Day 19: Descartes, BonJour, & Inside-out Epistemology

•     Study Questions for Test 2

•     Review

•     BonJour and the External World

•     A Motivation for Inside-Out Epistemology

•     Questioning the Qualitative Motivation

•     Reread IE 133-158

BonJour on the External World

•      Why does BonJour think we can be justified in believing in the external world?

•      Who do you think could provide such justification?

A Motivation for Inside-Out Epistemology

•                  The Qualitative Commitment: when we begin the project of epistemic justification, we have reason to believe that our beliefs about mental states are likely to be true in a way that we do not have reason to believe that our beliefs about non-mental states are true.

•                  The Temporal Commitment: in the course of epistemically reflecting on our beliefs, we come to be justified about mental states before we come to be justified about non-mental states, so we should start the project of epistemic justification with the justification of mental states, and then use those states as the basis for justifying our views about non-mental states.

Questioning the Qualitative Motivation

•     Descartes and the qualitative motivation

•     A way to question Descartes

•     BonJour and the qualitative motivation

•     A way to question BonJour