PHL210Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Mary Astell
Document Summary
Recap: perfection of understanding, not all truths are equally evident, modes of thinking: science, faith, opinion, role of senses in improvement of the understanding, difference between science and faith, most usual defects of thinking faculty. What exactly is reasoning: nothing else but a comparison of ideas, a deducing of conclusions from clear/evident principles. For reasoning to be free from nonsense and absurdity, falsehood and error, ideas must be clear, just, and principles must be true. Strict: that which represents to the mind some object distinct from it, clearly or confusedly attent and simple view we may discern its properties and modifications. Strictly speaking, no idea can be false: however, they can be wrong when they have no conformity to real nature of thing whose name they bear. Judgment that our idea does represent some object distinct from the mind is false. Astell: we usually join words to our ideas. Ideas must be clear and just: principles must be true.
