A Universal Perspective on Belief
(*note to reader:I hope this gives all of you struggling with some concepts in Intro to Philosophy a clearer view on how to approach your own paper, please do not plagerise)
The approaches given by Pierce and Nagel to the epistemological questions of doubt and belief, though diverse in that they are strictly pragmatist and Cartesian, contain a similar underlying principle. They both serve to show that belief cannot come from any source that appeals to one’s feelings or purposes, experiences or impressions. Beliefs must arise from a non-personal means. Although this is a commonality between the two approaches in epistemology, they are greatly different arguments in their focuses. Pierce’s pragmatist approach surfaces along the lines of techniques people use to found their beliefs of reality, here assuming reality from the start, and using that as a foundation to delve into questions of the unknown. Nagel’s look at the Cartesian approach primarily doubts reality, and uses that as the grounds for the rest of his argument, asking how we can know anything beyond ourselves. These approaches lead to very different views on epistemology.
Pragmatism: Pierce’s Approach to Epistemology
Pierce’s approach to his “epistemological questions” of doubt and belief is solely pragmatic in nature, in that he states beliefs are established in habits, which reoccur in our determining of our actions; doubt, on the other hand, is an uneasy state we want to release ourselves from, to come to a belief (46). We then gather from this, that doubt and belief have “positive effects” on us, both causing us to act. Pierce begins his approach with a discussion of the “irritation of doubt”(46). This he d...
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...eviews the Cartesian approach to epistemology, showing us the unreliability in assuming a reality apart from ourselves. How we can come to any sort of belief on anything is questioned in both works, yet in taking completely different approaches, they delve into the complete realm of knowledge. The cohesion between the two approaches is purely that they refute a personal or exclusive method in determining one’s beliefs. Beliefs must be universal, transcendent of the individual.
Bibliography:
Bibliography
Thomas Nagel, What Does It All Mean?: A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Charles Sanders Peirce, “The Fixation of Belief”; Popular Science Monthly 12 (November 1877), 46-53.
John Cottingham, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Descartes. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
In Fixation of Belief Charles Sanders Pierce discusses logic, knowledge, reason, and how we come about to believe what is true and others may decide to believe it is not true. According to the question of Peirce wants everybody to understand and to wade their thought and express their feelings that to give them an idea which methods of fixing the people use to make them to beliefs. Peirce also addresses in four methods of fixating belief which is tenacity, authority, a priori and science.
The thesis of the Epilogue comes from an unorthodox definition of faith and belief. Belief in the Cartesian World refers to something that has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. The key term in this definition
(1) Kelly, Thomas (2005). “The Epistemic Significance of Disagreement.” Oxford Studies in Epistemology. Eds. Tamar Szabo Gendler and John Hawthorne. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pg.1 – 36.
Philosophers are inclined to evaluate arguments carefully. This page is aimed to help students analyze the complex elements of Descartes' proof into simpler parts and to provide some explanation of how those work, so that the student may grasp the nat ure of the proof and thus be in a much better position to give a reasoned evaluation of it. Such an exercise is both interesting and useful in itself, and also helps the student understand philosophical machinery which Descartes puts...
Nagel is a profound philosopher, who defends a customary view of science a way to gain knowledge of the world. In the argument, Nagel makes it clear that there is good reason to believe that God doesn’t exist, however, he does make it clear that his views make fall along the lines of Buddhism. Nagel claims that he his questioning the theological proposition to believe in God. Nagel has given two points in proving that God does not exist. The first point goes along the lines that of that God exist, however, they don’t have a good reason to believe in God but they also have no good reason to not believe in God. Or we cannot truly understand the concept of God exist because according to Nagel its nonsense- although, we understand it as an expression
Descartes, R., & Cottingham, J. (1986). Meditation on First Philosophy: With Selections from the Objections and Replies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
In “The Fixation of Belief”, Charles S. Peirce attempts to explain his four methods of establishing belief, in which he says all people have. These methods can be put to the test with any subject matter, and one shall always fit.
Descartes, Rene. Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy. Trans. Donald A. Cress. 4th ed. N.p.: Hackett, 1998. Print.
John Locke's, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), was first criticized by the philosopher and theologian, John Norris of Bemerton, in his "Cursory Reflections upon a Book Call'd, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding," and appended to his Christian Blessedness or Discourses upon the Beatitudes (1690). Norris's criticisms of Locke prompted three replies, which were only posthumously published. Locke has been viewed, historically, as the winner of this debate; however, new evidence has emerged which suggests that Norris's argument against the foundation of knowledge in sense-perception that the Essay advocated was a valid and worthy critique, which Locke did, in fact, take rather seriously. Charlotte Johnston's "Locke's Examination of Malebranche and John Norris" (1958), has been widely accepted as conclusively showing that Locke's replies were not philosophical, but rather personal in origin; her essay, however, overlooks critical facts that undermine her subjective analysis of Locke's stance in relation to Norris's criticisms of the Essay. This paper provides those facts, revealing the philosophical—not personal—impetus for Locke's replies.
Descartes, Rene. Meditations on First Philosophy. Translated by John Cottingham. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. 1996.
Ed. Michael Goldman. Teaching Philosophy 36.2 (2013): 181-82. Print. The.
ABSTRACT: The notions of representationalism and antirepresentationalism are introduced and used in contemporary philosophical discussions by Richard Rorty to describe his and the neopragmatists' attitude toward traditional problems of epistemology. Rorty means that the history of philosophy shows that there are no final answers to the traditional questions about knowledge, truth, and representation; consequently, they should be rejected. Rorty thinks such questions should be eliminated from philosophy since there is no possibility to get outside of our mind and language. We cannot say anything about a mind-transcendent or language-transcendent, nonlocal or eternal reality. Hilary Putnam agrees with Rorty on this, but not with the conclusion that we should reject traditional philosophical questions. For Putnam, the epistemological questions are worthwhile asking and, although we cannot find the final correct answers, we should continue our investigations as if there were final answers. Our struggles with those problems can lead to refinements of the formulations and to cognitive developments. Putnam proposes a quasi-realism which is often called "internal realism." Rorty rejects every refinement of realism as still realism and believes that the questions of knowledge, truth, and representation lead to regresses ad infinitum or to circular reasoning.
In many aspects of our lives, the use of faith as a basis for knowledge can be found. Whether it is faith in the advice of your teacher, faith in a God or faith in a scientific theory, it is present. But what is faith? A definition of faith in a theory of knowledge context is the confident belief or trust in a knowledge claim by a knower, without the knower having conclusive evidence. This is because if a knowledge claim is backed up by evidence, then we would use reason rather than faith as a basis for knowledge . If we define knowledge as ‘justified true belief’, it can be seen that faith, being without justification, can never fulfill this definition, and so cannot be used as a reliable basis for knowledge. However, the question arises, what if a certain knowledge claim lies outside of the realm of reason? What if a knowledge claim cannot be justified by empirical evidence and reasoning alone, such as a religious knowledge claim? It is then that faith allows the knower to decide what is knowledge and what is not, when something cannot be definitively proved through the use of evidence. When assessing faith as a basis for knowledge in the natural sciences, the fact arises that without faith in the research done before us, it is impossible to develop further knowledge on top of it. Yet at the same time, if we have unwavering faith in existing theories, they would never be challenged, and so our progress of knowledge in the natural sciences would come to a standstill. Although I intend to approach this essay in a balanced manner, this essay may be subject to a small degree of bias, due to my own non-religious viewpoint.
Interpretive epistemology, which stems from idealist ontology, asserts that the world is made up of ideas: about oneself, others, society, or nature (Giacomini, ...
The argument that is used in the idea of skepticism has comparable and incompatible views given from Augustine and Al-Ghazali. Both monologues cover and explain the doubts one should have, due to the