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From Descartes to Nietzsche:The Birth of Science and the Death of God

Lee Braver

Every chapter in the course, with links to the moment it begins in the video and in the transcript. For topics across all courses, see the Topic Index.

Intro When the Old Map Stopped Working

What Is Epistemology?
▶︎ 0:00 transcript ↗︎
The Scientific Revolution Changed Everything
▶︎ 0:32 transcript ↗︎
The Medieval Worldview and Biblical Authority
▶︎ 0:52 transcript ↗︎
The Google Maps Analogy for Divine Authority
▶︎ 2:15 transcript ↗︎
Cracks in the Old Picture of the Universe
▶︎ 2:49 transcript ↗︎
When Philosophy and Science Were One
▶︎ 3:38 transcript ↗︎
The Legacy That Built Our World
▶︎ 4:38 transcript ↗︎
From Deference to Independent Thinking
▶︎ 4:47 transcript ↗︎
Descartes and Rebuilding Knowledge from Scratch
▶︎ 5:13 transcript ↗︎

Lecture 1 Descartes Reboots Everything

Introduction to the Meditations on First Philosophy
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Why Existing Knowledge Had to Be Scrapped
▶︎ 0:35 transcript ↗︎
When Science Didn't Exist Yet
▶︎ 2:29 transcript ↗︎
Believing Is Seeing: Why Observation Fails
▶︎ 4:42 transcript ↗︎
Getting the Worldview Right First
▶︎ 8:41 transcript ↗︎
The Foundation: Beliefs That Cannot Be False
▶︎ 10:58 transcript ↗︎
How the Meditations Are Written
▶︎ 13:08 transcript ↗︎
Testing Beliefs Like Bulletproof Material
▶︎ 14:20 transcript ↗︎
Methodological Doubt and Grouping Beliefs
▶︎ 16:44 transcript ↗︎
Can We Trust Our Senses?
▶︎ 18:50 transcript ↗︎
The Dream Argument Destroys All Perception
▶︎ 24:00 transcript ↗︎
Math and Logic Beyond the Senses
▶︎ 26:14 transcript ↗︎
The Evil Demon: Nuclear Bomb of Doubt
▶︎ 28:40 transcript ↗︎
I Think, Therefore I Am
▶︎ 31:18 transcript ↗︎
Existence vs. Essence: What Am I?
▶︎ 36:24 transcript ↗︎
Cartesian Dualism: Minds and Bodies
▶︎ 40:11 transcript ↗︎
The Third Foundation Stone: Ideas Exist
▶︎ 41:17 transcript ↗︎

Lecture 2 The Birth of Modern Science

Three Bulletproof Beliefs as Foundation
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What Is a Clear and Distinct Perception?
▶︎ 0:38 transcript ↗︎
Proving 2+2=4 From Scratch
▶︎ 3:33 transcript ↗︎
Why Only A Priori Knowledge Qualifies
▶︎ 7:25 transcript ↗︎
Killing the Evil Demon by Proving God Exists
▶︎ 8:57 transcript ↗︎
Ideas Have Essences Even Without Existence
▶︎ 13:15 transcript ↗︎
Essences Entail Necessary Properties
▶︎ 15:40 transcript ↗︎
The Ontological Proof of God's Existence
▶︎ 18:09 transcript ↗︎
Why You Can't Just Reject the Conclusion
▶︎ 21:48 transcript ↗︎
Objections: Thinking Things Into Existence?
▶︎ 24:06 transcript ↗︎
God's Goodness Defeats the Evil Demon
▶︎ 27:24 transcript ↗︎
Human Responsibility for Error
▶︎ 30:33 transcript ↗︎
Restoring A Priori and Empirical Beliefs
▶︎ 31:45 transcript ↗︎
Why the Senses Are Poor Scientific Tools
▶︎ 33:12 transcript ↗︎
Quantification: Turning Experience Into Numbers
▶︎ 34:56 transcript ↗︎
The Moment That Changed Everything
▶︎ 38:53 transcript ↗︎

Lecture 3 Hume's Map of the Mind

Meet the Philosophers' Favorite Philosopher
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One Big Argument in Three Phases
▶︎ 0:41 transcript ↗︎
Why 'Human' Understanding Matters
▶︎ 2:04 transcript ↗︎
The Brain Has Limits Just Like the Eye
▶︎ 5:02 transcript ↗︎
Why Metaphysics Never Gets Corrected
▶︎ 7:00 transcript ↗︎
Mapping the Mind Like Studying an Eyeball
▶︎ 8:49 transcript ↗︎
Critical Philosophy: Drawing the Line
▶︎ 10:54 transcript ↗︎
Impressions vs. Ideas: Force and Vivacity
▶︎ 11:57 transcript ↗︎
Every Idea Comes from Experience
▶︎ 15:55 transcript ↗︎
Empiricism vs. Rationalism: The Great Debate
▶︎ 16:47 transcript ↗︎
The Blank Slate and the Pineapple Test
▶︎ 18:37 transcript ↗︎
Building Unicorns from Horses and Horns
▶︎ 21:08 transcript ↗︎
Math Is Certain but Says Nothing
▶︎ 24:05 transcript ↗︎
Matters of Fact: Informative but Uncertain
▶︎ 28:51 transcript ↗︎
The Big Question: How Do We Know Anything?
▶︎ 32:56 transcript ↗︎

Lecture 4 Why You Can't Prove Tomorrow

The Problem of Induction
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Cause and Effect: How We Know the World
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The Billiard Ball Thought Experiment
▶︎ 4:47 transcript ↗︎
Only Experience Teaches Causation
▶︎ 7:44 transcript ↗︎
The Shocking Claim About Experience
▶︎ 11:05 transcript ↗︎
The Future Will Resemble the Past: Or Will It?
▶︎ 13:42 transcript ↗︎
Begging the Question: A Logical Fallacy
▶︎ 17:57 transcript ↗︎
The Thanksgiving Turkey Analogy
▶︎ 22:23 transcript ↗︎
Should You Eat Glass Tomorrow?
▶︎ 24:18 transcript ↗︎
Custom and Habit Save Us From Reason
▶︎ 26:04 transcript ↗︎
Pavlov's Dogs and Skinner's Pigeons
▶︎ 28:26 transcript ↗︎
Humans Are Just Clever Apes
▶︎ 31:34 transcript ↗︎
Arational vs. Irrational: A Crucial Difference
▶︎ 33:36 transcript ↗︎
The Limits of What Humans Can Know
▶︎ 36:26 transcript ↗︎

Lecture 5 Kant Wakes from His Dogmatic Sleep

Rationalism vs. Empiricism in Early Modern Philosophy
▶︎ 0:00 transcript ↗︎
The Greatest Philosopher and His Massive Book
▶︎ 0:53 transcript ↗︎
One Big Idea: The Structure of the Argument
▶︎ 2:41 transcript ↗︎
Waking from Dogmatic Slumbers
▶︎ 3:42 transcript ↗︎
Causality and the Limits of A Priori Reasoning
▶︎ 6:02 transcript ↗︎
Generalizing the Question: All Knowledge as Connection
▶︎ 9:09 transcript ↗︎
Metaphysical Claims and the Dogmatic Assumption
▶︎ 11:16 transcript ↗︎
Why We Must Have Rational Justification
▶︎ 14:21 transcript ↗︎
Preparation: A Priori vs. A Posteriori
▶︎ 17:01 transcript ↗︎
Analytic vs. Synthetic: The Bachelor Example
▶︎ 18:44 transcript ↗︎
Analytic Judgments: Clarification Without New Info
▶︎ 23:00 transcript ↗︎
Synthetic Judgments: Adding New Knowledge
▶︎ 25:20 transcript ↗︎
The Fourfold Table and Hume's Two Categories
▶︎ 26:35 transcript ↗︎
The Revolutionary Claim: Synthetic A Priori
▶︎ 29:06 transcript ↗︎
Why Empirical Knowledge Alone Isn't Enough
▶︎ 32:26 transcript ↗︎
Math and Science as Necessary Universal Laws
▶︎ 36:06 transcript ↗︎
A Bizarre Clue for Understanding the Mind
▶︎ 38:57 transcript ↗︎

Lecture 6 How Your Mind Builds Reality

A Riddle: Predicting the Future with Certainty
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The Black and White TV Solution
▶︎ 3:03 transcript ↗︎
Things For Us vs. Things In Themselves
▶︎ 5:33 transcript ↗︎
The Mind as Active Organizer of Experience
▶︎ 7:39 transcript ↗︎
Synthesizing Empiricism and Rationalism
▶︎ 10:16 transcript ↗︎
The Three Faculties of the Mind
▶︎ 15:19 transcript ↗︎
Intuition: Space, Time, and Mathematics
▶︎ 16:03 transcript ↗︎
Understanding: Causality and Science
▶︎ 21:57 transcript ↗︎
Reason and the Demand for Completeness
▶︎ 25:48 transcript ↗︎
Why Completeness Is Impossible
▶︎ 29:43 transcript ↗︎
God, Faith, and the Limits of Knowledge
▶︎ 34:15 transcript ↗︎
Transcendental Illusion: Finding vs. Seeking
▶︎ 38:14 transcript ↗︎
The Grand Synthesis of Modern Philosophy
▶︎ 44:58 transcript ↗︎
Enlightenment Autonomy and Human Freedom
▶︎ 48:39 transcript ↗︎

Lecture 7 Nietzsche's Warning to the Future

The Prophet of Coming Catastrophe
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Descartes and the Scientific Revolution
▶︎ 3:46 transcript ↗︎
How Science Destroyed Meaning
▶︎ 5:45 transcript ↗︎
Copernicus, Darwin, and Our Cosmic Demotion
▶︎ 8:59 transcript ↗︎
Nihilism and the Loss of All Orientation
▶︎ 11:57 transcript ↗︎
The Death of God: The Madman Parable
▶︎ 14:22 transcript ↗︎
What the Death of God Really Means
▶︎ 17:58 transcript ↗︎
We Were Always the Creators of Value
▶︎ 19:57 transcript ↗︎
The Transcendental Illusion Applied to Values
▶︎ 23:39 transcript ↗︎
How Divine Authority for Values Backfired
▶︎ 26:23 transcript ↗︎
The Animal With No Fixed Horizon
▶︎ 28:49 transcript ↗︎
Evolution as Liberation, Not Destruction
▶︎ 30:38 transcript ↗︎
Why Kant Failed by His Own Standards
▶︎ 31:31 transcript ↗︎
Philosophers as Artists in the Medium of Ideas
▶︎ 35:03 transcript ↗︎
True Autonomy: Remaking Our Own Minds
▶︎ 38:02 transcript ↗︎
Reconfiguring the Concept of Meaning Itself
▶︎ 41:08 transcript ↗︎
The Eternal Return: A Prayer to a Dead God
▶︎ 43:22 transcript ↗︎
Living a Life Worth Repeating Forever
▶︎ 46:06 transcript ↗︎

Recap Making Your Beliefs Your Own

Why Journeys Only Make Sense at the End
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Starting Over: Rebuilding All of Knowledge
▶︎ 0:20 transcript ↗︎
Doubting Everything to Find Real Belief
▶︎ 1:02 transcript ↗︎
I Think Therefore I Am: Reinterpreted
▶︎ 1:40 transcript ↗︎
Habits Run Deeper Than Conscious Thought
▶︎ 2:43 transcript ↗︎
Unifying Reason and Experience
▶︎ 4:07 transcript ↗︎
Philosophy as a Long Conversation
▶︎ 5:16 transcript ↗︎
Knowledge Without Meaning Is Empty
▶︎ 5:27 transcript ↗︎
Through Nihilism to Creative Salvation
▶︎ 6:39 transcript ↗︎
Creativity as Our Greatest Strength
▶︎ 7:23 transcript ↗︎
The Animal That Surpasses Every Limit
▶︎ 7:56 transcript ↗︎
You Have Already Changed Species
▶︎ 9:25 transcript ↗︎
What Are Your Limits: And How Will You Break Them?
▶︎ 11:02 transcript ↗︎
Always Becoming, Always Exploring
▶︎ 11:40 transcript ↗︎