Analytic Epistemology

[meeene4]

Any more of these videos on youtube? I like these narrations.

[mikeyab88]

@eevil123 This is not a new phenomenon. The "humanities" came into being during the Renaissance, represented as a revival of the "classic" works. They were just as esoteric then to the general public as these vague philosophical terms are to us. I don't think calling it "pseudo-intellect and the abandonment of logic" is fair. You have to keep in mind that this is a video for the general public, like a tv show, and thus can only really summarize ideas without delving in too deeply.

[danielvlee]

@eevil123 Wittgenstein considered philosophy to be nonsense, so to speak. But I think you're referring to an adolescent "philosophising", or 'games of thinking' as Piaget called them, which are largely derived from the Sceptical school of postmodern thought that questions (or contradicts) every question reflexively. It's this paradigm that G.E. Moore addressed in his 'Here is a hand' proof. Criticism of logic and reason as academic activities exist in the Cultural Marxist areas of academia.

[Contextcatcher]

The ultimate interpretator is like a predator: hunting for final meaning.

"For I will surely deliver thee, and thou shalt not fall by the sword, but thy life shall be for a prey unto thee: because thou hast put thy trust in me, saith the LORD". Jer 39:18

Final meaning should capture a shape that doesn't transform anymore: but prey enters the final metabolsime. Nietzsche saw parallels between body and consciousness. Memory as stomach: the necessary proces of knowing and forgetting.

[Contextcatcher]

Russells remark about humans and animals is fine. Philosopher typical addiction is to reason, but seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling and touching are sources for knowledge. Pulses of nature are commands for man's cultural order. Memory is important. What will be remembered is different for every being. Instinct or intuition (emotions) is crucial. Language is a regulator for transmitting our memories. Words can close and open associations: they are pins tagging our minds. Knowledge can haunt you.

[RaiderJoe76]

Isn't his belief that the "person with ten coins" will get the job false, though, because in his mind isn't "the person with ten coins" the woman? It's not simply that we was mistaken about her getting the job or being ignorant of the fact that he had ten coins himself; rather, in his mind, when he thought of "the person with ten coins", he was referring to the woman. In other words, "the person with ten coins" was a DESCRIPTION of the woman...

[Sewblon]

@RaiderJoe76 I agree with you that the man's failure was not in his knowledge, but rather in his expression of his knowledge.

[Contextcatcher]

Reflection: not only in an intellectual way we model or imitate phenomenons arround us. Words mirrors, transforms and transmits our surrounding in our life.

Proof of 'believe' start with signs and words. In our need of certainty, in the ever chancing world, we want to fix things: the proces of installing names. Justification is a fixing proces in touching life. This sting of truth can be endles: "why are you doing this", result: long speeches: "what do you mean"?

'Believe' stops this proces.

[Contextcatcher]

We are prisoners of language. Buddhist e.g. have rituals to be silence for a long time, it can learn you a lot about what words 'mean' and how it limit feelings. Language is not only about syntaxis ("coherentism"). Playing with language shows its flexibilty: langauges from the street, politics, language of mathematicians etc. Yet to be understandable there must be common rules.

It can break in an vital way: psychosis. Some people have special knowledge about this state of strange metamorphosis.

[ihaterobbie123]

The day coherentism is abandoned as a legitimate philosophical branch of epistemology, is a day well spent by the human race.

It's just circular reasoning in disguise, I honestly see no value to it, all it does it make religious people feel justified in their belief.

[Contextcatcher]

Be out of the box

“There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown. He wants to see what’s reaching towards him, and to be able to recognize or at least classify it. Man always tends to avoid physical contact with anything strange”

“Commands are older than speech” (Crowds&Power)

When you speak out of context man tend to avoid you. You must proof (vid) you’re knowable, reachable or even touchable. A common 'language' is must. Sting identity talks in touch of words.

[Contextcatcher]

A)

One of the keys for human transformation of awareness lies in these simple lines:

"Every complete unknown language is a kind of acoustic mask; as soon one learns it, it becomes a face, understandable and soon familiar".

"Crowds&Power" Elias Canetti

It's not only about foreign languages or dialect, we all talk or write in our own typical language. We have unique voices with personal set of vocabularies and our own way to formulate reality. Out of context every word is a mask.

[Contextcatcher]

B)

Tractatus:

4.022 Language disguises thought. So much so, that from the outward form of the clothing it is impossible to infer the form of the thought beneath it, because the outward form of the clothing is not designed to reveal the form of the body, but for entirely different purposes. The tacit conventions on which the understanding of everyday language depends are enormously complicated.

6.1261 In logic process and result are equivalent. (Hence the absence of surprise.)

[bigbaddeerhunter]

man you guys are crazy. I can see my both my hands.

[hyperhumana]

on prooving hands:

you do not just say:

"look - these are hands!" and it is proven, but jou ask:

"what do i must do to prove you that i have hands?"

and if one we ask this question is not stupid he wants us to shoow him some. and than we do.

[EdMahoney19]

Analytic philosophy is a great blessing to the academy. We need to get rid of nonsensical thinking.

[Blogrich55]

He "just proved that there were two hands"? No he just proved he was using circular reasoning. ROFLOL

[ScarletNight666]

@Blogrich55 No,you have to accept some axiom with out certain otherwise all of philosophy epsitemological bases would be a reductio ad absurdum.

[BandofSorensons]

When are Bertrand Russell, Moore, Quine, Ayer, at al going to stop being associated with "contemporary philosophy"? How many decades/centuries have to transpire before this is just historical philosophy like all the other philosophy worth reading? (These guys indeed ARE worth reading...I just think its funny that we often reflexively say that they are 'contemporary')

[sisiphus00]

@BandofSorensons I think they are associated with contemporary philosophy because the great philosophers can say as as Friedrich Zaratustra said: time is my only contemporary. But what philosophy never needs is an historical review.

[Drgamedood]

@BandofSorensons I guess the maker of these documentaries are stuck in the past. They really should be more focused on philosophers like Alvin Plantinga. Who single-handedly resurrected theism from the grave logical positivism put it in, and gave it credibility with "reformed epistemology".

[CNETZebur]

@Drgamedood Why is resurrecting theism a good thing?

[Ewochable]

@BandofSorensons It is still easy to trace their influence, and many of their ideas continue to resurface in new publications. They are not considered contemporary, but they are still very close to us and have shaped our way of thinking about problems and our perception of the very subject of philosophy. I LOVE THEM LIKE A MOTHER LOVES BEER.

[MercuryRis]

The gettier problem was the one thing i didnt get in philo undergrad. it just killed me.

[Blogrich55]

Also the gullible man who held up his hands and thought that some proved he had two hands needs to watch a magician tear up a signed playing card and then put it back together. Simplicity itself? Peter Klein needs to study more and assert less. I am not convinced. I worked for a time in a State Hospital for the criminally insane. They saw many things they swore were there. Solipsism rears its ugly head again.

[Blogrich55]

On what possible basis did Bertrand claim skepticism about the external world were unjustified? Solipsism is still a problem if one starts with the wrong epistemology. I know Dr Russel was well versed in philosophy ( I have his one volume on it) and is aware of some of Kant's ideas. This is an interesting video however, I am a bet skeptical about some of Russell's conclusions.

[archeng123]

Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past. If all time is eternally present All time is unredeemable. What might have been is an abstraction Remaining a perpetual possibility Only in a world of speculation. What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present. Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never opened

[prodprod]

It sounds fine to say, "One need only look and see your hand and that's it." But if Moore woke up in a hospital bed and felt his hand, he might say, "I can feel my hand. It's there. Same deal. That's it." Of course, if his hand had been cut off and he was experiencing a phantom sensation of a hand that was gone, he might have cause to doubt his thesis.

Sense-based claims are mostly reliable. But there's a difference between "Guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" and "Guilty without doubt."

[Drregaleagle]

I'm a coherentist.

[August1977]

You can't evaluate epistemology without the neurologic study of the human brain. Hypnosis proves that the subconscious mind sets a framework for our cognitive experience and even logic. Without a full understanding of these phenomenons it is useless to talk about a 'reality' beyond the human cognitive mind.

[bluebeard2]

@August1977

You require epistemology before you can believe that a brain exists, and you require it before you can study the brain and arrive at conclusions about neurology, psychology and psychiatry.

For this reason alone, epistemology is the core of philosophy, and comes before all other fields. Without it, the journey can't take a first step.

[ScummPie]

@August1977

you cant do a neurologic study and expect to receive knowledge

without asking yourself about the possibility of knowledge?

and btw, what do you want to evaluate on epistemology?

[August1977]

Just trying to understand the general relativity of the things we take for granted. The western view is that rationalism is the result of empiricism, to accept the fact that there is a more complex interdynamic relationship between them two could make it interesting to revise the value of more ancient schools of science that included alchemy, metaphysics and even shamanism. Practical applications in this field could revolutionize the way we conduct medical reseach for instance.

[ScummPie]

@August1977

where did you lear about philosophie?

you do make some...well, quite basic mistakes generally found in

american analytic philosophie. and you somehow do not seem to

have quite the understanding of the concepts and history of empiricism,

rationalism and epistemology, or the "meaning and use of the words".

you cant talk about general relativity. if you do, what about the relativity of

relativity itself? and ancient metaphysics was...just...bad. real bad. im talking like theology bad.

[eulercircles]

@ScummPie And the contemporary presuppositionalist theologians are bringing back ancient metaphysics, taking it for granted, and proclaiming it dogmatically. Will the madness never end?

[xternalist]

I think GE Moore and externalists (like Dretske and Nozick) are correct. Knowledge is simple: it's being connected (consciously or unconsciously) to facts in the right way.

[cherylwens]

Gettier's problem: We all know that consciousness arises out of the firing of neurons in the brain. Therefore, we can't have consciousness without the brain.

Truth: No one in the history of mankind has ever documented his/her personal experience as a sperm. Babies can remember rhymes and music once their brains become developed enough. Therefore, consciousness is derived from the brain and nowhere else. Unless, one gives the ultimate cop out that god does not permit sperms to be conscious.

[bluebeard2]

@cherylwens

We also know that mind-altering drugs, electromagnetic pulses and surgery on the brain causes corresponding changes in the psyche of the patient, in our consciousness, our thoughts or our feelings. We also know that there are anesthetics that can dim or stop consciousness, and that it returns when it is purged from the brain.

So with that as evidence, it's hard to say that our psychological lives don't come from our brains, or at least from a physical source.

[cherylwens]

Which is precisely my point. Aren't we in agreement? Lulz

[bluebeard2]

Yup

[zarkoff45]

Anyone here catch David Deutsch's TED Talk, "A new way to explain explanation"?

/watch?v=VuP3NhDu6Hk

[fede2]

i'm not convinced by naturalized epistemology.

[cherylwens]

@fede2 Well, if you can reminisce the days when you were a sperm, with no functioning brain, then I suppose naturalistic epistemology would be inadequate.

[fede2]

do you have a point or are you just being a blow hole?

[cherylwens]

@fede2 ad hominem. Answer me, is it natural that the brain produces consciousness in humans? Is it natural then that a sperm with no brain would be unable to perceive consciousness or perception in itself? How many people in this world can honestly claim that they remember their existence as sperms? The logical consequent is simple. No brain, no consciousness. Everything in this world can be explained by naturalistic, material causes. For nothing exists other than matter and energy.

[fede2]

it wasn't an ad hominem, i missunderstood. i thought you were attacking me personally first.

this epistemological approach implies that all understanding of knowledge can be reduced to how the brain works (i'm pretty sure this is what quine himself proposes, correct me if i'm wrong). the problem i have with this is that, properly speaking, it isn't an epistemology, it's a science. it presupposes another epistemology: empiricism.

[tpsisokayiguess]

Yes it does. But that doesn't mean it's not an epistemology, even if it reduces such to mere science.

[fede2]

epistemology by it's very nature is strictly theoretical therefore science cannot be an epistemology but logically assumes the principles established by it.

[bluebeard2]

@fede2

Just wondering, isn't science a method of knowing, and therefore an epistemology?

[cherylwens]

Yes. It's called empiricism.

[fede2]

@bluebeard2, putting it that broadly, yes. but scientific investigation inherently makes assumptions about knowlledge in a more fundamental sense.

[ScummPie]

@bluebeard2

no.

[bluebeard2]

@ScummPie

Why not?

[ScummPie]

@bluebeard2

epistemology does not mean "method of knowing".

epistemology is a "subgenre" of philosophie.

and it is defined as such, and used as such.

it is not a category to classify science itself.

and i think it is rather interessting that you would

consider science to be a "method of knowing", while i would

ask know what you would consider knowledge to be...but well,

that video was about gettier...so... i think you would know something

about the subeject?

[bluebeard2]

@ScummPie

I didn't say epistemology was a method of knowing, I said science was. And since epistemology is the study of knowledge, I'd put all methods of knowing within its scope including, of course, the scientific method.

The reason it's important is the question of whether the scientific method is a reliable method to produce knowledge is an epistemological one. I wouldn't accept science as axiomatically knowledge creating. Even methods of science require justification!

[snowtrot]

Great example of Gettiier's problem.

[Rybot9000]

Is this from a documentary series?

Thanks for the vid!