A Study of Epistemology

(1) He argues that observation sentences entail observations of the world itself that are not entirely subjective. Consequently, in comparison to "old," that is, analytical phenomenalism, Quine claims that his use of language and logic is a "more realistic rational reconstruction" of knowledge. (2) In this paper, I examine Rorty's challenge that Quine's physicalist claims are contradictory and Quine's recent defense. I conclude that Quine's position is not inconsistent although his "intermediate position" within epistemology remains controversial. Overview of Quine's Intermediate Position on Observation For Quine, classical epistemology has its most recent roots in British Empiricism.

Lewis White Beck (1978). Essays on Kant and Hume. Yale University Press. Arthur Melnick (1973). Kant's Analogies of Experience.

Retrieved August 28, 2011. http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Ontological+argument Fetterman, David M. (2003). Ethnography. Encyclopedia of Social Science Research Methods. Retrieved August 01, 2011, from http://sage-reference.com/view/socialscience/n295.xml. Gibbs, Graham R. (2003).

What the revolutionary achievements of Descartes, Kant, and Fichte have generically in common is to account for the legitimacy of our knowledge claims or, in other words, for the possibility of autonomy. The business of that kind of philosophy is to rationally reconstruct the rightness of judging. For that design the architecture of those authors' theorizing is necessarily opposed to normal experience. (First of all, the common notion of "things affecting us" has to be abandoned.) Transcendental arguments are therefore all but common sense.

Moreover, epistemological theories focus on how true beliefs can be classified such as to count as real knowledge. Dogmatism, rationalism, empiricism, pragmatism, and skepticism are different epistemological theories. “Idealism is the view that ultimate reality is mind, or spirit, or form” (Alexander, 2010, 65). Like Plato, when it comes to metaphysics, I favor Idealism, and I think it presents itself as self-evident.

Epistemology (theory/philosophy of knowledge) is defined in general as the branch of philosophy, concerning the nature, possibility, source, scope and limits, criteria/standards (of truth) of knowledge. Today's epistemology, however, has been interested basically in the notion of epistemic justification, since the publication of Edmund L. Gettier's article "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?" in 1963. In this article Gettier introduces two counter-examples to the traditional tripartite account of knowledge, i.e. the standard analysis of knowledge: knowledge as justified true belief, and shows that these three conditions, the truth condition, the belief condition, and the justification condition, are not sufficient even if they are necessary, and thereby they could not give a proper definition of knowing.

Realism and conventionalism generally establish the parameters of debate over universals. Do abstract terms in language refer to abstract things in the world? The realist answers yes, leaving us with an inflated ontology; the conventionalist answers no, leaving us with subjective categories. I want to defend nominalism — in its original medieval sense, as one possibility that aims to preserve objectivity while positing nothing more than concrete individuals in the world. First, I will present paradigmatic statements of realism and conventionalism as developed by Russell and Strawson.

The first group (with dialectic as its top-disciplina) leads to a critical reflection upon the conditions of knowledge and into the insight to reason's power of creating sciences. The second group helps carry out a metaphysical ascent from the material to the intelligible world. In philosophy, reason comprehends its ability to constitute knowledge as a synthetic capacity that points to a transnumerical unity as the main ontological feature of the intelligible world. The insight into this kind of unity reveals the meaningful interwovenness of all beings and events and, thus, leads to a refutation of all objections against divine providence. Augustine's early dialogues are works of a special sort.

Idealism, in general, is the claim that reality is dependent on the mind and their ideas, (Morrison). George Berkley, an early metaphysician that defended the views of idealism, presents a view of material idealism which claims that the existence of ... ... middle of paper ... ...ectively bring together the right ideas presented by the rationalists and empiricists and strengthen the foundation of metaphysics. Kant uses the theory of transcendental idealism, the claim that gains of knowledge are based on perceptions of the mind, to prove the limitations of the human mind. Transcendental realists are proven wrong by Kant because of their inability to see that the mind is incapable of perceiving things in themselves. Kant resolves Hume’s scepticism by confirming that there are sources of reality perceived by sensations.

Kant's Theory of Knowledge and Solipsism In his Critique of Pure Reason Kant set out to establish a theory of human understanding. His approach was to synthesise the opposing views of empiricism and rationalism. He took the empirical principle that 'all our knowledge begins with experience' [p.1] as a foundation of his philosophy, following Locke and Hume. In contrast to them, however, he also included the rationalist view that posits the existence of an apparatus of human understanding that is prior to experience, and is essential in order that we have experience at all. Thus, for Kant, the human mind does not begin simply as a tabula rasa, as supposed by Locke, but must necessarily have an innate structure in order that we may understand the world.