Inner Self and External World
Philosopher Hubert Dreyfus talks about the views of multiple philosophers concerning how the inner self encounters the every day reality of the external world.
Philosophical Theology
Philosopher Stephen Toulmin discusses the philosophical theology views of Thomas Aquinas, Gottfried Leibniz, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Professor Toulmin relates an amusing comment from Wittgenstein, who once said when someone asked him if he believed...
Rationalism
Philosopher Stephen Toulmin talks about rationalism, concluding that there have always been two driving forces behind it. On one hand, Professor Toulmin says, it comes from the desire to make theories as elegant as possible, which leads people to ma...
Is Reason the Source of Knowledge?: Locke and Leibniz Debate Theory of Innate Ideas
The first great 17th century empiricist John Locke borrows many ideas from Descartes. For the most part he accepts the corpuscular theory, but flatly rejects the notion of innate ideas about the world. Gottfried Leibniz concedes that innate ideas ar...
Is Reason the Source of Knowledge?: Reason, the Source of Knowledge
Seventeenth century rationalists like Descartes and Leibniz believe that knowledge comes from reason alone. It is not necessary to see examples in the physical world;truth can be grasped entirely in the mind. This is a period in which science is mak...
Descartes and the Greeks (Part One)
Philosopher Stephen Toulmin draws parallels between Descartes and Plato, arguing that both lived in a perilous time during which they tried to demonstrate "... in a quasi-mathematical way that we have a system of ideas which carry a certainty on the...
Experience and Innate Ideas
Philosopher Ian Hacking talks about the notion of innate ideas, making reference to such historical figures as Descartes, Leibniz, Locke and Michelangelo. He notes that while experience produces different ideas in people, those ideas are formed on w...
Empiricism and Rationalism
Philosopher Ian Hacking talks about the challenge of making a clear distinction between classic rationalists and empiricists. He notes that "there's an awful lot of theorizing to be found in those empiricists, and a lot of concern with experimentati...
History of Scientific Ideas, The
Philosopher Stephen Toulmin talks about the ways in which terminology and meaning change over time in the sciences. He gives the example of Leibniz insisting that "...the processes of the physical world should be mechanical." Professor Toulmin conte...
Mathematics and Change
Philosopher Stephen Toulmin explains that contrary to what many believe, mathematics and mathematical assumptions can change "deeply" over time. Professor Toulmin notes that, "...you will find that, beyond a certain point, the link with what we had ...