Topics Discussed in Week One
The film for week one is:
The Thirteenth Floor
The main topic was Knowledge (epistemology).
Skepticism:
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Doubt:
Someone who is skeptical about X in the philosophic sense is someone
who claims that it is impossible to know whether X is true or false.
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Descarte's method of doubt
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Descarte's argument, including the suppressed permise
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Theory of representative perceptions:
A perception is genuine if it is caused by and accurately represents
the external object(s) that give rise to it.
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Descates’s Problem:
Explaining how a perceiver could get evidence that a current perception
is caused by and accurately represents an external object.
David Hume (1711-76)
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natural foundationalism – accepts that our system of belief needs a foundation,
but denies that the foundation could have the kind of rational status that
Descartes wanted.
The veracity of our senses and reasonings must be part of the foundation.
Cannot be demonstrated by standing on some other ‘original principle’.
Coherentism
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Rejects altogether the need for a foundation
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Instead it emphasizes the coherent structure of our everyday system of
beliefs: the way they hang together, whereas the sporadic experience or
beliefs we get in dreams are fragmentary and incoherent.
Categorization
1. Rational foundationalism
2. Natural foundationalism
3. Coherentism
4. Skepticism
Questions
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What can the characters in the 13th floor know? (does the cogito
work?)
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Did your opinion about what you would be willing to say that Douglas Hall
know change from the beginning to the end?
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Does coherentism work?
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What does it means for something to be coloured? Solid? Any kind of object?
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Does Douglas Hall move about in space and time?
Return/transfer to the Philosophy in Film
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