Questions tagged [epistemology]
Epistemology is the study of knowledge, acquisition thereof, and the justification of belief in a given claim.
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Are random processes equivalent to unpredictable processes
I have seen random and unpredictable used interchangeably but sense there is a subtle difference that I have difficulty articulating.
My sense is that predictability is based on my own personal ...
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Is the (truth of) justification of political beliefs necessary given Pyrrhonism?
To explain real quick. Pyrrhonism is some sort of philosophical practice which does reject (or suspend judgment on) epistemic criteria. It is debatable if they can hold beliefs, but even if the could ...
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Markus Gabriel's conception of thinking as a sense
⚠ It doesn't make much sense to answer this question if you are not acquainted with Gabriel's work and do not even read the linked interview.
I always thought that common sense is fundamentally ...
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Does prediction really have epistemic value?
I am having trouble understanding why the act of predicting something gives it any sort of value or makes a theory more likely to be true. If a scientific theory explained everything in hindsight, ...
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A variant for panpsychism of shapes and matter?
What is the name of the variant of panpsychism that argues that not only matter, but also shapes and objects have conciousness?
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Resources on the distinction between epistemology in pure and applied mathematics
I'm looking for recommendations for works that present roughly (or at least parts of) the following perspective on epistemology in mathematics. I hope having access to similar perspectives will allow ...
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Is analytic philsophy the most associated with "armchair" knowledge and is that subject to change?
*By armchair I mean knowledge one can gain by not going out into the world very far. And by my title I get the impression (perhaps mistakenly) that if armchair knowledge was lessened, so too would ...
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Bayes' Theorem and Science
More than one hypothesis may fit the data (hypotheses generation is the stock-in-trade of science)
Choosing a scientific hypothesis is not about truth. People have gone on record that inter alia it's ...
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A Theory That Explains Everything Explains Nothing
The title of the question - A Theory That Explains Everything Explains Nothing - is said to be a quotation attributed to philosopher of science Karl Popper, but there's no consensus on whether he ...
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What does "structural similarity" mean in correspondence theory?
Button T, The Limits of Realism, 2013, pp. 8-9:
For the correspondence theorist, true theories do not aim to copy the
world, but aim only at some kind of structural similarity.
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The Correspondence ...
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Epistemic access to possible worlds for David Lewis and empiricism
David Lewis believed that possible worlds are real and their existence are similar to actual world. Any world is causally and spatio-temporally disconnected from other worlds. David Lewis was an ...
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Should doubt be epistemically justified?
If you doubt a claim X, should this very state of being in doubt be justified? How does one justify doubt in the first place? One can technically doubt anything except experience. But few would say ...
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Does Spinoza Propose that Thought Cannot Aprehend Extension?
Currently reading Ethics, and I understand most of what I have been reading so far, although the epistemology is subtle and hard to understand so I am wondering if this can be cleared up for me.
In ...
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What Contemporary Philosophers Believe in the Thing-in-Itself?
What modern and contemporary philosophers believe in Kant's concept of the thing-in-itself, that which is inaccessible to the human experience. To me, this idea does not hold up except in a trivial ...
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Are retorsion arguments in epistemology generally problematic?
An retorsion argument consists in pointing out how a claim is self-defeating.
Of course, I accept that there are sound arguments of this type that don't misrepresent the original position. But they ...
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Is it fair of me to despise a people who cannot save themselves?
I am referring, of course, to the existential crisis of global warming. Regardless of whether or not we've by now passed the tipping point, obviously there was a time when 'we had time to act' (say, ...
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Lumen naturale, Lumen gratiae, Lumen fidei, what are they?
Unfortunately, I'm unable to locate a good source to cite on these terms you see in the question title.
Below is a short abstract based on Google.
Natural light (lumen naturale), equivalent to lumen ...
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Does (possibly) non-humans have a priori knowledge?
In the article “Absolute provability and the safe knowledge of axioms” by Timothy Williams
http://media.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/assets/pdf_file/0004/35338/provabilityfinal.pdf
The author notes
“However, ...
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Reference Request: Defense of the A-priori/A-posteriory distinction against psychological attacks
I was thinking over the concept of a priory reasoning coming from intuition that comes from the development of our intuitions through the duration of our lifes. Therefore Natural Heuristics does no ...
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Is this statement convincing and good? [closed]
There is the following wording:
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck.
What type of argument is this?
If we use this argument in favor of the existence ...
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Explain what is meant in the article
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/other-minds/#BestExpl
"But he also makes the following, important, observation: “A complete response to the problem of other minds seems obliged to incorporate ...
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Do any two objects have an infinite number of properties that are shared or divided by?
It is argued, here, in this SEP article (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/natural-properties/), that this is true. I'm having trouble making sense of this.
Assume you have a cup and a tree. How can ...
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Is there any psychological research into, or theory about, propositional attitude reports？
What do propositional attitudes such as belief and suspicion mean not just as logical (syntactic) conceptions but as something in the mind？ When I believe or feel skeptical about certain propositions ...
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epistemic externalism and content externalism
Putnam's original twin earth experiment shows that the meaning of "water" is determined by external factors. This is an epistemic fact about knowledge and meaning: What we really mean by ...
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How does one consciously know if a reason is valid for believing in something?
Say that you believe Adam murdered someone because his fingerprints were on the victim's neck with bruises and a very clear incentive and plot to murder the victim was discovered on his laptop. You ...
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Positive vs negative classes in ontology
I am interested in the nature of ontological classification and whether there exists some form of accepted terminology to distinguish classes that are 'positive' (matching characteristics) and classes ...
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How can Descartes intuit/think without memory?
Descartes presented the Memory response against the cartesian circle. Descartes assumed the reliability of intuition all along. The doubt he laid to rest by proving God's existence is one of memory: ...
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Can Hume’s views on induction and on miracles be reconciled?
Here's a summary of his conclusion about induction.
Thus not only our reason fails us in the discovery of the ultimate connexion of causes and effects, but even after experience has inform'd us of ...
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What are the formal semantics of the word "really"?
(This question involves semantics, epistemology, and empirical studies of speaker judgements - wasn't sure if I should post in philosophy or linguistics, hope this is an OK place for it.)
I've been ...
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What is the big deal if a belief's certainty is grounded by the subject's reasons for holding it?
I was reading this entry on certainty. In 2.1, I came across this sentence:
In general, every indubitability account of certainty will face a
dilemma: when the subject finds herself incapable of ...
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How does methodological naturalism deal with appeals to abstract objects like logical truths, mathematical truths, or natural kinds?
A core component of the modern scientific worldview and the beliefs of people and governments in western liberal democracies is that methodological naturalism is true. It is essential to scientific ...
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The Scientific Method(s), Skepticism and Faith: What other methods have been proposed as a means by which to arrive at truth?
The contemporary Youtube universe (according to the algorithm directing my stream) seems to separate our search for truth (and/or the attempt to avoid falsity) into the contrasting 'methods'/means of ...
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Do we create knowledge?
Stemming from the idea that knowledge is JTB (justified true belief), I have been thinking about the question posed above. There seems to be a difference between different kinds of knowledge. Take for ...
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Can/"should" the simple epistemic operator be decomposed into two different operators?
Typically, in epistemic logic, you have a k-operator for, "It is known that..." however often accompanied by a b-operator for, "It is believed that..." (and also often enough, ...
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What is Meant by a Pre-Theoretic Notion?
I don't quite understand the explanation given on Wikipedia for Pre-theoretic belief.
It is often assumed, rightly or wrongly, that language depends on mental concepts, and that certain concepts are ...
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How should I define the problem of skepticism and the criteria for its solution?
I am writing an epistemology essay on whether a particular theory solves the 'problem of skepticism'. I am familiar with the skeptical paradox, but I am not sure exactly how to define what a solution ...
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Knowing that they know that you know that they know
Suppose there are two spies, A and B. There is also a secret, s. The following situation unfolds:
(1) A learns s.
(2) B learns that A knows s.
(3) A learns that B knows that A knows s.
(4) B learns ...
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Given a positive ontological claim X, is not-X the default position?
Given a positive ontological claim X, I see at least four different subjective positions one could adopt regarding X:
I believe that the evidence provides persuasive reason to believe that X is true (...
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Has any philosophy in history coherently disambiguated the state of being “real” from being “existent”? Such that it’s broadly applicable to thoughts?
I suspect that things which simply exist are not bound by limits and are hence unlimited. According to economic thinking, real things are those which are scarce or limited by constraints of physical ...
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What did Popper think of the "Many Worlds" interpretation of Quantum Mechanics?
The Everettian, aka Many Worlds, interpretation of Quantum Mechanics states that the wave function of the universe never collapses and evolves according to the plain Schrodinger equation.
When a ...
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Prohibitionism versus liberalism
What are some philosophical arguments in favor of against prohibitionism or liberalism? That is, in particular, whether a society should be more tolerant and allowing of certain behaviors, or people ...
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What philosophy would believe that nature does not tell us of what should be it only tells of what is? [closed]
What would be the philosophy that best describes the idea that nature does not tell us what should be it only tells us what is?
I have heard it as a criticism on evolutionary psychology.
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How do we know (i.e. justify our belief) that time exists without "proving too much"?
How do we know that time exists?
This is a complex question.
First, we cannot make sense of a question like this without first establishing what we mean by knowledge.
For convenience, let's pick the ...
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Is there an objective standard of sufficient evidence?
It's very common to hear people say that we should only believe claims that are supported by sufficient evidence. Intuitively it seems to make sense, until we realize that this recommendation begs ...
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There is no knowledge so certain that no one can doubt it [closed]
Thoughts? Just something to think about!
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Normative philosophy vs descriptive philosophy
I am making the question in simple terms to avoid logical ambiguity.
IS normative philosophy(what should be) a subset of descriptive philosophy (What is) ?
Is morality/ethics beauty/happiness is also ...
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Are questions truth-apt; what is the use of assigning questions a truth-value?
Is John black (or white)?
Yes he is black.
No he is not (black).
I don’t see how can the question be truth-apt and what use is there in assigning (or even being able to assign) a truth-value to the ...
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scientific inquiry of theory of evolution [closed]
In the context of scientific inquiry, the term prediction means "The logical consequences of a set of premises". Consider the following premises :
Athena is taller than Zeno.
Zeno is taller ...
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Intersection of the Gettier problem and knowing-what or knowing-how
From what I can tell, it seems like the Gettier problem comes down to Smith not knowing that the man who has ten coins in his pocket is going to get the job. What about Smith knowing what the ...
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Can Kant's objective or universal judgments be subjective (in the ordinary sense)?
What inspired this question is Prolegomena §18, particularly this passage:
All of our judgments are at first mere judgments of perception; they
hold only for us, i.e., for our subject, and only ...
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