SOC SCI H1G Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Visual Perception, Retina, Necker Cube

• School: UC-Irvine
• Department: Social Science
• Course: SOC SCI H1G
• Professor: Jeff Barrettand Kyle Stanford

Document Summary

Hume stopped the naturalistic exploration of the mind too early. We are not content to simply understand ourselves and marvel at mankind. I want to know how to form reliable beliefs. If a belief is formed in a way that i take to be reliable, then i take it to be rationally justified. Descartes and hume make a mistake by being focused on a global account rather than a local account of rational justification. Key idea 1: we cannot get ultimate foundational justification for our beliefs, but we can get beliefs that we form in ways that we take to be reliable. Key idea 2: while we cannot get global foundational justification for our beliefs, we can get local (coherence) justification for our beliefs on the basis of what one in fact believes concerning how one should form reliable beliefs. We will consider how we in fact form our beliefs.