The Problem of the Criterion
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 ต.ค. 2024
- We acquire knowledge through methods such as perception and reasoning and, according to an intuitively plausible principle, acquiring knowledge through such a method requires us first to know that this method is reliable. But it has long been recognized that this seems to give rise to a vicious regress, making knowledge impossible. Rejecting the principle, on the other hand, seems to make knowledge too easy: we could come to know that a method is reliable by using that very method! So how might we solve this ancient puzzle? Professor Conor McHugh discusses this fundamental problem of epistemology in a talk given at the University of Southampton in 2015 as part of the Philosophy Café series.
#Philosophy #Epistemology #Skepticism
Thank you for pushing the true spirit of philosophy forward. This is it! "Ipse se nihil scire id unum sciat" Cicero.
"He knew himself only to know nothing." This is Socrates's enigmatic statement. This is Socrates's skepticism, which is, I posit, similar to Pyrrho's and Sextus Empiricus's. This statement cannot be understood analytically, and it would involve what Socrates paradoxically called Wisdom, which he could not find in anyone. It seems Platonic, but it is in fact the opposite. It is precisely IN PHILOSOPHY, in philosophical communication and understanding, that Socrates knew such antagonisms were dissolved. They are snares of language, as Nietzsche put it. These snares are not Platonic objects themselves but rather rules we have to work around. Wisdom was not for Socrates a Platonic object beyond the human, namely in Athena or something... Wisdom is exactly as the image of Athena is. There is no sufficient representation. It is something that has to be intuited, understood through communication and teaching. He knew nothing in that he knew there was no sufficient knowledge, no sufficient criterion there to instantiate a rhetorical line, to push it forward of its own accord. Socrates knew it was not like this, that logic and argument is not prepared beforehand to be discovered and simulated. It is US that does this within an enterprise of philosophy. Karl Jaspers knew this well, I think. This is why Philosophy means "love of wisdom." You cannot put a finger on love. You cannot adequately represent it, such as Aristophanes demonstrated in Plato's Symposium.
And furthermore it seems very similar to Descartes' "Veritatem inquirenti, semel in vita de omnibus, quantum fieri potest, esse dubitandum." In the course of seeking truth it is necessary, once in one's life, to doubt all that can be doubted." Very different however what Descartes did with this.
It is a shame this lecture was not longer! Thank you for the upload.
This may be the most important thing to know about in philosophy! I sincerely hope more people look into this more and seriously! It is crucial!!!
Let's see..🤷♂️
You mean what one can know is the most important thing to know about? How would you ever know what you can know? Seems circular.
I have been seriously interested in this for a few years. Sextus Empiricus makes the most interesting arguments about this, and the way it has influenced Nietzsche, and furthermore modern thought, really has transformed the way people think, and it is in direct contradistinction to what I call Platonic epistemology.
(Oh I just now realized this was an old video)
If you are interested in the topic, check out what Spinoza said about it in "on the improvement of understand", he there uses a metaphor where a blacksmith needs tools as a criterion to make tools, but it is ridicoulous to claim that tools for this reason can't have been created before the first one had already been made. He argues that humans are born with a degree of knowing, a tool by birthright. This essay is often overlooked.
This feels similar to the problem of definitions. Definitions themselves may have terms that themselves need defining and so on. Either we have to come to a point where we just take a term as obvious or maybe the status of knowledge is not as black and white as we might think.
More please !
🧘♀️💃🤸🏻♂️🕯🔎
Fumerton's conceptualisation of knowledge by acquaintance is an excellent candidate for a combined particularist-methodist approach.
I strongly recommend checking out his "Metaepistemology and Skepticism" where he explicates acquaintance. It's a super quick read despite the density of information in it.
Oh yeah, almost forgot to mention: Fumerton's an infallibilist foundationalist and it was works by him, Moser, Tollefsen and McGrew that convinced hardcore coherentist Laurence BonJour to jump ship to classical foundationalism. Super interesting stuff.
So perception and cognition are the same?
So in order to know stuff, we need to know the method for knowing stuff, but in order to know the method for knowing stuff, we need to know stuff. What’s the argument that in order to know the method, we need to know stuff? Wouldn’t direct observation of our own mind be a counter example to this? The method being direct observation?
I can see why one would think in order to know stuff, one must know the method tho.
1. Every statement needs justification
2. A method is just justification
Con: Every statement needs a method
Coming late to the party, but...
There are a number of ways philosophers have begun to criticize knowledge of one's own mind in the last century:
1)Wittgenstein's private language argument and his conments about the concept of knowledge are one very early example. Does it really make sense to say, for instance, "I know I am in pain"? Or does the concept of knowledge, as opposed to certainty, so much as make sense where there isn't the possibility of doubt? Arguably not.
2) Other issues are raised by forms of externalism about content: if what I can see, for instance, depends on what's outside of the mind, then one might in principle wonder whether the content of one's perception is actually what one takes it to be. Whatever mental phenomena remain that don't have their content determined externally aren't externally are going to be much more limited, potentially controversial topics like qualia.
3) There are also a number of more straightforward epistemic issues thst gave been raised about whether we can actually have knowledge of our mental states directly. Timothy Williamson's anti-luminosity argument is a good example. It turns out we're actually *not* able to reliably judge our own mental states - we're quite bad at it in certain edge cases, and this may have more general consequences.
4) Finally, there's also a fairly broad body of evidence in psychology problematizing our powers of introspection. It can be experimentally shown that humans are incredibly unreliable, at least under certain circumstances, when it comes to forming judgments about their own mental states. Eric Schwitzgebel has a fair bit of work putting this data into a philosophical context.
Walker Paul Thompson Jason Lee Cynthia
Too many “so, so, ummm, and a, aaeerrr, Jesus! Like most academics, can’t speak clearly. Good subject otherwise thanks