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Aug 2015
13m 2s

How Can I Know Anything at All?

Bbc Radio 4
About this episode

A history of ideas. Presented by Melvyn Bragg but told in many voices.

Each week Melvyn is joined by four guests with different backgrounds to discuss a really big question. This week he's asking 'How can I know anything at all?'

Helping him answer it are physicist Tara Shears, lawyer Harry Potter, philosopher Clare Carlisle and neuropsychologist Paul Broks.

For the rest of the week Tara, Harry, Clare and Paul will take us further into the history of this idea with programmes of their own. Between them they will examine: David Hume's debunking of miracles; Wittgenstein's attempt to prove that other people have minds; Karl Popper's idea of falsification, which underpins the scientific method; and George Berkeley's approach to a famous philosophical problem - If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Producer: Melvin Rickarby.

Up next
Aug 2015
Neuropsychologist Paul Broks on Wittgenstein
Paul Broks looks at the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and the problem of "other minds". How do I know you are not a zombie who behaves like a human but actually has no consciousness? Even if you are conscious, how can I tell that what I experience as red, you do not experience ... Show More
12m 59s
Aug 2015
Philosopher Clare Carlisle on Reality and Perception
If a tree falls in a forest and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound?That's the kind of head-scratching question that's popularly believed to occupy the time and brains of philosophers. It relates to the ideas of immaterialism proposed by Bishop George Berkeley who as ... Show More
12m 57s
Aug 2015
Physicist Tara Shears on Falsification
Science is based on fact, right? Cold, unchanging, unarguable facts. Perhaps not, says physicist Tara Shears. Tara is more inclined to follow the principles of the Anglo-Austrian philosopher, Karl Popper. He believed that human knowledge progresses through 'falsification'. A theo ... Show More
12m 42s
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