What is your epistemology?

[Lost Ego]

At what basis do you decide something's factitiousness? How do you know if something is true or real? Can we know anything with certainty? What makes you so certain this is reality and not an illusion? Can you rely on rationality, your senses, or your instinct? How is it that we can gain accurate knowledge?

What are the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge? What are its sources? What is its structure, and what are its limits?

 

[RobotRipping]

intuition? i think therfore i am? clear and distinct idea?

the arguments for any position are so lengthy and complex that they will never get anywhere. It is beyond us to know. Such things are transcendental and i guess i just accept them as such and stop hurting my brain reading i suppose i stand with the tractatus' argument on this one lol

 

[ebola?]

This is a complex question, but I usually side with the American Pragmatists, who I think have converged with the development of the phenomenologists in Continental philosophy, and their extension forward into people like Quine. I also draw from Foucault, who is kind of his own thing.

I detail my overall perspective in the first post of this thread, and I think some good discussion follows: www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/382889-Philosophical-issues-metaphysics

ebola

 

[In Dubio]

Factitiousness? I let other people think for me. Experts and clever people or people who dress in suits and appear important. Politicians mostly. TV reporters. These guys and gals are big shots in society and therefore must surely be the wisest of us.
True or real? Superstition mostly or my parents.
Certainty? I knew you were going to ask that question!
Reality vs Illusion? Duh the same way I decide factitiousness.
Blah Blah? Sorry X factor is starting.
Knowledge? I don't want no stinkin' knowledge.



p.s. What an awesome question! Did you know that (and this is a partially educated guess) if you were to live in 800AD India you could probably become a mendicant and get high all fucking day then talk metaphysics with other crazy people every day of the week. How far home sapiens sank!

 

[sekio]

At what basis do you decide something's factitiousness? How do you know if something is true or real? Can we know anything with certainty?

The scientific method. By repeated experiment and observation, one can build and validate models of the world. When multiple people conduct experiments which are in consensus, confidence in our models are increased.

For instance, the observation that objects accelerate at essentially the same rate due to gravity is experimentally validated in introductory physics classes everywhere, and is even reflected in our actions when we go to catch a falling object.

What makes you so certain this is reality and not an illusion? Can you rely on rationality, your senses, or your instinct?

Current theories of the mind suggest that reality as we know it is an illusion generated by our mind that is governed by sense data, physical and mental state, and memories. This is far from "whoa dude, perception is, like, reality man" / "What's true is what's true for you", though - as evidenced by "mind over matter" only going so far. Even if you have a strong desire to live, if someone hits you with a bus at 200 km/h, you're probably not going to make it. Even if you refuse to accept the bus was really there.

From a pragmatic standpoint, people must be able to rely on our senses to share similar models of the world, or we could never have any sort of civilization. Most of us would be eaten by predators. Communication, attempting to find food, attempting to reproduce would all be hampered. Instincts are nothing more than a combination of logical thinking and classically conditioned emotional response. (see also: military training.)

BTW, the brain-in-a-vat/Matrix argument has a problem that you can't ever accurately tell if you're in a simulation of good enough quality, rendering most of the implications moot in light of the need to eat, sleep, and not get arrested.

p.s. What an awesome question! Did you know that (and this is a partially educated guess) if you were to live in 800AD India you could probably become a mendicant and get high all fucking day then talk metaphysics with other crazy people every day of the week. How far home sapiens sank!

Your ideas intrigue me and I wish to subscribe to your biweekly newsletter.

 

[Foreigner]

I had something all written up and then I remembered a poem that summarizes things pretty well for me that I'd like to share:

III Nagarjuna, Robert Bringhurst, "A Matter of Spirit: Recovery of the Sacred in Contemporary Canadian Poetry"

What is swollen like a ripe
fruit, hollow like a cave,
What you touch, hear, taste, see, smell
is the inner perfection of vision.

What reaches into our eyes and our ears
is what is, and that is the wordless, inaudible
song and the brooding, unmusical
speech of the world.

This too
is just one
more opinion
to move through.

What is is what lies
out of sight, thought and talking.
Open them. Open the three
fists clinging to the world.

Open this too.
All positions
are prisons.
No truth is true

No instruction is certain, no knowledge complete.
If I speak for the serpent, the serpent
may speak for the bird. My position
is that I have no position.

This too.
All fictions
are true,
all intentions

positions,
and all dispositions
are prisons;
this too.

What is has no essence.
What is interdependent and empty.
What is unsingle, undouble, unplural, unborn,
unenduring, unbearing, undying;

what is has no past and no future, no shape
and no nature, no being, no having been, going
to be or becoming, no wholeness and no
incompleteness, no fingers....

This too.
This too
is just one
more opinion.

Outside the perfection of light there is no
total darkness. What causes what is is the hunger
to be and keep being. What is is on loan
from what isn't and its reflection.

What is is on loan from what isn't and is
its disguise. There is no rock bottom.
No centre, no sides, no top and no bottom.
This too.

There are no literal statements.
There is no unmetaphorical language.
This too.
Emptiness is also empty.

Nothing is not nothing. Nothing
is, and is is nothing. All that is
is nothing, yet there is
no nothing there that we can cling to.

We are also then
the nothing,
and the nothing
is the hunger,

and the hunger
is the question
and the answer:
be pure wonder.

 

[jacki]

If this is an illusion, who is having the illusion, and how do you know it.

 

[MyDoorsAreOpen]

All I know for certain is what I have done and lived through. If I haven't experienced something firsthand -- and put a great deal of time, energy, thought, and emotional investment into it -- then I'm willing to admit my knowledge of it is far from complete, and maybe flat out wrong.

But the problem is, none of us have the time and energy to have deep and meaningful experiences of all the things we need to take a stand on in order to live our lives. So we rely on outside sources of information that we deem trustworthy, and take it on faith that we're not being misinformed. What any of us considers a reliable source of information is going to vary based on the nature of the information and the context it's being invoked in. In any given setting, all of us are socially conditioned to see certain sources of information as more reliable than others. Certainty is merely the feeling you feel when your conditioned rubric for vetting a piece of information as "true" has been met. It's no guarantee that you won't encounter new experiences or pieces of information that contradict it. It's just a statement that so far that hasn't happened to you, and you don't anticipate it will.

On the subject of epistemology, call me nitpicky, but it kind of irks me when I see philosophy defined as "the search for truth". I see this most commonly among amateur fans of Analytical philosophy, but also among some professional academics in this school who write for the general public. The reason I have a problem with this is because one of the big questions philosophy deals with is, namely, "What is truth?". This is hard to articulate, but I'll try; something about this strikes me as circular reasoning. If the end goal of philosophizing is deeming statements true, then it seems to me those people doing the debating need to be in consensus, more or less, about what constitutes truth. Therefore, calling into question the nature of "truth" can't really be on the table for any other discussions to move forward.

I prefer to define philosophy as "the cultivation of wisdom", or perhaps, "the search for understanding". I think this definition not only avoids the assumption that the criteria for "truth" are a settled matter, but also gets to the heart of why people philosophize to begin with. What any person gains from engaging in philosophical debate is fundamentally personal, even if the subjects discussed are of cosmic proportions.

 

[HypGnosis]

^ Quality post, MyDoorsAreOpen.

 

[Gloop]

I had something all written up and then I remembered a poem that summarizes things pretty well for me that I'd like to share:

III Nagarjuna, Robert Bringhurst, "A Matter of Spirit: Recovery of the Sacred in Contemporary Canadian Poetry"

What is swollen like a ripe
fruit, hollow like a cave,
What you touch, hear, taste, see, smell
is the inner perfection of vision.

What reaches into our eyes and our ears
is what is, and that is the wordless, inaudible
song and the brooding, unmusical
speech of the world.

This too
is just one
more opinion
to move through.

What is is what lies
out of sight, thought and talking.
Open them. Open the three
fists clinging to the world.

Open this too.
All positions
are prisons.
No truth is true

No instruction is certain, no knowledge complete.
If I speak for the serpent, the serpent
may speak for the bird. My position
is that I have no position.

This too.
All fictions
are true,
all intentions

positions,
and all dispositions
are prisons;
this too.

What is has no essence.
What is interdependent and empty.
What is unsingle, undouble, unplural, unborn,
unenduring, unbearing, undying;

what is has no past and no future, no shape
and no nature, no being, no having been, going
to be or becoming, no wholeness and no
incompleteness, no fingers....

This too.
This too
is just one
more opinion.

Outside the perfection of light there is no
total darkness. What causes what is is the hunger
to be and keep being. What is is on loan
from what isn't and its reflection.

What is is on loan from what isn't and is
its disguise. There is no rock bottom.
No centre, no sides, no top and no bottom.
This too.

There are no literal statements.
There is no unmetaphorical language.
This too.
Emptiness is also empty.

Nothing is not nothing. Nothing
is, and is is nothing. All that is
is nothing, yet there is
no nothing there that we can cling to.

We are also then
the nothing,
and the nothing
is the hunger,

and the hunger
is the question
and the answer:
be pure wonder.

I agree.

 

[rickolasnice]

Pretty much what sekio said..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory

..

I know that I can experience, remember, imagine, think something that will be true as a personal subjective experience.. and sometimes these will be real.. but I can never say for certain which parts are real, outside things and which parts exist solely as a construct of my brain.. Nobody can.

I still don't believe most scientific theories 100% (in the way that a person of faith will KNOW God exists).. I understand most of them will probably change or be thrown out altogether with new evidence.. What's the current consensus on the theory of the beginning / expansion of the universe?

I like playing with ideas that can not (or are nowhere near to) be proven either way.. My favourites;
Inside every singularity is another universe, and we are in one ourselves.
Keep going smaller and smaller and smaller and there will be a new "universe" and so on.. Same for bigger.
^On that note, our universe is like a sub atomic particle for the next.

 

[ebola?]

The scientific method. By repeated experiment and observation, one can build and validate models of the world. When multiple people conduct experiments which are in consensus, confidence in our models are increased.

However, I think that the traditional deductive method of science is insufficient taken alone. Now, by deductive science, I mean something pretty specific, whereby "objectivity" is maintained, observations sanitized of effects of the observer, generalizations made irrespective of the observer, and deductive methods used to link hypotheses to the experimental methods used to confirm them. This method tends to break down when you have situations where the observer is part of the system being observed. This occurs most clearly in practice of the social sciences and when we try to interpret the ontological implications of quantum mechanics. However, with the latter, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Eg, regardless of what I think about the implications of QM, the laser in my DVD drive will continue to function. I also think that the social sciences produce a different type of knowledge than the natural sciences. Namely, social systems are arbitrarily generative, depending on the methods of investigation with which we prod them. Thus, the practice of social science enriches the theoretical repertoire with which we may engage our world rather than arriving at some final theory of objects, relations, and dynamics which society may be reduced to. I find this personally problematic, as my first instinct is to try to build a grand-unified theory of objects in my purview.

I also think that the mathematical machinery underlying science and the ontological implications of scientific theory cannot be established via science itself.

Instincts are nothing more than a combination of logical thinking and classically conditioned emotional response. (see also: military training.)

I think that the question of what logical thought is gets quite slippery with sufficient prodding, though. I also think that the brain routinely processes information in ways guided by neither logic nor conditioning (we should allow operant conditioning as well) in any simple sense, namely via mostly unconsciously implemented heuristics.

On the subject of epistemology, call me nitpicky, but it kind of irks me when I see philosophy defined as "the search for truth". I see this most commonly among amateur fans of Analytical philosophy, but also among some professional academics in this school who write for the general public.

What if we define philosophy as search for the underpinnings of truth instead?

ebola