Course 6 of 18
What Can We Know?
Slow down on knowledge itself: doubt, experience, induction, and proof.
What this course covers
What Can We Know? works through slow down on knowledge itself: doubt, experience, induction, and proof. across 3 lessons. Each opens with a short teaching passage, then tests whether the idea actually landed — and explains every answer rather than just marking it.
The lessons are sequenced, not a menu. Knowledge and Doubt comes first because what counts as really knowing? is what the rest of the course assumes; by the end you reach Hume, Kant, and Gettier.
How it starts
For centuries, philosophers defined knowledge as justified true belief: you know something only if it is true, you believe it, and you have good reason for that belief. Descartes pushed this further by doubting everything he possibly could, searching for one belief that could not be shaken. He found it in the very act of thinking: even a deceived mind must exist to be deceived.
“I think, therefore I am.”
Who you will be reading
René Descartes, David Hume are the thinkers this course leans on. Each has a profile with their full set of passages in thinkr's library.