PH 202 Midterm: Modern Philosophy Midterm Review Sheet--STUDY GUIDE
13 Apr 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Modern philosophy midterm review: descartes and the new science. Descartes and the condemnation of galileo"s writing: explain what happened. Explain it: the scope of the method of doubt. The perceptual error argument: avoidable versus unavoidable error. Descartes" dream argument: avoidable versus unavoidable error, math and the dream argument. Descartes" demon argument: avoidable versus unavoidable error. It"s relation to the conclusion of the dream argument. Descartes illustrates the problem in a particularly compelling manner in the meditations, where he uses the dream example to motivate skepticism about sensory-based beliefs about the external world, including his own bodily existence. Dreams are clearly not the only case in which sensory experience can lead us astray; familiar cases of sensory illusions show that perception is not always reliable. Yet, as descartes notes, these cases are too easily avoided to raise general doubts about the reliability of sensory perception. The same is not true, however, for dreaming.
