Epistemology

Recognizing that it’s no easy task to pin down the essential features of science, let’s return to the story at hand. In Lecture Two we saw how a piece of Einstein’s general theory of...

Logical positivism gave special prominence to two connected doctrines: a theory of empirical meaning and a theory of evidence. Yet the logical positivists’ own efforts to explain and improve those doctrines exposed some of...

Probabilistic Statements The Bayesian approach considers probability statements as subjective, asserting that they represent one’s degrees of belief. It does not impose that one’s degrees of belief should align with frequencies. What Bayesianism requires is...

Modern Physics' influence on Philosophy From 1900–1930, the greatest revolutions in physics since the 17th century had a manifold effect on philosophy: some thinkers came to take philosophy now to be the handmaiden of science;...

Kant' starting point David Hume, one of the most prominent members of the Scottish Enlightenment, was a multifaceted Enlightenment thinker. Based in Edinburgh, Hume was a cultivated, cosmopolitan intellectual, a frequenter of Paris salons. Once...

Rationalism and Dualism There were important post-medieval philosophers before Descartes—Renaissance thinkers and early Protestant Reformation scholars who played significant roles in shaping modern thought. However, Descartes, in the early 17th century, made such a definitive...