The Allegory of the Cave: Claymation Version

Below is a great claymation adaption of The Allegory of the Cave, the parable that Plato uses to convey his views on the human condition and the nature of reality. 

There are a few differences from the Plato's version, which you can read here.

Notes on Hume and Kant

For any AS Philosophers out there, here is a link to a useful PowerPoint file that recaps some key vocabulary for the AQA unit on Reason and Experience, plus the views of Hume and Kant. Remember that any of these keywords could come up in AS exam questions, so make sure you know them inside out.

Do Babies Know Maths?

In our AS Philosophy course on Reason and Experience, we've been looking at the empiricist conception of the mind as a tabula rasa at birth against the rationalist view that we are born with innate knowledge. 

This short video suggests that babies might be born with some kind of mathematical understanding – it seems that they just don’t like it when the Maths is wrong. As Professor Spelke, who is leading the research says, this could suggest that:

“The mind is not a blank slate... we are born with a host of cognitive capacities and the building blocks of the concepts that stand at the centre of the school curriculum are innate”.

Interesting stuff. You can find out more about Professor Spelke’s work here.