EPISTEMOLOGY

• The Fundamental questions of Epistemology:

• How do I learn what I do not know?

• Is knowledge Possible?• Inductive Reasoning • Deductive Reasoning• Is certainty Possible?• The Problem of Criterion of

Truth?• Should we believe beyond

evidence?

How do I learn what I do not Know?

• We all have questions about life, how do we answer to these questions?

• If I cannot answer them, at least I should comprehend/understand them better?

• The questions arise from what we know. But, what I know is either doubtful or not enough?

• By questioning what we ‘think’ we know, we engage in an activity- questioning- Philosophy.

• How can we distinguish between opinion and Knowledge?

Common Sense Knowledge• Others: someone told us.

• Self: I have studied a body of knowledge.

I have experienced certain things.

When I revise those “things/notions I know”

I find arguments to “accept them” or to “refute them.”– this exercise is called TO REASON.

Leibniz, S. XVII “… is a faculty capable of establishing and capturing relationships that cause things to be dependant on others, and to be determined in a certain way and not other”

REASON

• Reason is not what others tell me, or the studies, or the experiences, reason is an “Intellectual procedure, that I use to organize the information , the studies and the experiences.”

• Characteristics of Reason:– Reason is not exclusively personal.

– Reason is universal (Plato/Descartes), everyone posses it, even those would not use it, is universal in the sense that everyone could agree in certain arguments

– We use reason to arrived,or to established the TRUTH.

TRUTH• To search for the truth, through reason is to attempt to

understand what is REAL.• EPISTEMOLOGY & METAPHYSICS

• Not all truths are of the same kind, or are attained through the same mediums: Reason has the mission to define the different arenas of the truth:

• EMPIRICISTS• RATIONALISTS• RELATIVISTS• UNIVERSALISTS• SKEPTICALS• REVELATION

Empiricism

• We know things because we experience them with our senses:– Touch, smell, sight, hearing, taste– Emotions

• Knowledge is inductive.• Knowledge is a-posteriori.• Sensations made impressions.• The mind is a tabula-rasa (blank state).

Rationalism

• We know things by reason

• We are born ideas/notions: innate ideas

• Knowledge is intuitive

• Knowledge is a- priori.

• Rene Descartes

Relativism and Universalism• The subjective knowledge is always imposed on the

objective knowledge- Empiricism vs. Rationalism.• Knowledge is involved with:

– Gender– Social Class– Interest: Political & Economical– Culture– Personal Character

• But, there is a body of universal knowledge from all knowledge is derived:– Laws of Science– Humanities

Skepticism• Skeptics negate or doubt the ability of REASON to

find the truth. There is no absolute Knowledge. The skeptic claims that there is no knowledge that is certain.

• Objections:• Is the skeptic certain of his belief in skepticism?• The skeptic uses reason to elaborate arguments to

convince or persuade his ‘truth’.• He doubt his own doubt- if there is no chance for

certainty, there is no chance for uncertainty.

Revelation• The concept of Eternal Truth, is not related to reason or

experience. • Truth is ‘revealed’, disclosed to human beings.• Truth is reachable by intuition, non rational, by feelings,

passions.• This source of knowledge is divine, spiritual, mystic, faith

based or natural. Taoism. • Consider the impossibility of proving something like this

using logic: When we try, based on our own experience, to save someone pain, by advising them not to do something or to do something differently, they are unlikely to take our good advice. What we ‘know,’ we know based on our lived experience, which is only theory to the person we are advising.

The knower and the known• What is the relationship between the subject and the object

or the knower and the known?• The Western Tradition: Descartes’ cogito assumes the

distinction between the knower and the known. Western philosophers have either agreed with Descartes that by thinking (use of reason) we can know, or that sense experience rather than reason leads to knowing. Both rationalists and empiricists, acknowledged the distinction between the knower and the known.

• Eastern Tradition: In Buddhism, the world of illusion to which we are attached and in which we are ensnared is not what it is. Their epistemological view, or everyday experience of the world present us with dualistic distinctions, me-you, subject-object; this is an artificial distinction.

• “if there is no way to telling when a proposition is true, then the proposition has no sense whatever” Friedrich Waismann.

• The meaning of a proposition is its method of verification (the verification principle). We can only understand a statement only by knowing what would possibly show it to be either true or false.

• Some claims are not subject to the method of verification: “ An omnipotent being exists”

• Does the method of verification admits of verification itself ?

• Two types of Arguments:• Inductive Argument: Its premises give only some degree of

probability, but not certainty, to its conclusion.– Better of worse– Socrates is human and mortal– Xantippe is human and mortal– Plato is human and mortal– Therefore, probably all humans are mortal

• Deductive Arguments: Claims to provide conclusive grounds for the conclusion, if it does it is valid, if it does not it is invalid.– Valid or invalid– All humans are mortal – Socrates is human– Therefore, Socrates is mortal

The Problem of Criterion

• It is used to distinguish TRUE and FALSE statements:– It is a ‘method’ and a ‘criteria’

• What is the proper method for deciding which are true beliefs and which are false beliefs?

• We do know of fairly reliable ways of sorting out good/true beliefs and false/bad beliefs:– Procedures of science– Common sense– Cannons of logic– Induction – Probability

Picturing Relation Statements

True Statements accurately picture how things are: Precisely - Free from error.

• This interpretation is somewhat plausible for statements that describe a state of affairs

– “The desk is next to the window” “The car is in the parking lot”

• It pictures with names and grammatical relations the physical conditions/situation.

• Some Problems:

• “If you were president of the United Nations, you would be famous – it is true

• But it is difficult to see what really pictures.

• It is difficult to identify to which it corresponds.

Normative Statements

• “You should help someone whose life is at risk, and if in doing so does not threatened your life”

(True statement)• We could avoid problems between picturing statements and

normative statements, if we define truth without relying on any concept:– “A true statement, is such that what it asserts to be the case is

in fact the case”

• Definition of Truth: Both normative and picturing statements if they declare what they assert to be the case is the case, then they are true.

• CIRCULAR REASONING

Skeptic Point of View Doubtless True

• A. How do we know that the procedures of science, reason and common sense are the best methods?

• B. How do you know that is the right/true way to method?

• One cannot answered A until you answered B and vice versa.

Procedure

Succeeds

True & False True & False

Should we belief beyond evidence?

• Evidentialism

• We should not accept any statement as true unless we have good evidence to support its true.

• Pragmatic Theory of Truth.

• P is True, “if and only if, ” ( as long it works) agrees with reality (What is reality?)

• Agree to be consistent with what we take to be true.

Truth

Correspondence theory of Truth

Coherence theory of Truth

Correspondence Theory of Truth

• For a statement to be true there must be some appropriate correspondence between true statements and actual features of the world

• True statements correspond with reality.• False statements fail to correspond to how things

actually are in the world• Truth arises from how things are in the world,

independently of human beliefs• What exactly that the relation of correspondence

between a)statement belief and b) the world, amount to?

• “It is theory about the nature of truth…

“A theory to the effect that truth does consist in some sort of correspondence between a proposition on the one hand, and on the other a real world whose nature and existence are quite independent of what may be believed about it.”

Correspondence Theory of Truth

Coherence Theory of Truth

• Definition of Truth:• “ a statement is true if and only if stands in an

appropriate relation to some system of other statements”

• What is for a statement to cohere with some system of other statements?(system of beliefs)

• Requirements:– Logical Implication: a statement coheres with a

system of other statements if and only if it follows logically from that system of statements, OR logically implies some subset of the system.

• CONFIRMING ANY JUDGMENT, false or true about and appropriate relation REQUIRES some cognitive access to the world.

• What is the relation between the statement and the system of beliefs that we know as true, and

• How do we identify what statements are true or false?

• The truth as correspondence may not depend on our knowledge of truth and/ or ability to discern truth.

• Truth consists in correspondence with a reality that is independent of anything that may be believed about it.

The problem of Circularity

• Definition of truth in terms of coherence and, definition of coherence in terms of presupposed truth:

• For a proposition to be true is for it to cohere with a certain system of beliefs

• The facts are determined by the coherent system of beliefs

• Coherence theory is a theory about the nature of truth• For a proposition to be true is to fit with some

designated set of belief, But what set of beliefs?• Every truth is the content of a belief that would be held

if the system of beliefs were fully understood and known to be true.

Truth in Zen Buddhism

• Zen does not assert the existence of a divine being. Zen has only one goal, the direct experience of what it is. Truth cannot be discovered in any objective way, and both warranties and truth tests badly miss the point. What we need to do is still our mental chatter and experience what is right in front of us directly-without the intervention of words and concepts.if we can get beyond words and concepts to direct experience, then and only then is truth possible.

• “As the fletcher whittles and makes straight his arrows, so the master directs his straying thoughts”

The Buddha

• No one can explain Zen to you, not even the most fully enlightened person, because to explain something is to know it and speak it from the outside. Truth lives instead on the inside, at the heart of life, and it must be experienced directly rather than talked about. There is no substitute for experience-Zen insists that the way of truth is not through reading or instruction. The truth cannot be commanded to appear; it cannot be conquered by reading, studying, and talking. You must patiently sit and meditate.

• The chief teaching method of the Buddha is the Koan - a kind of riddle.

Koan- a riddle• The best know is this: “You know the sound made by two

hands clapping. What is the sound of one hand clapping?”• “What was your face before your parents were born?”• Koans are intended to stop logical thought, discursive

thought and force you into a direct encounter with what is. The best way to ‘attack’ a koan is not to think about it and try to figure out what is means. The best way to begin may be to meditate, to empty your mind of all thought. If you persist, you may catch a glimpse of what is.

• Zen advocates do not find anything wrong with thinking; it is very useful for solving all kinds of complex problems, specially scientific and technical ones, and it has a clear and important role to play in the world. They just reject its value in finding the truth about existence.

“Believe nothing merely because you have been told it.

Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher.

But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be kind, conductive to the good, the

benefit, the welfare of all beings- that doctrine believe and

cling to, and take it as your guide.”

The Buddha