Philosophy 1020 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: In Medias Res, Foundationalism, Physicalism
16 May 2016
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Document Summary
In the old days, philosophy stood more or less for inquiry . Aristotle (384-332 bce), for example, whore about not only ethics and metaphysics, etc. Overtime, many of these areas get carved off as disciplines of their own. Philosophy is what is left; questions that cannot be answered empirically. Conceptual analysis, theoretical, less resolvable in terms of experiments. A third contract, pertaining to questions in metaphysics and epistemology in particular: two orders in which to proceed (a) metaphysics first (b) epistemology first here"s how we know everything about the world. It matters, because this tells us who bears what we might call (borrowing from the law) the burden of proof . A way to orient the structure of the discussion. Anchored as the argument is in our use of arithmetic, the burden lies on the critic. Rosen says: she must say more she must give us reason to think that knowledge of abstract objects is suspect.
