SOCIOL 1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Descriptive Knowledge, Simple Explanation, Euclidean Geometry
Document Summary
David hume and descartes are both skeptics, concerned with how we can be sure that we know anything at all. But they approach these issues in a very traditional way. There is a distinction between knowledge and belief. The ancient greeks distinguished between knowledge and opinion. In his dialogue theaetetus, plato had socrates argue that knowledge was true belief with logos (logic, reason, word, explanation, justification). Knowledge has to be true and has to be believed. Knowledge is true belief that is explained or justified. Midterm: the distinction between the two: explanation is a kind of description. Justification is a kind of prescription, it tells you what you ought to do. The soap storyhe was able to explain, to describe what he had done, but he was unable to justify do it. Justification is the reason why you did what you did, as where explanation is simply an account of what happened.
