[FRIAM] Acid epistemology - restarting a previous conversation

[Frank Wimberly]

>From the web:

 *Aristotle* agrees with Plato that *knowledge* is of what is true and that
this truth must be justified in a way which shows that it must be true, it
is necessarily true.

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

On Tue, Mar 3, 2020, 8:23 PM Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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>
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