Epistemology

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[[es:Epistemolog�a]][[fr:�pist�mologie]]

Rodin, Thinker
Auguste Rodin, Thinker

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy dealing with the nature, origin and scope of knowledge, and methods of obtaining knowledge. No consensus exists as to which epistemological beliefs give human beings the most accurate understanding of the truth, or if there is just one "truth". Because all people have epistemological beliefs, even if unconsciously, thinking beings cannot understand and analyze ideas without first having a system to accept and process those ideas. All people begin with rudimentary and undeveloped epistemological processes, however, those who study philosophy can begin to recognize how epistemological systems work, and can develop their own epistemology from new discoveries.

Philosophers of all schools of thought agree, people have the capacity to think of questions which seem to be without answers. For instance: "Is there an end to time?" "Is there a God?" "Is the God of the philosophers the same as the Biblical God?" "Is there a reality beyond that which we can sense?" Such questions are considered transcendental, because they currently go beyond the limits of human rational inquiry and evidence. In the 20th century, logical positivists finally declared such metaphysical questions to be devoid of any cognitive significance. But others still take them seriously and continue to ask and search for answers, and there are still epistemological problems with them, even if some would push them aside.

Many beliefs have positive epistemological features, and many beliefs are quite rational and "justified", a term philosophers use in a technical way. However, most of us, at least in some moments, are not content with being merely rational, because even a rational belief can be false. One can be careful and logical in forming a belief, remain rational in holding the belief, but still be wrong when the belief is false. Arguably, our ultimate ambition is to believe the truth, put simply, but in the press of the realities before us in the real world, the epistemological features of belief require much more expression than simple right-or-wrong duality. The question then becomes one of at what point belief is true, to what extent it is true, or for how long it is true.

An analysis of this topic might make us wonder about how we can be sure any beliefs are true. Are there any guarantees available, we might ask, some criteria we might use in order to decide on the truth of our beliefs. Using logic, we can base our beliefs on observation and experiment, conscientiously answering objections found in evidence, feeding the results back into our formulations. Belief is rational, and possibly true, when it follows these basic guidelines. Epistemology and logic, then, as forms ofrationality, provide at least an indicator of truth. If our beliefs are rational, then they are at least probably true. At the very least, the rationality of a belief gives us reason to think the belief is true.

The two major schools of thought, inherited from modern philosophy, may prove useful in categorizing certain approximate trends throughout the history of epistemology:

  • Rationalism holds there are innate ideas not found in experience. These ideas exist independently of any experience people may have, and may in some way derive from the very structure of the human mind, or they may exist independently of any mind. If they exist independently, they may be understood by a human mind once it reaches a necessary degree of sophistication.
  • Empiricism (see: scientific method, philosophy of science and naive empiricism) denies there are any concepts which exist prior to experience. All knowledge is a product of active human learning, based upon perceptory interaction. Perception, however, may cause concern, since illusions, misunderstandings, and even hallucinations prove that perception does not always depict the world as it really is.

The existence of mathematical theorems may pose a problem for empiricists, as mathematical truths certainly do not depend upon experience, and they can be known prior to experience. Some empiricists answer this by noting that mathematical theorems are empty of cognitive content, only expressing the relationship of concepts to one another. Rationalists would hold that such relationships are indeed a form of cognitive content.

Immanuel Kant is widely credited with creating a synthesis between the two views, in his Transcendental Idealism. In Kant's view people certainly do have human knowledge prior to particular experiences, such as causality, which is not devoid of cognitive significance. Kant held these are synthetic a priori concepts, which are used to process new empirical experiences. This copernican revolution still affects epistemology, and the 20th century logical positivist movement is another way of bringing Rationalism (logical) and Empiricism (Positivism) together, and even more recently, a contemporary approach divided the issue in a different way.

  • Foundationalism holds there are basic beliefs in which we can be certain, and we can also be confident in other beliefs rigorously derived from these. A famous example [[Ren� Descartes|Descartes]]' cogito ergo sum ("I think therefore I am"), by which he meant it is impossible to doubt one's own existence. Whether our observation of our own mental activity is fundamentally different or more reliable than other observations is still in question. The difficulty of foundationalism is that no set of basic beliefs proposed for it are trivial.
  • Coherentism holds we are more justified in beliefs if they form a coherent whole with our other beliefs. Because foundational beliefs are rather limiting, coherence allows us to create a far richer web of belief. However, the problem is that a set of beliefs can be internally consistent but still reflect poorly on the actual world. As some say, two drunken sailors holding each other up may still not be standing on solid ground.

Recently, near the end of the contemporary period, Gilbert Harman and Susan Haack separately attempted to fuse foundationalism and coherentism. Haack called it "Foundherentalism", which accrues degrees of relative confidence to beliefs by mediating between the two approaches, establishing foundations for tautological beliefs, bringing in more esoteric beliefs through relative coherence. Newer philosophers also argue for combinations resembling Kantian idealism or a mesh of foundations and coherence theories. It is clear, neither rationalism nor empiricism, foundationalism nor coherentism, work on their own to explain human knowledge, and how knowledge is produced and maintained is a very complicated process, as the famous Gettier problem illustrates.

So, epistemology asks about the ultimate sources of justification, rationality, and other epistemic features of our beliefs. Epistemologists ask: "What are the ultimate sources of knowledge?" "What is knowledge?" These basic questions are not as simple-minded as they seem, and the challenge remains that all of our belief has to pass some pretty stringent tests to count as knowledge.

See also: Self-evidence, theory of justification, Regress_argument, a priori and a posteriori knowledge, knowledge, skepticism, Common sense and the Diallelus, social epistemology, aesthetics, ethics, metaphysics, philosophy, ontology, reason, philosophy of science, science education.

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