Episode Details

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?

• 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