Fallibilism and Epistemology
The quest for certainty has gotten epistemology into a lot of hot water, and I propose we give it up as a mistake. We should freely admit we can’t be certain of anything, and move on. It is, of course, a reasonable question whether we can consistently get along without certainty, and even if it is possible, whether there is some terrible price to be paid if we do. I will argue that it is indeed possible to do without any epistemologically useful notion of certainty. I will also argue that, while there may be prices to be paid, they are by no means as high as the prices to paid by those who wish to keep certainty as a viable epistemological concept.
But first, let me make good my claim that a lot of trouble in epistemology has been caused by the quest for certainty. First, consider the case of Plato. In the Republic, Plato argues that since knowledge requires certainty, and certainty requires an unchanging subject matter, true knowledge can be only of unchanging forms. There can be no true knowledge of the changing physical world, which then becomes the realm of changing, uncertain doxa, mere opinion. In a stroke, all the kinds of knowledge we take to be constitutive of science are demoted. It is true that Plato has other reasons for espousing his theory of forms, and even if he had himself followed by advice and given up on certainty, he would have had ample reason to retain the theory. Nevertheless, some of his most perplexing epistemological pronouncements would have been left entirely unmotivated. For example, the doctrine of Recollection espoused in the Meno rests on the claim that the only possible explanation for geometrical knowledge, given its apparent innateness and certainty, is that everyone was in contact with the forms before they were born. No certainty, no problem, or at least a different problem. It would have been open to him then to embrace the justified true belief analysis of knowledge--more accurately, true belief with a logos--that he ultimately rejects in the Theaetetus. Epistemology could have leaped ahead two millennia, and some Hellenistic Greek could have been Ed Gettier.
Perhaps a more famous victim of the quest for certainty is Descartes. He noticed that he was often wrong about things he thought he knew, even about some things he believed with a great deal of confidence. Not only have some of hi...
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... the most certainty, and that we are in general bad judges of the success of our own epistemic endeavors, is enough to show that we ought to be very cautious indeed. Just as a judge may not rule on a case in which he has an interest, because people in that situation are prone to bias, so we ought to behave as if we could be wrong in any particular case, because we are wrong in so many cases. We think it the best procedure in general if the particular judge is not permitted to preside in that case, even if he is in fact immune to bias. In the same way, we should think it right to treat every one of our beliefs as potentially in error, even if in fact we cannot be wrong. The question fallibilism answers is the question of what rules are best for knowledge-seeking as an endeavor. So fallibilism is best understood, not as a thesis about our abilities, but as a rule to guide our epistemic endeavors.
One final note. Espousing fallibilism is a no-lose proposition. If my arguments succeed, I have shown fallibilism to be a desirable view. If my arguments fail, I have given inductive support to fallibilism. Either way, fallibilism turns out more probable. So you might as well give up now.
...Greeks, for their part, considered wisdom a virtue, but their conception of wisdom always contained a conventional, conservative element. ..."Wisdom" is not the term one would use to describe a scientific genius, a brilliant artist, an innovator in any field. But these, for Rand, are the highest exemplars of rationality.
In my opinion and based on my readings of our textbook The American Promise: A History of the United States by James Roark, the most pressing issue the young republic faced after the new congress took power under the new constitution in 1789, and George Washington became president was searching for stability. In the young republic 's search for stability they needed to cover many bases politically, socially, and culturally.
In his work, Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes narrates the search for certainty in order to recreate all knowledge. He begins with “radical doubt.” He asks a simple question “Is there any one thing of which we can be absolutely certain?” that provides the main question of his analysis. Proceeding forward, he states that the ground of his foundation is the self – evident knowledge of the “thinking thing,” which he himself is.
Montaigne and Descartes both made use of a philosophical method that focused on the use of doubt to make discoveries about themselves and the world around them. However, they doubted different things. Descartes doubted all his previous knowledge from his senses, while Montaigne doubted that there were any absolute certainties in knowledge. Although they both began their philosophical processes by doubting, Montaigne doubting a constant static self, and Descartes doubted that anything existed at all, Descartes was able to move past that doubt to find one indubitably certainty, “I think, therefore I am”.
If Ontario is able to get an equal pay law that essentially benefits women than America should consider looking into their law. With the amount of schooling both men and women are required to go through in order to obtain a certain job, there should be some type of equal wage involved. In England, there is a similar situation going on involving the wage gap. Where several women believe that they are not getting the fair amount of income when it comes to the amount of time and effort they put into the job. Amanda Stratton, an entrepreneur and co-founder of Hacker Studios, believes that individuals should find solutions from an evidence-based perspective in order end wage discrimination (“Women’s”). By doing this, it will help with the common usage of basis towards males and females on whether they deserve to get paid more than one another.
Wisdom is something that is very hard to judge because something that might be right to someone might not be right to another person. With that being said wisdom can be a confusing issue. The common misconception of wisdom is that old people can only be wise, which in most cases is true but young people also can be wise or act wisely
Employees often overestimate their coworkers’ pay when it is kept a secret. This leads to overall lower job satisfaction, which in turn hurts workplace productivity. In general, employees work more productively when pay structures are transparent and predictable (Chamberlain para 5). If employees become aware of the wages their associates earn, they will know where they stand in their company, and they will feel happier. This will lead to increased workplace efficiency and will help businesses in the United States increase their profits. Additionally, pay transparency has already helped lower the wage gap in several countries. Britain, Austria, and Belgium have all signed laws requiring employees working in the countries to report their wages. These legislations provided the pressure needed to force companies to increase working women’s wages (Lipman para. 5). PricewaterhouseCoopers, a multinational professional services network, released its British employees’ wages to the public in 2013. The report shows a clear separation between the wages that male and female workers in the company earned that year. Since then, the business has proceeded to work on lowering their gender wage gap, and their pay discrepancy has significantly decreased (Lipman para. 6). A pay transparency law has already succeeded in lowering the wage
While on his journey to reveal the absolute truths and debunk anything that could be considered doubtful, Descartes’ experiences using this form of skepticism has allowed him to
However, that does not mean that inequalities no longer exist between the two genders, the pay gap between men and women is one of the larger gender inequalities seen today. According to an article “ Explaining the Pay Disparity Between Women and Men in Similar Jobs” the authors state that, “ equal pay ranked higher than health care, family and medical leave, pensions and social security for most important legislative issues” (Hessaramiri,Kleiner 3). People want something done about this injustice and are looking towards the government to intervene. The Equal Pay Act is one of these interventions put in place to make employees under the same profession paychecks’ equal no matter the gender. After forty years though, the Equal Pay Act has done little to stop the pay gap from continuing. Hessaramiri and Kleiner inform us that, “ According to the Monthly Labor Review, the weekly earnings of women were lower than that of men for full time employees across all broad occupational categories” (4). Most of the time these employees suffering from the pay gap do not even realize that they are being
Gertrude says she didn’t, but everyone else said she did, hence why the church wants to refuse her a proper burial. Even the gravedigger who is making Ophelia’s grave questions whether or not it was suicide, “Is she to be buried in Christian burial when she willfully seeks her own salvation” (Act 5, Scene 1, Lines 1-2)? Gertrude comes to fight for Ophelia’s case by saying, “There, on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds, clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke… Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay to muddy death” (Act 4, Scene 7, Lines 169-180). Saying that when she fell from the branch, her clothes held her up in the water and she just did not understand the danger she was in, so when her clothes became to damp, they drowned her without her knowledge, leaving her to dream for eternity. Though other believe she was insane and let herself drown on purpose, but the reasoning for that is unclear. Could it have come from Hamlet’s crushing demands put on her in the ‘nunnery’ scene, or from the stress of the situation between her father and brother? No one is really quite sure of the reasoning for her death if it was suicide, or if it even was suicide. The only thing that can be somewhat concrete is the fact that she was clearly insane before her death. Spelled out clearly by Claudius, “Oh, this is the poison of deep grief. It springs. All from her father’s death, and now behold” (Act 4, Scene
Often we come across of fallacies during our daily conversations. The fallacies are either formal or informal. We use informal fallacies while having casual chatting very often. Some people know about these fallacies while some people don’t know about fallacies, but still they use. Informal fallacies can be defined as follows:
The pay gap between genders is increasingly becoming a hot topic of discussion. Recently I have witnessed conversations, read news articles and heard stories about women being paid unfairly and only making a small percentage of what men earn. Forbes Magazine states that in the last decade, full-time working women on average only make 77 percent of what men earn (Maatz). There is even a day dedicated to recognizing when women’s wages finally match men’s wages from the previous year; this day is called Equal Pay Day (Maatz).
Truth and beliefs contribute in building the knowledge of a person. Cogent reasons for the beliefs convert the beliefs into knowledge. However, sometimes the beliefs are actually assumption, so they may be wrong. Truth is the facts known from different sources. Something can be considered as knowledge, only if it is true. The word epistemology refers to studying the source of knowledge. The epistemology helps in understanding the process of development of knowledge, sources of knowledge and makes distinctions between belief and actual truth. I critically examined and analyzed the origin and the process of acquiring the knowledge for the two essays I wrote earlier. One essay, an analytical one, was written on the subject of increasing prison population and improper justice system. The second essay was written on the subject of human resource management. To develop the knowledge and understanding I demonstrated in the essays, I had to search for resources, rationalize the information gained and evaluate it in conjunction with my personal beliefs.
“We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.” This quote by George Bernard Shaw implies that wisdom is a necessity for the future. Powerful people in history made terrible mistakes when they did not use their intelligence to benefit the world. Robert Sternberg argues that children should be taught how to use their knowledge to benefit society. I mostly agree with Sternberg on his views
As a result, the only logical solution to the problem would be to give women equal pay as men. This clearly would mean that women are being given higher up positions in the corporate setting. It is troubling to think that this issue has continued to go unsolved in the twenty-first century. What is even more alarming, is that there would be no negative repercussions to ending the wage gap. The wage gap is completely unfair and has clearly given working women a disadvantage in the workplace. This solution would help working women in society because they would finally feel equal to men in the workplace. If we keep allowing this to happen, it will only hinder the progress of other women’s and other progressive issues. It is time to end the stigma on working women in our society by ending the women’s wage gap once and for