simplified epistemology

[William Flynn Wallace]

So I got a book on that subject and found it truly tedious, and requiring  a background in other philosophy courses.  So HELP!

Here is my version of a simplified epistemology:

1 - rationalism - using reason and logic  - math here of course

2 - empiricism - we all know this one

3 - authoritarianism - Bible, gurus - based on authority's opinions which are not necessarily based on anything

4 - intuition, gut feelings, instincts, common sense and whatnot including every bias known to us

What am I missing?    bill w

[John Clark]

On Sat, May 8, 2021 at 5:22 PM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Here is my version of a simplified epistemology:

>1 - rationalism - using reason and logic  - math here of course

>2 - empiricism - we all know this one

>3 - authoritarianism - Bible, gurus - based on authority's opinions which are not necessarily based on anything

>4 - intuition, gut feelings, instincts, common sense and whatnot including every bias known to us

>What am I missing?    bill w

Empiricism and intuition should really be combined into one because empiricism needs intuition to know what the test for, and intuition without empiricism can lead you astray. And authoritarianism it's not limited to the Bible and gurus and it's not always a bad thing, when a scientist reads in a journal like Science or Nature about an experiment he assumes the experiment really was conducted as described and produce those results even if he has not personally repeated it because of the authority of the journal; and the journal got that authority from its history, a history of usually being truthful.  

Your list could be simplified even further with just 2  entries, deduction and induction. 

John K Clark 

[Lawrence Crowell]

I would consider deduction, the use of formal rules, and induction, a proposition based on a large number of outcomes or calculations, as two forms of rationalism. 

LC

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[William Flynn Wallace]

Maybe I should put intuition into two categories:   'trust your instincts' kind, no better than wild guesses and gut feelings, and the helpful kind where your unconscious is telling you something valid.  The Authority - the way I am looking at it, is where the authority only has his own opinions about something and is not using empiricism or anything else to back them up.  Hence the Bible and online gurus and knowitalls.  As for Lawrence's comment, Empiricism uses both induction and deduction, and I am calling Rationalism something outside empiricism.  

But no matter, nobody added any categories, so that's good.   We just need categories for good epistemology and bad epistemology. bill w

On Sun, May 9, 2021 at 5:00 AM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Dan TheBookMan]

Pragmatism is for your list.

I believe the two major ways of dicing up epistemology are by
structure and by source. Structures usually divide into varieties of
foundationalism and coherentism. (This also relates to theories of
truth.) In a nutshell, foundationalism means knowledge is built from
knowledge: there's stuff you know and you derive more stuff you know
from it. A metaphor that might help here is seeing knowledge as a
building with a foundation and floors built up from there.
Rationalism, by the way, as in Descartes, is foundational like this:
there are certain foundations and stuff is built up from them.

Coherentism, similarly, means knowledge fits together: a new item
either fits with the rest of your knowledge or doesn't. A metaphor
would be like a web where one particular piece has to fit in (more or
less), but there's no up or down in the web. I can hold together from
different places. Pragmatic theories of truth usually ride on
coherentism, though they're usually hybrids.

And one can combine these -- as some thinkers do.

Now for sources. That seems to be how you're dividing things up. Are
the sources, e.g., experience/sense perception? That's empiricism, no?
Intuitions? Well, needs not be said. :) Pure ideas? Testimony? And
there's no reason the sources can't be mixed together. I see no a
priori problem with combining empiricism with intuitions and testimony
and perhaps concepts themselves. (Much scientific knowledge is
testimonial, of course: almost no one does experiments or collects
data. Most simply accept the experiments and data collection others
have done and go from there.)

By the way, philosophers of mathematics debate whether mathematical
knowledge is based on pure reason (Frege, Russell), perception
(Platonism, which is usually the default position here is really a
form of perception; Godel is a modern holder of this view, I think),
empiricism (J. S. Mill and, more recently, Philip Kitcher hold that
math is empirical), intuitionism (Brouwer and Dummett, for instance),
and formalism (Hilbert and I think Tarski), etc. Of course, people
will use mathematics as an example of pure reason par excellence, but
that's obviously not something agreed upon by all.

Which book were you reading?

Regards,

Dan
Sample my Kindle books via:
http://author.to/DanUst

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Sun, May 9, 2021 at 11:55 AM Lawrence Crowell
<goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I would consider deduction, the use of formal rules, and induction, a proposition based
> on a large number of outcomes or calculations, as two forms of rationalism.

Rationalism is usually more about the source of knowledge (intuitions,
innate ideas, concepts) and the structure (it's usually
foundationalist, meaning it views knowledge as a hierarchical
structure kind of like a building) than about purely the use of forms
of reasoning. In fact, rival epistemologies also use forms of
reasoning too. So that's not the differentiating feature here.
Descartes is usually seen as a Rationalist and he mostly held you
moved from innate ideas to further developments of these. Locke, often
seen as the Empiricist wasn't against using logic (though his ideas on
logic are a wee confused). And perhaps the arch-empiricist is J. S.
Mill who actually came up with Mill's methods:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mill%27s_Methods

[William Flynn Wallace]

"Rationalism means this."  "No it means that."  "It should be included under...." "No I disagree."   Nothing says 'philosophy' like the 12 men and the elephant metaphor.

I think since no one actually added any epistemologies I'll go with what I have.  bill w

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[John Clark]

On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 11:56 AM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I think since no one actually added any epistemologies I'll go with what I have. 

You might add direct experience, and that outranks everything, even the scientific method. If I bang my fist on a table really really hard I may not have proven that the table exists or even that my fist exists but I have proven by direct experience beyond any doubt that I feel pain; the only trouble with that sort of proof is it can't be communicated, it is available only to me. That's why if I ever have a mystical experience (so far I haven't had any) I intend to keep it to myself and not make a fool of myself by talking about it.  As Wittgenstein
said "That whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must remain silent"

John K Clark

[William Flynn Wallace]

I think of direct experience and common sense as being part of empiricism.  So that category includes very formal experiments and very casual observations.  bill w

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[John Clark]

On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 12:33 PM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I think of direct experience and common sense as being part of empiricism. 

I think common sense is either the product of induction (X has always occurred in the past therefore X will always continue into the future) or is the product of the way genes happen to hardwired our brains (perhaps that's why most people feel the concepts of up-and-down are a fundamental part of reality, even a great physicist probably couldn't help feeling that emotion if he's standing close to the edge of a cliff). Common sense can be wrong and often is, but direct experience never can be. If direct experience tells us something we need neither induction nor deduction nor empiricism to know it is true.

John K Clark

[William Flynn Wallace]

The problem with direct experience is that it can be misinterpreted, especially overgeneralized.  Marry one woman, get taken for an expensive ride, and forever after hate women.  This is what brains do:  try to develop 'laws' based on personal experience to be used in other cases which might not be similar.  bill w

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[Dan TheBookMan]

I added pragmatism, but maybe you missed my post where I responded directly to yours.

The problem with the term rationalism is it’s like materialism: there’s a use inside philosophy that isn’t exactly as the same outside philosophy. Rationalism doesn’t mean just using reason and logic in philosophy, though that is how it’s used in everyday talk. I mean if someone unschooled in philosophy were to say she’s a rationalist, you probably wouldn’t presume she was a follower of Descartes and believed in innate ideas. (Likewise, in everyday use, a materialist is someone who chases after wealth and values that more than friendships, family, etc. In philosophy, it means someone who believe that physical reality is really all there is. That person might be an ascetic in personal life and be a people person who feels their time volunteering to build homes for the poor is more important than having a big bank account.)

Anyhow, you might be better served by reading this:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/

It goes over stuff I mentioned and more and in more detail and is by two professional philosophers. 

Regards,

Dan

[John Clark]

On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 1:00 PM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> The problem with direct experience is that it can be misinterpreted, especially overgeneralized. 

I agree. If Bob has a mystical experience, such as talking to the one true God, then Bob can be absolutely certain that Bob believes God exists. But that is of no help whatsoever in Bob or anyone else answering the question "Does God exist?". Somebody can be absolutely positively 100% certain about something and still be dead wrong, in fact it's not at all rare, they often are. However direct experience is right yet again, it is absolutely true that Bob believes God exists.

John K Clark

 

[John Clark]

On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 1:09 PM Dan TheBookMan <danus...@gmail.com> wrote:

> In philosophy, it [rationalism] means someone who believe that physical reality is really all there is. 

The trouble is in philosophy there's little agreement on what constitutes physical reality and what does not.  If a car is moving at 11 miles an hour the car may be part of physical reality but what about the number 11? Is the adjective "speed " part of physical reality, what about "slow"? Are only nouns physically real or must we include adjectives and adverbs? If you ask 11 philosophers those questions you'll get 13 different answers.

John K Clark

[William Flynn Wallace]

I have read a bit of Peirce and James but cannot say that I fully understand pragmatism.  So I will deal with it as a nonphilosopher:  it seems to me that being pragmatic uses the knowledge you have rather than being a source of knowledge.  bill w

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[Dan TheBookMan]

On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 7:42 PM William Flynn Wallace
<fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have read a bit of Peirce and James but cannot say that I fully understand
> pragmatism. So I will deal with it as a nonphilosopher: it seems to me that
> being pragmatic uses the knowledge you have rather than being a source of
> knowledge. bill w

In a nutshell, pragmatic epistemology would be accepting something as
true because it has practical applications or works -- and rejecting
something when that doesn't hold. This might sound too vague, but
various pragmatists try to be clearer on just how this is to be done.
Usually, they start with the fact that knowers have goals, figuring
out what those particular goals are, and work from there. Pragmatists
like Peirce often seem little different than just scientific realists.
(And Peirce seems to have been just that; pragmatics is the means, but
the overall shape of his ideas seems to be some form of moderate
scientific realism that I believe few here would find crazy.)

Of course, the source of knowledge would be experience just like
empiricists, but the difference is how the knowing agent is seen as
enmeshed in the world and how the knower sets the goals and ultimately
decides when to stop. But there is a further difference. One can also
accept non-empirical sources of knowledge too -- as long as they meet
the goals and fit into whatever line of inquiry the knower is engaged
in. Think of how many scientists use mathematics (and might even
accept some form of mathematical Platonism) and use logic yet might
not think either of these very helpful tools are ultimately derived
from experience. (I'm not arguing for the basis of math or logic here
-- just trying to make the case for how a pragmatist might argue that
empiricism doesn't give the whole truth even in science.)

I believe in general you're looking for 'fast food answers to gourmet
questions' here if you're just seeking to ruthlessly oversimplify.
Granted, sometimes explanations turn into verbal diarrhea and too many
hairs are split. Then again, it's sort of like if you want to
understand particle physics. You have to do some mental work other
than just fitting it all into what you can put on a post it note. :)

Regards,

Dan

[Dan TheBookMan]

This is a case where you trimming someone else's response really
shifts the meaning around. What I wrote was:

'(Likewise, in everyday use, a materialist is someone who chases after

wealth and values that more than friendships, family, etc. In

philosophy, it means someone who believe[sic] that physical reality is

really all there is. That person might be an ascetic in personal life
and be a people person who feels their time volunteering to build

homes for the poor is more important than having a big bank account.)'

Now you chopped that and then added 'rationalism' in square brackets
to explain my use of 'it.' But it should be obvious by it, I mean
'materialist.' :)

Two further things could be said about your comment. One is that
whatever disagreements professional philosophers have, they often
still agree on some stuff, including what a term like materialist
means. What they might disagree on is whether materialism makes sense
or is true. (Two different things. Any idea might seem to make sense
but on closer inspection one finds there are contradictions baked in.
And even if an idea makes sense, it might not be the case. For
instance, the claim that the pyramids were built by dinosaurs and are
millions of years older than suspected doesn't seem nonsensical in
itself, but it does seem to be plainly false.)

The other is that your statement, if taken seriously, is an empirical
claim that should be easy to verify or falsify by simply doing some
surveys on [professional] philosophers. I haven't done such, but among
philosophers I personally know, it's more about being willing to
entertain different ideas than actually holding them. And this
tolerance for wildly different views is kind of just part of how
philosophy is done. But the openness to this doesn't mean there's no
method or goals or nothing is agreed upon ever. Were that not so, one
would expect there to be little or no change in philosophy over the
generations. But that's not what we actually see as anyone who reads
the journals can see.

Regards,

Dan

[John Clark]

On Mon, May 17, 2021 at 5:10 PM Dan TheBookMan <danus...@gmail.com> wrote:

 

>>> In philosophy, it [rationalism] means someone who believe that physical reality is really all there is.

>> The trouble is in philosophy there's little agreement on what constitutes physical reality and what does not.  If a car is moving at 11 miles an hour the car may be part of physical reality but what about the number 11? Is the adjective "speed " part of physical reality, what about "slow"? Are only nouns physically real or must we include adjectives and adverbs? If you ask 11 philosophers those questions you'll get 13 different answers.

> This is a case where you trimming someone else's response really shifts the meaning around. What I wrote was:

'(Likewise, in everyday use, a materialist is someone who chases after
wealth and values that more than friendships, family, etc. In
philosophy, it means someone who believe[sic] that physical reality is
really all there is. That person might be an ascetic in personal life
and be a people person who feels their time volunteering to build
homes for the poor is more important than having a big bank account.)'

Now you chopped that and then added 'rationalism' in square brackets
to explain my use of 'it.' But it should be obvious by it, I mean
'materialist.' :)

Sorry, because the "it" in question came just after the word "philosophy" I thought we were talking about what philosophers mean not what non-philosophers mean in everyday life by a certain word. And "Is valuing wealth more than friendship or family a good idea?" is not a scientific question, it is a matter of taste, and there's no arguing about matters of taste. 

> Two further things could be said about your comment. One is that

whatever disagreements professional philosophers have, they often
still agree on some stuff, 

Philosophers may agree on some stuff but not much. I love the story Richard Feynman tells about philosophers when he was in graduate school:

"In the Graduate College dining room at Princeton everybody used to sit with his own group. I sat with the physicists, but after a bit I thought: It would be nice to see what the rest of the world is doing, so I'll sit for a week or two in each of the other groups.

When I sat with the philosophers I listened to them discuss very seriously a book called Process and Reality by Whitehead. They were using words in a funny way, and I couldn't quite understand what they were saying. Now I didn't want to interrupt them in their own conversation and keep asking them to explain something, and on the few occasions that I did, they'd try to explain it to me, but I still didn't get it. Finally they invited me to come to their seminar.

They had a seminar that was like, a class. It had been meeting once a week to discuss a new chapter out of Process and Reality - some guy would give a report on it and then there would be a discussion. I  went to this seminar promising myself to keep my mouth shut, reminding myself that I didn't know anything about the subject, and I was going there just to watch.

What happened there was typical - so typical that it was unbelievable, but true. First of all, I sat there without saying anything, which is almost unbelievable, but also true. A student gave a report on the chapter to be studied that week. In it Whitehead kept using the words "essential object" in a particular technical way that presumably he had defined, but that I didn't understand.

After some discussion as to what "essential object" meant, the professor leading the seminar said something meant to clarify things and drew something that looked like lightning bolts on the blackboard. "Mr. Feynman," he said, "would you say an electron is an 'essential object'?"

Well, now I was in trouble. I admitted that I hadn't read the book, so I had no idea of what Whitehead meant by the phrase; I had only come to watch. "But," I said, "I'll try to answer the professor's question if you will first answer a question from me, so I can have a better idea of what 'essential object' means.

What I had intended to do was to find out whether they thought theoretical constructs were essential objects. The electron is a theory that we use; it is so useful in understanding the way nature works that we can almost call it real. I wanted to make the idea of a theory clear by analogy. In the case of the brick, my next question was going to be, "What about the inside of the brick?" - and I would then point out that no one has ever seen the inside of a brick. Every time you break the brick, you only see the surface. That the brick has an inside is a simple theory which helps us understand things better. The theory of electrons is analogous. So I began by asking, "Is a brick an essential object?"

Then the answers came out. One man stood up and said, "A brick as an individual, specific brick. That is what Whitehead means by an essential object."

Another man said, "No, it isn't the individual brick that is an essential object; it's the general character that all bricks have in common - their 'brickiness' - that is the essential object."

Another guy got up and said, "No, it's not in the bricks themselves. 'Essential object' means the idea in the mind that you get when you think of bricks."Another guy got up, and another, and I tell you I have never heard such ingenious different ways of looking at a brick before. And, just like it should in all stories about philosophers, it ended up in complete chaos. In all their previous discussions they hadn't even asked themselves whether such a simple object as a brick, much less an electron, is an "essential object." "

  John K Clark

[John Clark]

On Mon, May 17, 2021 at 4:55 PM Dan TheBookMan <danus...@gmail.com> wrote:

> In a nutshell, pragmatic epistemology would be accepting something as
true because it has practical applications or works -- and rejecting
something when that doesn't hold.

Sadly there are lots of people, even some non-philosophers, who disagree with what you call "pragmatic epistemology" and I'll be damned if I understand why. If a plan works then it is true ( if X is a plan that says "this will produce Y" and Y is a desired result and if X is true then according to the Material Conditional Y  will result from X). Nevertheless some think they shouldn't stop doing something just because they know it's not working and will never work. And they believe they shouldn't start doing something just because they know it will work and result in less death and misery than doing nothing. And they insist everybody should be required to do what they do. It's amazing to me that pragmatism is controversial when it's just the refusal to deliberately be stupid.

John K Clark

[William Flynn Wallace]

This Feynman story really sums up a lot for me.  Why are there so many varieties and sub varieties of philosophical schools?  Because, it seems, everyone has to be smarter than everyone else, especially at figuring out what someone else said.  Their 'take' on concepts then can become a 'school of thought', which will initially attract followers, who then add their own takes, split off and form a new subgroup and so on.  Given that there are no facts to support any of the groups, this sort of thing has and will go on forever, providing nothing of importance to society, only to their tenure hopes (which they will get because some places will publish anything, as already demonstrated by that physicist who wrote a nonsense paper and got it published.)  

Thought experiment:  ask philosophers what Kant meant by.............Get a thousand answers, none of which totally agree with any other one.  Bring Kant forward in time and ask him:  he reads all the interpretations, and say  "Well, some of them are nearly correct on that point, but that was what I thought when I wrote that paper, and since then I have changed and now I think................." 

Total value of philosophy = zero.  Natural philosophy turning into science has been their only contribution to actual knowledge.  

bill w

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[Lawrence Crowell]

On Tuesday, May 18, 2021 at 5:45:58 AM UTC-5 johnk...@gmail.com wrote:

Philosophers may agree on some stuff but not much. I love the story Richard Feynman tells about philosophers when he was in graduate school:

"In the Graduate College dining room at Princeton everybody used to sit with his own group. I sat with the physicists, but after a bit I thought: It would be nice to see what the rest of the world is doing, so I'll sit for a week or two in each of the other groups.

When I sat with the philosophers I listened to them discuss very seriously a book called Process and Reality by Whitehead. They were using words in a funny way, and I couldn't quite understand what they were saying. Now I didn't want to interrupt them in their own conversation and keep asking them to explain something, and on the few occasions that I did, they'd try to explain it to me, but I still didn't get it. Finally they invited me to come to their seminar.

They had a seminar that was like, a class. It had been meeting once a week to discuss a new chapter out of Process and Reality - some guy would give a report on it and then there would be a discussion. I  went to this seminar promising myself to keep my mouth shut, reminding myself that I didn't know anything about the subject, and I was going there just to watch.

What happened there was typical - so typical that it was unbelievable, but true. First of all, I sat there without saying anything, which is almost unbelievable, but also true. A student gave a report on the chapter to be studied that week. In it Whitehead kept using the words "essential object" in a particular technical way that presumably he had defined, but that I didn't understand.

After some discussion as to what "essential object" meant, the professor leading the seminar said something meant to clarify things and drew something that looked like lightning bolts on the blackboard. "Mr. Feynman," he said, "would you say an electron is an 'essential object'?"

Well, now I was in trouble. I admitted that I hadn't read the book, so I had no idea of what Whitehead meant by the phrase; I had only come to watch. "But," I said, "I'll try to answer the professor's question if you will first answer a question from me, so I can have a better idea of what 'essential object' means.

What I had intended to do was to find out whether they thought theoretical constructs were essential objects. The electron is a theory that we use; it is so useful in understanding the way nature works that we can almost call it real. I wanted to make the idea of a theory clear by analogy. In the case of the brick, my next question was going to be, "What about the inside of the brick?" - and I would then point out that no one has ever seen the inside of a brick. Every time you break the brick, you only see the surface. That the brick has an inside is a simple theory which helps us understand things better. The theory of electrons is analogous. So I began by asking, "Is a brick an essential object?"

Then the answers came out. One man stood up and said, "A brick as an individual, specific brick. That is what Whitehead means by an essential object."

Another man said, "No, it isn't the individual brick that is an essential object; it's the general character that all bricks have in common - their 'brickiness' - that is the essential object."

Another guy got up and said, "No, it's not in the bricks themselves. 'Essential object' means the idea in the mind that you get when you think of bricks."Another guy got up, and another, and I tell you I have never heard such ingenious different ways of looking at a brick before. And, just like it should in all stories about philosophers, it ended up in complete chaos. In all their previous discussions they hadn't even asked themselves whether such a simple object as a brick, much less an electron, is an "essential object." "

  John K Clark

I seem to remember reading this in Surely You're Joking Feynman. A part of the problem is that as A. J. Ayer stated, philosophy is a game of words and language, where by making continual references to things, ideas and people in this way by many philosophers a set of possible ways of thinking are presented. The object is not to come up with the "right one," but something that might have some consistency and which might serve some scholarly endeavor. In this discussion Feynman pointed out, everyone had their own idea of what was meant by essential object.

LC