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Show Notes
If our senses can deceive us and our reasoning can outrun experience, which should we trust as the true foundation of knowledge: reason alone, or the evidence of the world?
Topics discussed:- How radical skepticism (including modern versions like simulations) motivates Descartes’ turn inward
- A reconstruction of René Descartes’ Cogito argument as a proposed foundation of certainty
- The difficulty of moving from Descartes’ foundational truths to knowledge of the external world
- Philosophical objections to Descartes’ inference from thinking occurs to a unified self exists, including Nagasena’s chariot analogy
- The role of innate ideas and God in Descartes’ attempt to bridge the epistemic gap
- John Locke’s rejection of innate ideas and the blank slate hypothesis
- Locke’s empiricism, including simple vs. complex ideas and indirect realism
- The tension between reason and the senses as competing sources of knowledge
- The emerging dilemma between rationalism and empiricism as rival epistemic frameworks