What he meant by this is that Plato's view of reason and the demands of reason supported a conception of knowledge and reality that led to the scientific revolution of the 17th Century and so the modern world. In this introductory course, we will examine several of the major theories of knowledge and reality that have been supported by critical rationality, beginning with Plato's Republic, comparing and contrasting the rationalism of Descartes and the empiricism of Hume, and ending with a reassessment of the nature and limits of reason in the work of Nietsche and the American pragmatist William James. Emphasis throughout is on the question of philosophy's relation to the sciences in terms of its reflections on language.
Students are responsible for all material discussed either in class or in discussion sections.
Therefore attendance is mandatory. Several short writing assignments during the quarter and a final examination. Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume are the philosophers we will discuss, and the particular topics we will discuss include perception, the limits and the justification of knowledge, substance, causality, secondary qualities, free will, personal identity, and the existence of God. Scientific creationism is the view that scientific evidence supports the Biblical story of creation more strongly than it does evolutionary theory. Evolutionary biologists argue that such claims are pseudo-scientific nonsense.