Point of View Taxonomy Here is an algorithm to help you identify the point of view of a narrative text. Algorithm 1) Examine the text, excluding lines of dialogue spoken by the characters, for the pronouns used. 2) If the pronouns “I” or “we” are found, determine the degree of…

This is a difficult question to answer since we do not seem to have a satisfactory definition of knowledge itself. Plato makes a lengthy and systematic attempt to define knowledge in his Theaetetus, which some philosophers consider his greatest work. As with many of the Socratic dialogues, however, Theaetetus is…

Nearly everyone who cares about such things seems to know that Socrates claims not to know anything of value. However, one of the things that he claims that he does know is that true belief and knowledge are two different things: “I certainly do not think I am guessing that…

Occam’s razor has, for many, come to name an explanatory principle that holds that the simplest explanation for something is probably the right one. Such a principle is not really very helpful, if one is trying to account for the cosmos as we actually experience it because one could answer…

Descartes believes that the relation of implication produces indefeasible truths. In less philosophical terms, if it is true that I have two spoons, and it is true that I have two forks, then it must be true that I have four eating utensils (2+2=4). …

David Hume is thought by many to be the most important and influential philosopher to do original work in the English Language. Hume writes in the empiricist tradition of John Locke, George Berkeley, and others. and his magnum opus, A Treatise of Human Nature, is a comprehensive attempt to account…

Republic is Plato’s most famous and most influential dialogue. In it he goes into depth on all of the subjects for which he is universally known: The virtues and vices of various political systems, education, art, the human psyche, the Forms, justice, and much more. Plato is probably the most…

Hume attacks the principle of induction, which he calls cause-and-effect reasoning, in at least two ways in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. His most devastating attack is in Section IV, Part 1, where he shows that the reasoning behind inductive inference is circular. The argument runs thus: All matters of…