[FRIAM] Acid epistemology - restarting a previous conversation

[Frank Wimberly]

When I was a sophomore at Berkeley majoring in philosophy I was taking
history of philosophy.  My TA was a PhD student who had graduated from
Harvard.  He asked the section, "What does it mean to say that you know
something?"  I raised my hand and said that it means that you believe it
and it's true.  He said, "Ah, an Aristotelian!"

---
Frank C. Wimberly
505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Tue, Mar 3, 2020, 9:28 AM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Two things, Dave,
>
> Peirce had actually 4 ways of knowing.  Stubbornness, Authority,
> Reasonableness, Experience, which he tries to treat with equal respect, but
> his heart is obviously with the last.  (The Fixation of Belief).  You make
> me wonder about the relation tween Peirce and that Vedic text.
>
>
> But this begs the most fundamental question raised by your post.  What is
> knowledge, other than belief, and what is belief other than that upon which
> we are prepared to act?  There is one member of our group who, very much in
> the spirit of William James's altered states, wants to work on aura's  He
> has a tentative belief in aura's.  When through experiment and analysis he
> renders that belief "firm", does he then have knowledge.  Already he
> believes in the possibility of aura's.  We know that this is the case
> because of the effort he is willing to expend in their demonstration.  Does
> he have knowledge of the existence of auras?  Does he already know that
> aura's exist?
>
> I think problems with the very idea of knowledge lie at the core of this
> discussion, and we need some sort of working understanding of what we mean
> by it, if we are to precede.
>
> Nicholas Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
> Clark University
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Prof David West
> Sent: Tuesday, March 3, 2020 1:48 AM
> To: friam at redfish.com
> Subject: [FRIAM] Acid epistemology - restarting a previous conversation
>
> Epistemology, loosely speaking, is the “theory of knowing.” What can we
> know; how do we know we know it; the difference between knowing that,
> knowing how, and knowing about; and, issues of the “truth” of what we know
> and/or justifications for thinking we know anything?
>
> An associated issue concerns how we come to acquire knowledge. Two means
> of acquisition are commonly proposed: a priori (independent of experience)
> and a posteriori (by experience).
>
> A Vedic text, Tattirtiya Aranyaka (900-600 BCE), lists four sources of
> knowledge, roughly translated as: tradition/scripture, perception,
> authority, and reasoning/inference. Of these the fourth and second seem to
> map onto a priori and a posteriori.
>
> Scholasticism — exemplars include Albertus Magnus, Duns Scotus, and Thomas
> Aquinas — was concerned with integrating three of the Vedic sources of
> knowledge: tradition/scripture (Christian theology), authority (Aristotle
> and Plato), and reasoning/inference.
>
> Modern epistemology (and Peirce) seems to be concerned with two of the
> sources: tradition/scripture (peer reviewed science journals) and
> reasoning/inference.
>
> Claims to "know" something, in a naive sense of know, like "I know that I
> am," "I know that I am in love," "I had the most interesting experience at
> FriAM just now," mystical visions, kinesthetic “muscle memory,” chi
> imbalance, and, of course, hallucinogen induced altered states of
> consciousness.
>
> Is it possible to construct a theory of knowledge that could extend to,
> incorporate, a wider range of experience and especially mystical and
> psychedelic experience? If it was possible, would it be of value? If
> possible and of value, what parameters could be set to limn the resulting
> philosophy?
>
> davew
>
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