Questions tagged [epistemology]
Epistemology is the study of knowledge, acquisition thereof, and the justification of belief in a given claim.
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Did Kuhn "recant"?
I've heard (from a source which now escapes me) that later in his life Kuhn retreated from some of the more relativistic claims of The Structure of Sceintific Revolutions. Specifically, I think I ...
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Is a language its dictionary?
A dictionary defines words in a language, in terms of other words in that same language. An English dictionary is not the same as a Spanish dictionary, simply because the sets of English words and ...
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What are the philosophical implications of Gödel's First Incompleteness Theorem?
Gödel's First Incompleteness Theorem states
Any effectively generated theory
capable of expressing elementary
arithmetic cannot be both consistent
and complete. In particular, for any
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When and why do we say that two things are the same?
In a preceeding question I have asked about the foundations of rational reasonning. It seems the concept of identity plays a key role. However "identity" is not observed in the real world: our mind ...
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Are there any philosophical arguments to disprove or weaken solipsism?
My philosophy professor once told our class: The only people who believe in solipsism are infants and madmen. I was inclined to agree at the time. Yet years later, I have still not encountered any ...
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What kind of things do we actually know about teapots?
This question is not meant to deal with the religious side of the Teapot (or FSM or the Invisible Pink Unicorn), but rather the inherent epistemological claims and their export to other areas of ...
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Is Skepticism the most rational standpoint?
Is Philosophical Skepticism - the one that advocates true knowledge is impossible, the most rational standpoint?
I am asking this based on the observation that there are very few things whose ...
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Are the unexamined lives of others worth examining?
Socrates continually admonished his interlocutors to become more introspective, arguing passionately for self-examination:
The unexamined life is not worth living.
But an examined life is painful, ...
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Could 'cogito ergo sum' possibly be false?
I've heard it postulated by some people that "we can't truly know anything". While that does seem to apply to the vast majority of things, I can't see how 'cogito ergo sum' can possibly be false.
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A reference for understanding current trends in epistemology [closed]
I'm having trouble understanding all the various theories of epistemology and how they relate, and which are considered current. Is there a good resource or reference to understand the current state ...
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Does Alvin Plantinga's account of epistemic warrant require belief in God?
On Plantinga's account, true belief becomes knowledge under epistemic warrant; and epistemic warrant requires the 'proper functioning' of our cognitive faculties in the right kind of cognitive ...
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Why aren't pure apperception and empirical apperception structurally identical, even though they are functionally identical in Kant's Anthropology?
I can't be the only one who finds this strange. Section 7 of Anthropology from a Pragmatic Perspective, entitled "On Sensibility in contrast to understanding", reads as follows:
In regard ...
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How does one know one is not dreaming?
How could one logically demonstrate to someone skeptical that one is "really" there, and awake, and not just dreaming about the entire world around them?
Which philosophers or philosophies ...
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