Senior Philosophy Seminar Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Senior Philosophy Seminar - Assignment Example Plato believed that the knowledge represented by these lines are ordered highest to lowest as follows CE, CD, AC, and AB. 2 Explain the cave that Plato describes, with the prisoners, the platform from which the shadows are cast and the exit to the real world. The cave that Plato describes is a group of people chained to the wall of a cave for all of their lives. These people face a blank wall with a fire continuously roaring behind them. All that the chained people can see are shadows of the other people between them and the fire. For the prisoners the shadows are reality. However if a prisoner was freed, they could see that the shadows were not reality. Philosophers are like freed prisoners. Philosophers are like freed prisoners, they can detect reality from shadows. Sextus Empericus 3 What is the goal of Skepticism? The goal of the skepticism is to research truth about reality be comparing different truths in order to have peace of mind through the lack of judgment. A skeptic never passes judgment, but always searches truth in reality by comparing different truths. Descartes 4 Through what chain of reasoning does Descartes attempt to doubt his own body and all elements of it? Descartes uses the wax argument to doubt his own body and all elements of it. The wax argument is where Descartes takes a ball of wax. He looks at it, touches it, smells it, and uses his five senses to define the ball of wax. However when he puts the ball of wax next to a flame it loses it shape, it smells different, it sounds different, it feels different, and basically the wax changes. The human body can change the way it smells, tastes, sounds, feels, and looks. This is the reasoning Descartes uses to doubt his body. He concludes the only reason he exists is because he reasons. Locke 5 According to Locke, if our mind is a blank sheet of paper, how does it come to be filled? Where do complex ideas come from, according to Locke? John Locke believed that sensations and reflections are th e two sources of all our ideas. As a baby develops in the womb, the sensations fill the mind. After birth the sensations and growing reflections of thought fill the mind. Complex ideas come from education. The education of a man really makes a man according to Locke. Good education makes for a good person; likewise bad education makes a bad person. Hume 6 If all of our knowledge of matters of fact depends on cause and effect, what is the source of our ideas of cause and effect, according to Hume? How does Hume argue for this? According to Hume, people reason inductively by correlating repetitively joined events. The thought of cause and effect result in knowledge. Hume historians believe Hume taught three types of causation exist; the logical positivist; the skeptical realist; and the quasi-realist. The logical positivist which argues that A leads to B or A most likely leads to B. The skeptical realist argues that if A leads to B an underlying cause is the reason. The quasi-realist believes that cause and effect can be anticipated by past behavior. 7 Why does Hume think we go in a circle when we try to demonstrate why we believe in cause and effect? Cause and effect is based on experience. Since experience can be different for diverse situations cause and effect might not always work for everyone. For example, a person in Moscow might say precipitation from the sky will cause snow packed roofs in December, but a person in the