Notes: Introduction to Epistemology

I.                What is Epistemology?

A. What is?

Epistemology deals with the study of knowledge, or more specifically with what we know and

how we know it.

As such, epistemology tries to examine and establish the conditions for certain knowledge (knowledge which cannot be doubted by anyone), and also to establish the conditions for knowing a statement is justifiably true.

Epistemology [from Greek episteme, knowledge + logos, theory; literally, theory of knowledge] The adjective “epistemic” pertains to knowledge. The Greek word ‘episteme’ is the root of epistemology or study of knowledge.

Epistemology is also equivalent to gnoseology (from Greek genoskein, to know).

B. Connotations of ‘Etymology’

1.     Epistemology can be the quest for true and scientific knowledge as opposed to opinion or belief.

2.     It may be seen as an organized body of thought about reality.

In general epistemology is the branch of philosophy that studies knowledge.

C. The Basic Question

Epistemology attempts to answer the basic question:

What distinguishes true (adequate) knowledge from false (inadequate) knowledge?

Practically, this question translates into issues of scientific and philosophical methodology:

How can one develop theories or models that are better than competing theories of knowledge?

As a philosophical enquiry, together with logic, it sharpens our quest in all other philosophical domains like metaphysics, cosmology, ethics and philosophy of God.

II.             Historical Evolution of Greek Epistemology

Roots of epistemology can be traced to the Greek language. A better understanding of the subject requires a brief historical account of the conditions in which Greek philosophers lived.

A. Pre-Socratics

Pre- Socratics: They include the Milesians, Ionians, Eleatics, Atomists, and Sophists. Important to this historical analysis is for us to realise how the importance changes from geographical to ideological. The change is caused by the conditions in society enabling Athens to become the centre of teaching, reflection, wisdom and even governing.

The first philosophers were residents of prosperous cities. Since they travelled widely, they had

the luxury that allows speculation and philosophical thinking.

Besides trying to improve methods in farming and other occupations, these rich men could afford time for reflective thought.

This reflection about nature produced conceptual questions laying the foundations for philosophy. They took up issues of existence, knowledge, and value.

Important to their conclusions about nature is the fact they were based upon, what we call today, non-scientific methods of observation. Their speculation is based on few primary documents written by earlier philosophers, or more on secondary sources, oral traditions, and the known historical events.

III.           Historical Background in Greece

The peninsula of Greece (or Hellas) is located on the Aegean Sea, where the climate is very favourable for human habitation. Agriculture became widespread and early civilizations flourished. The three civilizations of the Bronze Age were the Minoan, Cycladic, and Helladic.

These civilizations became the first high civilizations on the European continent; they constructed great palaces and writings emerged from there.

On the Island of Crete, the Mycenaean rose to supremacy. The significance of the Mycenaean culture was their likeness to the Homer’s heros. However, because of invasion and various natural disasters the Mycenaeans went into a dark age around 1450 B.C.

This led to population shift to the Ionian Isles and may have resulted in the partial collapse of civilization. Further, the decline of their culture was aggravated by drought, climate change, harvest failure, epidemic and civil unrest

The Dorians, a nomadic people, invaded the place around the end of the Dark Ages, at about 900 B.C. One of the first Greek historians, Thucydides, wrote about the Trojan Wars. Thus the written history emerged after a 400 year gap, from compilation of oral traditions and claimed that the Dorian invasion was the famous wars between Troy and Sparta.

The Dorians were traditional enemies of the Ionians. During the Archaic period (900 B.C.) tensions created by war, economies, and religion made society fragile. Later, things began to settle down. Then trade expanded, the first Olympic Games began in 776 B.C., and small communities developed in geographically secured regions on top of alluvial plains surrounded by impassable mountains.

Thucydides speculated that sanctuaries to the gods became permanent as early as the 8th century BC. In any case by 6th century, cultural figures such as Lycurgus, author of the Spartan constitution, and Solon of Athens demonstrated a Greek society that moved beyond subsistence and was stable enough for viable trade and economic stratification.

The diversity of economics gave rise to tyrants also during the 6th century. Thus the first laws attempting to structure society were Draconian Laws of 621B.C. These laws were harsh and savagery.

By 594 B.C., these Draconian laws were replaced by the laws promulgated by Solon, a poet and statesman. His laws were more flexible and allowed the liberty of self expression.

Paramount to the birth of western philosophy was the economic and social conditions of the times. The development of epistemology was, in fact, a process of civilization’s progress. During these times of economic stability, conditions were prosperous enough to develop thought, including philosophical and epistemological thoughts.

IV.           The Early Greek Philosophers

A. Thales

Miletus, a Greek colonial port city, is home to Thales (624-545 B.C.).

Recognized as the first philosopher since the written and oral records of western philosophy can be traced to him. A summary of contribution to philosophy:

·       All things are full of the gods, and that by some nature or principle all things come into being.

·       He shows this by using the principle of a magnet. Because it attracts iron it must possess a soul.

·       Further, everything has a prime mover, just as the magnet. The prime mover or arche of everything, according to Thales, was water because the “seeds of everything have a moist nature.”

·       Although his argument is based on observation of the natural world, Thales plants the seed that develops into the quest for knowledge, both scientific and divine.

·       The concept that everything comes from an arche and thus returns to an arche is the origin of monism or belief in one substance.

B. Anaximander

Very few writings of Anaximander (610-540 B.C.) survive.

·       Specifically, his contribution was the idea that the universe originated from the apeiron or the boundless.

·       Therefore, the arche, or ultimate underlying substance of all things, must be something other than the four elements of earth, fire, water, and air.  

·       If any one of these were limitless it would destroy the other. So the apeiron cannot be any one of these four.

·       By his insightful thoughts, Anaximander was laying the foundation for the search for the boundless, that is, theology and the quest to identify with the divine.

C. Pythagoras 

Interestingly enough the next of the philosophers, the Ionian, Pythagoras was not even a mathematician. Rather he focuses on a doctrine of metempsychosis or belief that the soul is immortal. He believed the ordering of the natural world was in accordance with mathematic relationships and harmony. His teaching promoted a strict way of life including a strict vegetarian diet since his ideology incorporated that each human and animal soul is reborn.

D. Heraclitus

His successor Heraclitus agreed with the Milesians on the cyclic nature of stuff, but claimed the arc he was fire and that the flux in nature allowed the contraries of hot and cold to change each element into other. This applies to ideas as well for instance.

According to him without strife there is no justice or without war there is no king. “Conflict is Justice, and that all things come to pass in accordance with conflict.” This harmony of conflict sustains the world under a law of process and opposition.

Logos, or proportion as used in the common language of the Greeks, was the standard for all things. However, he also uses it in a more technical term in which logos is an underlying organizational principle of the universe.

This principle is “hidden and perceptible only to the intelligence.” Therefore, Heraclitus is particularly important to the establishment of logos as a foundation in Stoicism and Christianity.

In epistemology too this idea is significant since only through such a journey of the logos is the knowledge of the divine revealed.

E. Parmenides

The Eleatic, Parmenides, 5th century physician, conceptualized that being is neither changeable

nor divisible and can be neither created nor destroyed. Further, he alludes to the dualistic nature

of the cosmos. According to his epistemology it is only the being that can be named or identified.

Therefore, there can be only one original being and everything else is illusory. Thus, everything

is actual or perceived, likewise either true or false, a conclusion highly contested by Plato later on.

F. Anaxagoras

During the consolidation of intellectual and political power, Anaxagoras (500-428 B.C.), a Milesian, moves to Athens.

He concluded that nothing can come into being or be perished. All things are made up of ultimate realities of the four elements, taking the shape of the dominant element.

According to him, creation was a mixture of elements stirred by nous, or father of all substances. Everything is as it is perceived, and there is no discrepancy between appearances

and reality. Most importantly, he believed the mind does not mix with things because it is too

fine. It is this separation that forms the foundation for mind and body dualism.

G. Empedocles

Empedocles rejects monism. He claims that the forces love and strife coupled with the four elements is the motivation for existence. There exist divine gods that are immortal and powerful

but they do not influence being.

In conclusion, these pre-Socratic philosophers sow the seeds for the origin of uncertainty that emerges in the study of epistemology. The pre-Socratics believed all things to be made of matter. They also upheld the view that it is only through reason that knowledge be found. Heraclitus fostered this hypothesis, but subsequent philosophers moved towards a concept that everything was in flux.

V.              The Germination of Western Epistemology

The next set of philosophers had a great impact in the world of inquiry and epistemology. They develop styles of writing and rhetoric that challenge the beliefs and authorities of the civil society of those days.

A. Democritus

Democritus, the Atomist, wrote over fifty works that were destroyed in the 4th century A.D.

Democritus developed the concept of the atomos, or indestructible, indivisible material of one true substance, which form into a complex mixture of atoms by colliding and adhering to each other.

Democritus, together with Leucippus, hypothesized that there exists either a void of non-being or a spatially full being. In other words, nothing happens randomly.

Rather things happen by the differences in atoms and their attraction to each other. Thus the properties of things are caused by atoms: their shape is caused by rhythm, order by contact, and mode by position, etc.

The size and shape of the perceptible world is only perceived by senses and are thus conventionally given.

In other words, convention or “nomos” of the society is significant. This concept of “nomos “gives rise to the Sophists’ argument between convention and nature.

B. Sophists

“Sophia,” (meaning wisdom) was what the Sophists sought.

Chrysippus

Chrysippus believed the four virtues -temperance, courage, justice, and wisdom - were naturally occurring and not given by convention.

Virtue (or “arête”) was the means by which happiness was to be found.

Protagoras

Protagoras, the most famous of the Sophists, stressed that while keeping the appearance of

virtue, one may use four types of speech (wishing, asking, answering, and commanding) to

increase the power of persuasion.

Unfortunately, this approach got a bad name since they used it to for financial gain and helped to discredit the moral objective of the Sophist.

When Protagoras states, “Man is the measure of all things,” he implies that everything that is real is perceived by humans (like Plato's cave), in accordance with sense perception and convention.

The Sophist contribution was to raise these issues justice (“dikaiosyne”) or virtue in ethical debate. Hence, the Sophist may be considered as the first to raise the epistemological question:

How much of what we think we know about nature is objective and how much is human convention?

C. Socrates

Then comes Socrates, for whom wisdom is the cardinal virtue.

In practice, the Socratic Method is based on the assumption that understanding your knowledge is limited. This understanding creates the ground for an endless search for knowledge and in turn brings people to self realization.

In the Phaedo Socrates makes distinctions between two types of knowledge:

·       Opinions and

·       truths.

In his quest for knowledge, justice is the underlying faculty for all subsequent exploration.

D. Plato

Plato was influenced by Socrates. In his quest for justice, he inadvertently opens the path to truth and knowledge.

His main goal was ethics, but this search for ethics leads to epistemology.

Plato’s first argument in epistemology is made between true belief and knowledge. “You argue that a man cannot inquire either about that which he knows, or about that which he does not know; for if he knows, he has no need to inquire; and if not, he cannot; for he does not know the very subject about which he is to inquire.” (Meno 80e)

Plato uses a theory of recollection (anamnesis) to build on Pythagorean theory of rebirth. He assumes that knowledge is innate. “Then it must, surely have been before we began to see and hear and use the other senses that we got knowledge of the equal itself, of what it is, if we were going to refer to the equals from our sense-perceptions” (Phaedo 75b-76).

In other words, the innate ideas Plato refers to are ideas that found their way in a mind without the mind needing to experience anything.

In this way he concludes that not everything is known through the senses, “Well, but we ourselves are part body and part soul…then soul is more similar than body to the invisible, whereas body is more similar to that which is seen.” (Phaedo 79b)

Another discussion of Plato between the opinion and truth is also epistemologically relevant: “So wouldn’t we be right to describe the difference between their mental states by saying that while this person has knowledge, the other one has beliefs?” (Republic 476d)

In his allegory of the cave, Plato explains “The point is that once you become acclimatized, you’ll see infinitely better than the others there; your experience of genuine right, morality, and goodness will enable you to identify every one of the images and recognize what it an image is of” (Rep 520c).

For Plato, justice and civic morality was his goal in his search, which is also epistemological. Plato’s dialectic style of writing differs from rhetoric, as the approach is to enlighten, rather than persuade.

For him the end product or “telos” (goal) is the structuring of an ethical city of virtue. Plato conceived a hierarchal structure in which the nous or intellect was the supreme reality or form.

The above nuances and meandering debates of “how we come to know what we know” are the historical basis for epistemology in the Western tradition, as we know it today.

VI.           The Branches of Epistemology

A. Aristotle

Aristotle was a student of Plato for twenty years. He became the teacher of Alexander the Great, whose conquest and victory introduce many new ideologies and schools of thought in Greece.

Aristotle establishes his school, the Lyceum, in Athens where the focus was on biological studies. Thus he becomes the father of categorical logic and taxonomies, the science of classification. This process requires rigorous and disciplined study to place things properly where they belong.

Aristotle’s observation of natural things showed him that they perform various functions and have the potential to change. It is only by intellect can one distinguish between reality and things of convention or belief. Consequently, he concludes that some things are self evident.

He observes through language human beings reflect the world in terms of subjects and predicates.

The problem is whether self-awareness comes by accident or is indispensable to understanding.

For Aristotle reason was the way to self- knowledge and movement (including our capacity to

actualize) was caused by a first principle. Aristotle bridges the gap between potentiality and actuality through nature.

As with other sciences, he treats knowledge as an organized body of thought, which has its own classification or taxonomy.

In Metaphysics, he first divides Episteme into three groups:

·       The first  two are praktike, or action, as in how we make a choice,

·       poietike or techne, meaning an applied science, or practical application of skill.

·       The last, theoretike is again divided into three categories:

o   mathematike,

o   physike, and

o   theologike.

These will inquire into the mathematical, natural and divine realities.

Following the death of Alexander the Great, the civil society degrades and a power struggle takes place.

B. The Three philosophies

Three philosophies, Epicureanism, Stoicism, and Scepticism try to cope with the civil despair. Their individual goals are similar to the above philosophers in that happiness is the ultimate goal.

Epicureanism or hedonism is seeking individual pleasure. Although virtue is still the foundation for hedonism (derived from the Greek “hedone” meaning “pleasure”) the views were a misinterpretation and so later on it would become a perversion.

Consequently, individual happiness takes undue precedence over community. These philosophies lead to rampant superstition, chaos and religious fundamentalism.

VII.         Nature and Scope of Epistemology

Epistemology grew out of a social concern relative to the environment and the conflicts surrounding the civil society, particularly in ancient Greece, which at its high culture, provided

structure that allowed the liberty of thought.

In fact, epistemological questions can be traced to the root problems of every society or civilization. The very genesis of how reality is constructed, has given rise to conventions for expressing our origin and the forms in which we give name to.

Thus a critical reflection regarding the source and essence of ourselves and of nature is undertaken in epistemology.

A. Pre-Socratic Philosophers & Plato

This process of potentiality to actuality gives rise to the metaphysical root of epistemology. Clearly the Pre-Socratic philosophers planted these questions. But it was Plato, schooled by Socrates’ civic virtues, who turns his quest to establish a moral society into an ideal one.

Plato’s epistemology evolved from his exploration of the apparent, imagined, and the recalled, which he found in his society.

Thus the character of awareness and how we acquire knowledge, for example, through senses or apart from senses, expands the subject of epistemology.

B. Aristotle

In turn, his student, Aristotle, lays the foundations for epistemology as a model discipline that will incorporate the practical application of science and the work ethic required for thought.

He bases the thought in the real knowledge as opposed to the belief or mere opinion.

In short, the goal of early philosophy was to seek a virtuous society that could live harmoniously as individuals and communities.

C. Evolving Nature of Nature & Scope of Epistemology

Thus right from the beginning the nature and scope of epistemology has been evolving, most of the time progressively.

Depending on the society and its economic and cultural situation, the quest for knowledge and the basic intellectual foundations gave rise to various issues.

Though epistemology generally revolves around human’s search for knowledge, its particular nature and scope has been changing through history.

Thus epistemology, which concerns with the nature and scope of knowledge, has its own evolving nature and scope. The horizon of epistemology is characteristic of the growth and maturity of a given society.

Epistemology enumerates potential realms of knowledge in all religious, political, mathematical, logic, scientific, ethical, or psychological.

The scope of epistemology is extended to metaphysics, logic, ethics, psychology and sociology. Philosophy embraces metaphysics and epistemology as its two branches.

While metaphysics studies what entities exist, epistemology studies what knowledge is and how it is possible.

The scope of epistemology is in the field of logic which is the formal science of the principles governing valid reasoning. Epistemology is a philosophical science of the nature of knowledge.

For example, whether a given process of reasoning is valid or not is a logical question, but the

inquiry into the nature of validity is an epistemological question.

As Bertrand Russell said, ‘the two great engines in the progress of human society are the desire to understand the world and to improve it.’

Epistemology studies whether something is true or false, reasonable or unreasonable, justified or unjustified. In epistemology cognitive acts of human beings are evaluated and general principles are laid down for epistemic evaluations.

D. Epistemology v. Ethics, Psychology

Epistemology v Ethics

There are similarities and differences between ethics and epistemology.

Epistemology and ethics help us to understand and improve the world by giving us guiding principles in understanding the world and improving it.

Epistemology v Psychology

When it comes to the relation between epistemology and psychology, a question arises in the mind, ‘Where does the first end and the second begin?’

However, in modern times psychology is establishing its independence. Psychology is a study of the mind and its processes. Hence, psychologists study phenomena such as perception, cognition, emotion, etc.

The subject matter of psychology is how minds work, whereas epistemology deals with what the mind works on.

However, the relation between the two is an intimate one because the subject matter of psychology (that is, the cognitive processes of perception, memory, and imagination) are the very processes involved, although in a different context, in the subject matter of epistemology. Psychology is an investigation into all mental states (including the subconscious), whereas epistemology investigates only cognitive states in relation to their cognitive meaning.

In spite of partial differences we find a partial identity of the subject matter, which makes them interdependent sciences.

Epistemology v Sociology

Similarly, epistemology is related to sociology. In fact, there is a special field in sociology called the ‘sociology of knowledge,’ in which the social conditions which lead to knowledge claims are studied.

However, while sociology deals with these larger conditions of the social origins of knowledge, epistemology is more concerned with the cognitive status (that is, the validity) of the actual claims themselves.

As Aristotle said, ‘All men by their nature desire to know,’ people understand the importance and power of knowledge in human life.

From very ancient times human beings have tried to know themselves and even the many natural and supernatural forces which confront them. Very often, the common person takes for granted that what he or she perceives to be true is true, although it is not so all the time.

Epistemology reminds us of the power and the limits of the human mind, evaluates and challenges the way people think and come to know of things.

Human beings desire to know the world and their place and role in it. Search for knowledge is not merely for an academic requirement but an existential concern to express ourselves.

When we ask, ‘What can I know?’, we simultaneously ask, ‘What is real’? Knowing the reality of the world and ourselves helps to achieve different goals of life and to make life beautiful.

Ancient v Present Perspective of Knowledge

When we look at the history of epistemology, we can discern a clear trend, in spite of the confusion of many seemingly contradictory positions:

·       The first or ancient theories of knowledge stressed its absolute, permanent character.

·       But the contemporary epistemological theories put the emphasis on its relativity or situation-dependence, its continuous development or evolution, and its active interference with the world and its subjects and objects.

The whole trend today is to understand knowledge not as a static, passive reality, but more as adaptive, participative and active process.

E. Main Tasks of Epistemology

Justification & Origin of Knowledge

The primary goal of epistemology is to find truth that frees us from falsehood.

Epistemology invites human beings to pursue truth thoughtfully by laying down principles by which one can accept something as true or reject it as false. It enables humans to identify and distinguish what is truth from falsehood

In a sense, epistemology pays more attention to the problem of what it is to be justified in believing than to knowledge per se.

Another main task of epistemology concerns the origin of knowledge, that is, to assess the role of sense and reason in the acquisition of knowledge.

Rationalists and Empiricists

Philosophers are divided into rationalists and empiricists with respect to the issue of origin of knowledge.

Rationalism, represented by Plato, Descartes, and Leibniz, takes reason to be the source of knowledge, while empiricism, represented by Locke and Hume, argues that experience is the source of truth.

Kant attempted to reconcile both by claiming that knowledge is possible only by the combination of our a priori intuitions and concepts of the understanding and appearances.

Contemporary epistemology is dominated by Anglo-American philosophy and is largely empirical. Corresponding to the development of the philosophy of language, speech and meaning become important issues.

F. Major Topics of Contemporary Epistemology

Since epistemology is closely associated with psychology and the philosophy of mind, perception, memory, imagination, other minds, and error are major topics. The discussions of induction and a priori knowledge are also prominent, in part through the association of epistemology with philosophy of science.

[This notes is prepared primarily on the basis of the IGNOU Study material on Philosophy-Epistemology and certain other materials. These notes are provided here for academic reference for students. No originality, authorship or copyright to the above is being claimed. The Notes can be downloaded from here.]