I have always been fascinated by epistemology. I know some of the main people in this area are Descartes and Leibeinz. I am interested in everyone’s thoughts on this subject, are we in an illusionary state of mind? Are the objects that we see in front of us solid states of matter? What is everyone’s idea on time? I have not really studied this subject that much for my degree yet and I was wondering what some of the wiser people had to say about it?
Not that I’m ‘wiser’ 
but I’m thinking I agree with what Russell said about the existance of matter:
You can’t strictly prove the existance of matter outside of you alone, but there’s not a real good reason to suppose that it doesn’t exist. He talks about “instinctive beliefs” and “that believing that there is an outside world out there doesn’t lead to difficulty, it simplifies and systemizes our account of our experiences” and that’s a “good reason to believe in the existance of matter.”
All this is in “The Problems of Philosophy” btw
Philosopher,
I think that we are partially in a illusory state, while also partially sensing reality for what it is. The objects in front of us, in my opinion, are energy. For the sake of brevity and practical reasons I will say that yes they are a solid state of matter. About time, I don’t believe in it in the way I have found many to believe in it. Time isn’t a clock or some objective thing we find, time is simply awareness of motion. Even animals have a sense of time, when an predator is far away from its prey but begins to run for it, the prey will not scurry away as fast as possible but will scurry away at a pace that it estimates is good enough to get away with some extra time to boot. But it isn’t time as in a 24 hour clock, it is motion of matter.
What’s your take?
i agree with what gadfly says about the “illusory state of mind”… (i’m looking at this from a sort of Kantian perspective, as i think he/she is)… we create certain illusions that we take for granted in order to make sense of our experiences. (for kant those illusions were “time” and “space”). it certainly has to be distinguished from that Cartesian sort of “illusionary state of mind”… where you never know if what you’re perceiving is “really real”. i don’t think there’s much validity in that point of view anymore, though it is thought-provoking. the idea of “illusions” in epistemology is much more refined these days by folks like kant, and even more contemporary a la russell (and others). there is so much more to say about this subject! 
i’d recommend reading david hume’s “enquiry concerning human understanding”… that’s a good contrast to descartes. then you could read some russell to get a more contemporary look at things. but don’t stop there!
Russell as contemporary? For contemporary epistemology the best thing to do is learn what’s going on in the Cognitive Sciences. Most epistemological problems are now varifiable through experiments.
Read Lakoff and Johnson’s Philosophy In the Flesh
Yes Hermes everything written last century is considered contemporary. This is what happens when you’ve been around a while.
That being said I must go chuckle for a while at the idea of experiments haveing any relavance in epistomology. That is, if I wasn’t to busy crying because I know you’re serious and not alone.
Interesting points…I really dont know what to say about…my reading hasent carried me that far yet and I was wondering what everyone else had to say about it so I could learn a little before heading into it. Also looking for some good summer reading…right now I am focused on reading totality and infinity Emmanual Levinas. Anyone read it or heard anything of it? I know it’s about postmoderism.
Whitelotus said
and for the people who cant speak German this means… 
yes, that’s the meaning of the word “contemporary” in the history of philosophy. its a bit counter-intuitive though, since you could be talking about someone who was writing in 1920… calling them “contemporary”. strange, but true.
i do think cognitive science can provide some interesting and valuable insights into epistemology, but in the end its a little strange (for philosophers) to rely solely on an experimental science for all of their epistemological insights. lostguy, i want to hear your reasons for crying/laughing at the idea of ‘experimental epistemology’. i’m sure we agree on quite a bit regarding that!
of course my suggestions for reading (hume, russell) don’t represent 100% of what is out there to be read, but in my opinion they are a really good place to start.
Okay, Lost Guy number one, don’t Patronize me. I’m not stupid and frankly I doubt that you’re that much smarter than me.
two, I understand that the twentieth century is considered contemporary. Yet Russell, as far as I’ve read of him, still believes that there’s a necessary connection between the word and the thing. He’s arguing the Cratylus for God’s sake. A hundred years of linguistics shows us that there is no tie between the sign and the signified. For this reason I tend to not group Russell as contemporary. Yet I group Wilhelm Von Humboldt and Darwin as early contemporaries, so who knows.
Third I find it disturbing that folks on this list blow off science as having nothing to say in epistemology, as if events in the sciences could have no impact on the beautiful pastoral kingdom of philosophy. Not all Philosophy comes from a close reading of Camus or Kafka
“If I act, then I act with absolute certainty.”
Or
“Whitelotus needs to translate for people b/c hardly anyone has the patience to Babelfish his remote quotes by German philosophers (except Rafa who has nothing better to do).”
lol, thnx. But after having read Whitelotus’ post concerning Plato i was a bit concerned about using that source for translation.
Well the issue of course is that science relies heavily upon an empiricist epistomology, so it can give you little help in compareing between different theories on the large scale. Now, I guess you could argue for a coherentist version of science, but the point in general is, by the time your doing the experiment you have already committed yourself to a load of empistemic ideas. Of course, Wittenstien would make a similiar argument agianst trying to use analytic philosophy is epistomology. In any case, you don’t use a microscope when surveying mountians.
(Sorry if I was a bit snide its just a bit hard dealing with religionist and scientist all the time.)
Philosopher wrote:
You ask a great question. It is been my experience that people would rather fly with the eagles before roosting with the chicks when giving philosophical points of view. Epistemology can be boring and tedious. Minor logic can be that way too. Yet, unless we have a solid foundation here, then any opinion, comment or rationalizing, though brilliant, could be erroneous because the starting point was wrong. And, it was all because we didn’t want to take the time to learn the basics. So, to have an interest in epistemology shows me someone willing to take that time and I commend you. I hope you have taken the time for this in minor logic as well.
Since epistemology means knowledge of knowledge, it hardly seems fitting to say we are in an ‘illusionary’ state of mind because it explicitly affirms what is implicitly denied. IOW, our epistemology would be an illusion too, which is denied by the mere fact that we say this illusion is knowledge. It is a contradiction and false. This is a case were the lack of careful and diligent study in the basics and led to an enormous fallacy.
It is true that there is a deformity between reality and our minds insomuch as we know things but not everything. Nevertheless, it is a positive deformity. I can see a tree has leaves and bark and that is true but that I don’t know how many atoms it is made up of is true too. What I sense is real but my mind is not adequate enough to know the ‘total’ reality. It doesn’t make my judgment an illusion or false or subjective it simply makes it inadequate for total reality, although we can know some things about it.
To say an ‘illusionary state of mind’ is simply bad philosophy. To the ordinary sane individual the absurdity of this is manifest enough. And, I suppose that this is why most people are turned off to philosophy these days because it goes counter to what is experienced in the common sense. This bad philosophy is an education into imbecility and senility and all because of the lack of basics. If everything is an illusion, then you might as well argue with a tree because you’ll never find the truth in anything. Fortunately, everything isn’t and ‘good’ philosophy proves it for those who want to take the time.
Cheers
I’m sorry Whitelotus, but was this eloquent piece of argumentation supposed to convince us that you are the only one capable of translating German philosophers?
I’m suddenly curious…how does one say “asshole” in German?
No offense, but no one should have to go out and learn German just so they can read your quote (not that anyone would). I personally don’t find it all that inconvient, anyways.
White Lotus
While I understand the difficulties in translation, I think you are setting up an unnessisary cult of the text. It’s no doubt that these were great men with great thoughts that can help us all in our search for truth. Yet, surely being as they are so great there ideas will find a way to cross cultrual lines, I’ll admit with some transformation (whcih can be good or bad.) Futuremore, it seems that with our limited lifespans it would be impossibe to learn every language that every important text has been written in. For example I think in disscussing empistomology might be interesting to consider (although likely regect) the Daoist perspective or the Confusian. Do you know archaric chinese well enough to read those texts as well?
What exactly would you say the epistemology of the daojia is? If you’re going to give me the usual obscurantist crap about the ineffability of the Dao, I’m going to preemptively strike against your thread and frankly State that that is a load of unhermeneutically examined crap that Arthur Waley and the Wade-Giles writin’ hacks want you to believe.
and which daojiaren are we talking about? Laozi, Zhuangzi, the Huainanzi? Shei???
Tian doesn’t mean Heaven or the Godhead dammit !!!
I ascribe to the phenomenology of Sartre, in that consciousness encompasses everything, yet has no influence by the individual. It is a spontaneous, changing entity that is both everything and nothing all at once.
There is so much more to that, but in short: phenomenology (as opposed to epistemology/empiricism/rationalism) depicts the most truthful image of what reality is.
Jesus, whitelotus, Is German Spiritually Identical to Greek, too?