PHL244H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Hypotenuse, David Hume, Akrasia
Document Summary
On the influencing motives of the will; the intuitive dog and its rational tail. Hume"s work is in many ways responding against descartes" rationalist philosophy, and kant is responding to hume. Both descartes and kant think that it is possible for you to discover the world with reason alone. They thought that these were the most solid types of truth you could discover. In contrast, hume (who is in this sense anti-rationalist) says that we can"t discover things just by thinking about it, we have to go out and experience things. The beliefs we have that are justified are only justified in virtue of our experience of the world. So reason has a very limited role to play in grounding or justifying our theoretical knowledge of the world. He"s also an anti- rationalist in another sense, in a practical realm. He thinks it has a very limited role in guiding our actions.
