Philosophy Here And Now

There is no minimum page/word count required. No citations needed. Assignment is a discussion post. Textbook is Philosophy Here And Now 3rd edition by Lewis Vaughn. Chapters 6.3 & 6.4 which is pages 293-319. There are also two videos to watch from The Examined Life Series titled “Does Knowledge Depend On Experience?” and “Does Mind Shape The World?”. The videos are 28 minutes each. They seem to be only available through online libraries so I really have no idea if you have access to watch them. The discussion prompt is as follows: 1. In the video, Paul Churchland suggests that rationalism is motivated by a misguided quest for absolute certainty. Why does he says this? Are rationalists more likely to seek deductive or inductive arguments? Explain. What about empiricists? Again, explain. 2. According to John Locke, all of our ideas are either simple ideas that come directly from sense impressions or complex ideas that are composed of those simple ideas. Explain the distinction between simple and complex ideas using an example. According to Hume, is the idea of causation simple or complex? 3. Why is it a problem for empiricists to explain how our sense impressions correspond to mind-independent objects? What is Hilary Putnam’s response to this problem? Does that response work? 4. Explain Kant’s view of causation and contrast it with Hume’s view. Specifically, explain why Kant thinks that the concept of causation is “a priori” and what that means.