Week 4 · Readings & resources

Week 4 — Readings & Resources

Introduction to Philosophy Free sample edition

Your primary reading is Chapter 4 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.

How to use this page

This page has 10 items (4 readings and 6 videos). Allow 66–84 minutes for everything. Each group points back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu when you want more depth, or take the quick path below.

Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text.

Pick-one quick path (18–21 min total)

① Doubting everything: dreams and the deceiver

Chapter 4, Section “Test your senses with the dream argument” · Session 1, Segment 2, “Methodical doubt, the dream argument, and the evil deceiver” · Remember: doubt is Descartes' method for testing beliefs, not a belief that nothing is real.

Cartesian Skepticism - Neo, Meet Rene: Crash Course Philosophy #5 — CrashCourse — an episode framed by a science-fiction film that compares Descartes' method to tipping out a basket of apples and keeping only the sound ones, then walks through senses that mislead, a dream you cannot tell from waking, and the evil genius, the course's evil deceiver, before reaching the one belief that survives. It places the line I think, therefore I am in the Meditations; Chapter 4 shows the wording comes from the Discourse, so treat that as a slip to catch. Its segment on a five-minute-old universe and its closing remarks on God go beyond this week. (video, 10 min) (captions: creator)
Descartes: Life is a dream — Philosophy Vibe — a short animated conversation between two speakers about the dream argument: dreams can be as vivid as waking life, so how could you know you are not dreaming now? It reads lines from a translation of the Meditations without naming the translator, and its turn to arithmetic and shapes that seem to survive a dream sets up the deceiver; the course quotes only its pinned line. Use it while working through the Week-4 module overview. (video, 3 min) (captions: automatic)

② What survives, and whose words are they?

Chapter 4, Section “Get the famous words from the right book” · Session 1, Segment 3, “The cogito and the source of its famous wording” · Remember: the famous wording is Veitch's English for the Discourse, Part IV, and the Meditations say the idea in other words.

I think, therefore I am: René Descartes on the Foundations of Knowledge — 1000-Word Philosophy — a short essay that follows Descartes from doubt about the senses and an evil demon to the cogito, and notes that the famous phrase first appeared in the Discourse on the Method and that the Meditations put it in other words. Its closing section asks whether knowledge really requires certainty, the question behind Dataset B's argument 1. Its section on God and clear and distinct ideas goes beyond this week. Stop here before its remarks on knowledge without certainty; next week takes up what knowledge is. (reading, 5–8 min)
Discourse on the Method, by René Descartes, translated by John Veitch — Project Gutenberg — the whole Discourse in Veitch's English, free to read online; search it for the word therefore to find the pinned line in Part IV, then say who wrote the French, who wrote the English, and whose the Latin in parentheses is. (reading, 5–10 min)
I think, therefore I am Explained: Descartes: Cogito Argument — Philosopher Games — a four-minute explainer that sets out the cogito as an argument: if I try to doubt my own existence I am thinking, thinking things exist, so I exist at least as a thinking thing. Compare its version with the chapter's reconstruction and name the form of each. It reads a Meditations passage in an unnamed translation and calls the line I think, therefore I am a shortened version of the argument without saying which book the wording comes from; check that against Chapter 4. (video, 4 min) (captions: automatic)

③ Reason or experience: Locke, Hume, and induction

Chapter 4, Section “Question every prediction: Hume's problem of induction” · Session 2, Segment 4, “Locke's empiricism and Hume's problem of induction” · Remember: the problem of induction asks what justifies a prediction, not whether predicting is useful.

Rationalism vs Empiricism — Carneades.org — a three-minute definitions video: rationalists say some knowledge comes without sense experience, through sources such as innate ideas, intuition, and deduction, while empiricists say all knowledge needs experience. It adds that someone could be an empiricist about one subject and a rationalist about another, and names skepticism as a third position. It uses the term a posteriori, which next week defines. (video, 3 min) (captions: automatic)
Locke, Berkeley, & Empiricism: Crash Course Philosophy #6 — CrashCourse — watch the opening, which sets empiricism against rationalism as two responses to skepticism and presents Locke's rejection of innate ideas and his view that all knowledge comes through experience. It uses the Latin label for a blank slate where the chapter uses Locke's comparison to white paper. The rest of the episode, on primary and secondary qualities and on Berkeley, goes beyond this week, and treat its claims about Plato and Aristotle as the episode's own. (video, 10 min) (captions: creator)
The Problem of Induction — Carneades.org — a whiteboard walk-through that draws black balls from an urn, shows that predicting the next ball needs the added premise that the future will resemble the past, and shows why supporting that premise from past draws is circular. It frames the problem as a test of the claim that science guarantees certain knowledge; the chapter's point is the same, that the problem questions justification, not usefulness. (video, 6 min) (captions: automatic)
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section IV: Sceptical Doubts concerning the Operations of the Understanding — Hume Texts Online — Hume's own text, in a free scholarly edition. Read Part II of this section, where Hume argues that our conclusions from experience about the future do not rest on any reasoning, because every such argument assumes that the future will resemble the past. Part I, on relations of ideas and matters of fact, is useful background but is not needed this week. (reading, 10–15 min)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

Rationalism vs. Empiricism, section 1: Introduction — online Encyclopedia of Philosophy (reference entry) — read section 1, with its two short parts on rationalism and empiricism, for how the debate is about the sources of knowledge and how rationalists differ over how certain reason's knowledge is; skip the later sections on the three theses. This builds on Week 3's study of Plato, whom the entry names beside Descartes as a defender of reason's superiority. (reading, 10–15 min)

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