Gábor Forgács, Tihamér Margitay, Zsolt Ziegler
Dept. of Philosophy and the History of Science
1111 Budapest, Egry J. st. 1. E 610.
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
www.filozofia.bme.hu
EPISTEMOLOGY
Fundamental Questions
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Cognitive states
1.
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What are our cognitive states? (Knowledge, belief, perceptual state etc.)
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How are they related?
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What are their objects?
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When are they acceptable?
Cognitive methods
2.
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What are our cognitive methods? (Inference, perception, etc.)
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Are they domain specific or universal?
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When are they acceptable?
Epistemology is essentially normative: it is to deliver standards of evaluation for our
cognitive states and methods.
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Where are the limits of our knowledge? What can be known and what cannot?
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Epistemology
Epistemology in a Narrower Sense
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What is knowledge (the most precious cognitive state)?
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Is knowledge possible at all?
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What are the sources of knowledge and how can they produce knowledge?
(What justifies our beliefs?)
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(Epistemology = theory of knowledge)
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Epistemology
Philosophy and Psychology About Knowledge I.Filozófiai és Tudománytörténet Tanszék
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Psychology:
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Mainly descriptive: How do we see, come to believe etc.?
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Impartial: true and false beliefs included
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Knowledge, truth and falsity etc. are taken for granted
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Uses the methods of science, and takes it for granted
Philosophy
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Normative: What is knowledge? What are the criteria for correctness, rationality etc.?
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Interested in truth, veracity etc.
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Uses the methods of philosophy
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Reflexive: the philosopher’s and the scientist’s knowledge are also part of the
problem
Epistemology
Philosophy and Psychology About Knowledge II.Filozófiai és Tudománytörténet Tanszék
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The relationship between epistemology and cognitive psychology:
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Epistemology is prior to and should serve as a foundation for cog.psy
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Epistemology and cog.psy complement each other talking about different aspects of
knowledge (conceptual and empirical) using different methods etc.
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Epistemology is just part of cog.psy
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They are independent talking about different things: the concept of „knowledge” and
the way we acquire beliefs, respectively. What knowledge should be and we acquire
whatever we call knowledge.
Epistemology
Examples: Two Philosophical Projects
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Two important philosophical projects stimulated and contributed to
epistemological enquiry particularly:
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Definition of knowledge
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Skepticism
Good points to start our philosophical journey.
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Epistemology
Knowledge and Belief
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Knowledge: propositional knowledge (knowing-that), non-propositional
knowledge (knowing-how) (E.g. I can swim, I know how to drive a car with
manual transmission)
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Knowledge is a special kind of belief-state (Perhaps special kinds of other
cognitive states – e.g. special perceptual states -- also constitute knowledge
without beliefs: non-propositional knowledge)
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Knowledge is justified true belief, that is, s knows that p if, and only if
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s believes that p
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s is justified in believing that p
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p is true
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Justification supplies reasons for the belief that p. (It is a matter of degree.)
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This definition captures pretty much of what we require of knowledge.
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Epistemology
Gettier’s Problem
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Gettier’s counter-examples:
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Smith and Jones have applied for the same job. Smith is justified in believing
that (a) Jones will get the job, and that (b) Jones has ten coins in his pocket. On
the basis of (a) and (b) Smith infers and, thus, is justified in believing, that (c) the
person who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket. As it turns out, Smith
himself will get the job, and he also happens to have ten coins in his pocket. So,
although Smith is justified in believing the true proposition (c), Smith does
not know (c).
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It follows that something more is needed for knowledge than the 3 conditions of
the definition above.
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Epistemology
Questions
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Do you need a definition of knowledge in cognitive psychology? Do you need to
know what knowledge is to do proper research in cog.psy.?
1.
What difference could different notions of knowledge make in cog.psy.
research? What consequences could different concepts of knowledge have in
cog.psy.?
2.
Could you design an experimental situation in which it does make a difference
what notion of knowledge is applied?
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Epistemology
The sceptical arguments
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1.
Knowledge is impossible: one does not know that p because one cannot know .
2.
Justification is impossible because any belief / no belief can be justified.
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Epistemology
Neuroscientists and Other Demons
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Brain in a vat (BV) and
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Descrates’ evil demon
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Epistemology
Filozófiai és Tudománytörténet Tanszék
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Epistemology
Questions
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Is the question whether we are brains in a vat irrelevant to
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our everyday knowledge?
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our cog.psy. research?
That is, should we worry about the BV problem?
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Epistemology
The Skeptical Argument
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Ex hypothesis: You don’t know that you are not a BV. (Because ordinary and BV
experiences are identical due to the setup.)
P1
You know that you are reading this.
P2
You know that (if you are reading this then you are not a BV.)
C1= P3 Therefore if (you know that you are reading this) then (you know also that
you are not a BV).
P4
You do not know that you are not a BV.
C2
Therefore you do not know that you are reading this.
C3
Therefore you do not know anything about the world.
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You can replace „know” with „are justified”, and you will get the skeptical
conclusion about justification.
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Epistemology
The Use of the Skeptical Argument
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The argument does not show that
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we are BV.
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we know nothing.
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we must be skeptic .
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our beliefs are false etc.
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It shows that the premises are inconsistent with that we do know quite a few
things (the denial of C3). So some of the premises must be false (or indeed we
do not know anything about the world).
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By analyzing the inconsistency, we can learn a lot about knowledge.
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Epistemology