knowledge is and if we can really obtain it. Knowledge as we know it is a true, justified, belief. The external world is anything that can exist outside of the mind. Things in the external world can be created from the internal world but once it has been created it is officially external. Descartes and Stroud both claim that we can have no knowledge that anything in the external world actually exists. 1. The Skeptic and its importance a. Skeptic says that everything you think you know you don't b. Skeptic makes and interesting claim and one that must be acknowledged because we want to have knowledge but here we have someone who says that we do not. c. Stroud says it would be disastrous if the Skeptic is correct but he apparently seems to agree with the Skeptic. d. If the skeptic is right it seems that it is going to be VERY difficult to figure out what knowledge is and how we obtain it. 2. What are the methods of the skeptic? a. We shouldn't look at the skeptic as having some knowledge about knowledge that no one else has. He is in the same boat as all of us and therefore has to use the same methods we use to obtain knowledge. b. All we are relying on is the fact that we are speakers of English and we have to have knowledge of the definition of knowledge. c. The skeptic is looking carefully at how we look at the word and sees that we have no knowledge because of the way we use the word. d. Skeptic uses same argument that we use to find knowledge to prove that we know nothing e. Sometimes we think we know things and then we go back and re-evaluate and then realize we know nothing. This is what the skeptic points out. i. Ex. Look at the reading and the example of the person on trial and thinking about his alibi. f. If we just look at what we do in ordinary life we can use that to find out if we really know things about the external world. 3. The Skeptic and Knowledge a. Skeptic points out we that have beliefs and those may be true but we have no justification of those beliefs
i. Ex. b. How do we investigate if we have knowledge? i. We base our knowledge off of what we can get from our senses. Our knowledge of the external world can come from our senses and mainly does. ii. We form beliefs from our senses and we claim that is knowledge.
iii. The reason we think that we have so much knowledge is because we feel that we gain so much knowledge though our senses and form beliefs 1. Descartes says that we cannot trust our senses so we have no reason to form beliefs to lead to knowledge.
2. 4. Stroud's Argument a. Premise 1- In order to have knowledge about the external world you have to know that you are not dreaming. b. Premise 2- You can never know whether or not you are dreaming. c. Conclusion- We have no knowledge of the external world Why can't we know that we are not dreaming? Because there is no test to prove that we are not dreaming. We can only rely on our senses and we can't really trust those because we may simply be dreaming that things are the way they are 1. Stroud's second Argument a. Premise 1- In order to know any proposition about the external world, the evidence of my senses must support truth that a proposition b. Premise 2- The evidence of our senses never supports the truth of my proposition about the external world c. Conclusion- Therefore I don't know anything about the external world. P 24. Descartes "...my belief. Nor will I ever...doubtful. At the same time highly probable... deny them" 2. Unger's Argument a. Premise 1- If someone knows something to be so, then it is alright for the person to be absolutely certain that it is so. i. Pg 47 left side "if someone is certain of something then that thing is not doubtful...." b. Premise 2- It is never alright for anyone to be absolutely certain that anything is so. c. Conclusion- Therefore no one knows anything. Sick Gap