Stanford link by Dan

[William Flynn Wallace]

Keep in mind, Dan, that I am looking for a simple way to explain epistemology (to two 13 year old girls, in fact, who are also my gardeners and piano students), not sending them to professional essays.  That sort of article is what just about halted my investigations into philosophy.  Unnecessarily verbose (to the point of logorrhea (a better term than diarrhea of the mouth/brain) ), picky about definitions and yet often vague  etc etc.

Some of it reminds me of Freud:  on page 12 he would introduce a concept in a very tentative form, but by page 18 it was a proven fact.    bill w

[John Clark]

On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 3:51 PM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> That sort of article is what just about halted my investigations into philosophy.  Unnecessarily verbose (to the point of logorrhea (a better term than diarrhea of the mouth/brain) ), picky about definitions and yet often vague  etc etc.

A little inaccuracy saves tons of explanations. Before you tell me exactly what something always means first tell me approximately what it usually means.

 John K Clark

[William Flynn Wallace]

Anyone interested in word origins, as I am, and often goes to https://www.etymonline.com/, and looks at the changes in meaning over the centuries, knows that if you know Latin and Greek prefixes and suffixes (thousands of them) you often still can't figure a word out as to current meaning.  Very often the word has morphed into something far from the original meaning.  Words are slippery little devils, like the snails in Pretty Woman.  You can tell somebody exactly what something means - now.  Next year?  Maybe.  John I don't get 'a little inaccuracy'.  bill w

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[Dan TheBookMan]

I missed the part where you said this was to explain it to thirteen year olds.

I reckon if that's your goal, then you might ask what is epistemology
for? Well, it's the study of knowledge, right? :)

What does that mean? At a basic level, epistemology should deal with
questions like Can we know anything? What can we know? And how can we
know what we know is true or free of error or at least in the
ballpark? Then it can get more particular to ask where does knowledge
come from. (Reading the classics? Great authorities like the sages or
prophets? Personal experience? Innate ideas? Whatever works? Etc.)

And then we can ask what form knowledge takes overall. (Is it like
just a heap of unconnected factoids? Or is it more like a building
with foundational stuff on which all other knowledge rests and there's
a hierarchy -- maybe running from logic to math to physics to biology,
etc.? Or is it like a web where changing one part might affect other
parts in subtle ways?) And then one can ask about stuff like logic,
science, math, the role of emotions, rhetoric, etc.

Think of the above as the What's it for? approach to any topic. I feel
it works well for many fields -- not just epistemology. In fact, David
Saum many years ago applied it to concepts in general. If someone has
a concept -- which can be anything from the concept of dog or the
concept of green to the concept of individual rights or of the
scientific method -- then you ask What facts gave rise to this
concept? Of course, this doesn't limit one to concepts related to
brute physical facts. One can ask it about mathematical concepts,
literary criticism, film genres, the idea of god (even if one is an
atheist, one can ask what gave rise to the concept and whether there's
some unified concept there), unicorns.. You can go wild. :)

By the way,elsewhere you mentioned a quote often attributed to
Einstein about being able to explain something to a six year old or
something along those lines. In fact, he never said that. Something
like that is often attributed to Feynman too and to someone else. By
the way, there's a quote from Feynman that makes it seem like he might
not have said it:

“Hell, if I could explain [quantum electrodynamics] to the average
person, it wouldn’t have been worth the Nobel prize...” :)

See: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-02-16-mn-42968-story.html

Not sure if he really said it, but the LA Times seems somewhat credible.

Regards,

Dan