- WEEK 9–10 (23 Oct–3 Nov): Rationalism versus Empiricism
Required Readings
- Plato: The Meno
- David Hume: Enquiry into Human Understanding, pp.1–28
- Optional secondary reading on Hume: Jeff Speaks: Hume and the Classical Problem of Induction
- Course Notes for Weeks 9–10
Writing Assignment
This week's writing assignment should be submitted through the course's blackboard page. To submit it, you should go to the Discussion Board section, then open this week's forum, which is called "Weeks 9–10 Assignment". You should begin a new thread in that forum and post your answer to the question there.
Your assignment this week is to explain Hume's argument that we cannot have any genuine knowledge about anything that cannot be directly experienced. (This argument is often called "the problem of induction".) The crucial primary text for this assignment is Hume's Enquiry into Human Understanding, in particular sections 4 and 5. Your answer should cite specific textual evidence from this text in order to back up your interpretation.
This is a difficult assignment, and will require you to struggle through with a difficult text, which you will probably have to read more than once. You are also being given extra week to work on the assignment, and so you should not wait until the last minute to complete it.
Your answer should be no more than 400 words long. It is due on Friday, November 3rd at 11:59pm.