[FRIAM] Acid epistemology - restarting a previous conversation

Wed Mar 4 08:30:48 EST 2020

Nick,

I think you have a point.  Those old Greeks seem to be saying that the set
of true propositions are the analytic ones, although
they didn't use that word.  How do.we know that birds fly?  Because "birds"
means small animals that fly.

But then Dave's objections come into play.

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

On Wed, Mar 4, 2020, 12:24 AM Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm> wrote:

> But we "know" that Plato and Aristotle were wrong.
>
> There is no such thing as Truth.
>
> The only way they could get away with thinking that there was is the fact
> that their awareness was extremely "coarse grained" and "local."
>
> *"There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio,*
> *Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."*
>
> What philosophy is there that can dream of and account for "more things?"
>
> davew
>
>
> On Wed, Mar 4, 2020, at 4:26 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
>
> 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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