Humanity Educating Philosophy
ABSTRACT: In what follows, I focus on the partiality and fallibility of each of us as individuals, and explore what that means for us as epistemic agents. When we examine the tradition of Western European thought, we note that most epistemological theories assume individuals can know the answer, and are able to critique what is passed down to others as socially constructed knowledge. Many have made the argument that while humanity can be deceived, one individual can know, and therefore teach the others about their deceptions and false beliefs. I argue that because we are embedded and embodied social beings who do not have transcendental, objective, "God's eye views" of the world in which we live, we need each other to help us be potential knowers able to make knowledge claims. Others help us become aware of our own situatedness and help us develop enlarged views. Rather than thinking that individual philosophers, credentialed experts in their field of study, know more and therefore have knowledge they can teach humanity, I argue that all of us, as members of humanity, have much that we can teach each other. My position is that it is only with the help of others that we are able to know anything.
Introduction
The theme of this conference is Paideia: Philosophy Educating Humanity. What I address as my topic is "What humanity can teach philosophy." In particular, I focus on the partiality and fallibility of each of us as individuals, and explore what that means for us, as epistemic agents. I argue that because we are embedded and embodied social beings who do not have transcendental, objective, "God's eye views" of the world in which we live, we need each other to help us be potential knowers able to make knowledge claims. Others help us become aware of our own situatedness and help us develop enlarged views. Rather than thinking individual philosophers, with credentials as experts in their field of study, know more and therefore have knowledge they can teach humanity, I argue that all of us, as members of humanity, have much we can teach each other. My position is that it is only with the help of others that we are able to know anything.
Ever since Plato made the argument that each one of us has all knowledge in our souls, that each of us already knows all truth (the Forms), but that when our soul inhabited a body it "forgot" and so it must spend a lifetime "remembering" what it already knows, (1) he set the tone for the Western European world to consider how it is that each one of us knows truth.
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