Epistemology - Introduction to Philosophy - Lecture Slides, Slides of Philosophy

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Epistemology

Definition

• How do we know what we know?

• Reflection on the acquisition and justification of

knowledge claims

• “Meta” category

Propositional Statements

• Descriptive Knowledge

• Main area of study
• Can we determine the accuracy of a particular

statement of knowledge

• Is a statement true?

Acquiring Knowledge

• Two Schools of Thought

• Empiricism
  • All knowledge arises from sense experience
  • Knowledge is a posteriori

Rationalism

• Plato
  • All knowledge is prior to experience and independent of sense experience
  • Truth is sought through the contemplation of the world of the forms
  • Allegory of the Cave

Rationalism

• Gottfried Leibniz
  • Truths of Reason
    • Truths that can be comprehended independent of sensations
    • Platonist – Soul reflects on necessary truths
  • Truths of Fact
    • Secondary to Truths of Reason
    • Contingent truths

Empiricism

• John Locke
  • Sensory experience is the only source for knowledge
  • The mind is a tabula rosa , blank tablet on which the senses write
  • Ideas are not innate, but built up from the particular sensations of the senses

Empiricism

• Human knowledge is based on sense

impressions

• Ideas are memory-images of perceptions
• Only way to validate ideas is to go back to the sense data
• Our experience is a succession of separate disconnected perceptions
• Scientific theories or laws are summaries of individual observations (sense data)

David Hume