Knowledge
Philosopher Charles Taylor talks about different understandings of knowledge, beginning with Descartes, who believed that knowledge is inner representation of outer reality.
Mind and the World (Part Two), The
Philosopher Stephen Toulmin continues his exploration of the relationship between the mind and the world. He contends that while eighty percent of the way we see the world is based on the way the world present itself to us, the other twenty percent ...
Kant and the Distinction Between Scheme and Reality
Philosopher Ian Hacking talks about the distinction Immanuel Kant made between reality and scheme, a word used to describe "...the conceptual organization which we either socially or individually bring to raw sensation in order to organize it into s...
Do We Have Free Will?: Moral Responsibility and Free Will
In an attempt to reconcile science and free will, Immanuel Kant distinguishes between the phenomenal world of nature and the noumenal world of ideas in which morality and responsibility reside. It is in the noumenal world that we exert free will. Mo...
Community and Individual Identity, The
Philosopher Charles Taylor talks about individual identity, particularly as reflected in moral positions of individuals. Professor Taylor explains that what often seems to be the position of the individual alone is actually a position that has, at l...
Coherence in the Sciences
Philosopher Stephen Toulmin talks about coherence and science, observing that, while people generally assume that coherence is a virtue in the sciences, there are some problems with this position. The primary difficulty, Professor Toulmin argues, is...
Darwin and Human Nature
Philosopher Hubert Dreyfus talks about Charles Darwin, who wrote at about the same time as Kierkegaard, but wasn't drawn in by the same existentialist concerns. Darwin believed there is something like a human nature, even if unplanned by God. In fac...
Does the Mind Shape the World?: Does the Mind Shape the World?
Immanuel Kant, born in 1724 sought to resolve a controversy that had been brewing for over a century. Rationalists argued that knowledge is based on reasoning inside our minds. Empirists disagreed saying that all knowledge must come from the senses....
Theories of Truth
Philosopher Hilary Putnam states his objections to the various theories of truth (coherence, correspondence, pragmatist and, more recently, deflationist) that have been commonly cited by philosophers of science since the early 20th century. He finds...
Time and Cosmology
Philosopher Stephen Toulmin talks about the efforts of Immanuel Kant and others to come to grips with questions about time and whether it's possible to produce an overall theoretical description of the whole process by which the material universe to...