Explain and illustrate the view that what exists can be demonstrated
using a priori intuition and/or demonstration.

Knowledge is said to come from different places according to different philosophers. One view was held by David Hume who said that if things must be ‘matters of fact’ or ‘relation of ideas’ and he held that all substantive knowledge (that is, knowledge that tells us something new about the world) must come from ‘matters of fact’. He said that if a statement did fit into these categories we should “Commit it then to flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion”. However, some other philosophers such as Descartes suggested that we could have substantive knowledge about what exists through a priori intuition and demonstration. This means that we can, through knowledge not gained from experience, deduce and ‘see’ that something must be the case using our rational insight. In fact, it would be logically contradictory to say it wasn’t the case. An example of this would be to say “all circles are round”, we can tell by looking at the words, using our rational insight, that this must be the case.

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Descartes, in Meditations, establishes his mind, God and the external world through a priori intuition and demonstration. He starts off by using scepticism (philosophical doubt) as a tool. He doubts everything, both physical and metaphysical; he does this in order to get to a foundation for knowledge. He goes through three stages of doubt, the first being “Sense doubt” – he points to examples of optical illusions (a modern example would be Wittgenstein’s rabbit) and instances where his mind has deceived him. He thus concludes that his senses deceive him and can not trust information they give him.  His second stage ...

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