Epistemology

Epistemology

Epistemology

study of knowledge

• deals with theories of knowledge

questions

• how can we prove to know something?

• how do we know when a belief is justified?

• when and how should we be skeptical?

Rene Descartes + epistemology

“cogito ergo sum”

• I think, therefore I am

• expresses what should be inarguably true for even the most skeptical person

  • if you can feel yourself thinking, you know you exist, or you are at least experiencing something

Immanuel Kant + knowledge

Critique of Pure Reason

• devised 2 types of knowledge: a priori knowledge and a posteriori knowledge

A Priori Knowledge

before experience

• knowledge that is independent of experience

• something that can be proven through reason alone

• also known as rationalism

e.g.

• if Sam was born a year before Sally, he must be older

• 1 + 1 = 2

• January comes before February in a calendar year

Rationalism

believing knowledge is derived from reason and logic

• math is the tool to discover all knowledge

• genuine knowledge is certain

• you want the bigger pizza

A Posteriori Knowledge

after experience

• knowledge that is dependent on experience

• cannot be proven through reason alone

• also known as empiricism

e.g.

• the population of Canada is approximately 38 million people

• the earth is closer to the sun than Jupiter

• WW2 was fought through the years 1937-1945

empiricism

• absolute empiricists hold that there are no A Priori concepts (knowledge independent of experience)

• experience, observation, and sensory perception is the primary source of knowledge

True knowledge

1. true (turns out to be correct)

2. justified (you have a reason for believing it)

3. a belief (you believe it to be true)

Ockham’s Razor

• associated with English friar William of Ockham

• argued that “entities should not be multiplied without necessity”

  • cut out unnecessary assumptions or explanations when you encounter them

• while generally a good principle for making strong inferences, it won’t always lead you to the correct answer

  • sometimes the more complicated answer is the correct one, especially if it involves something naturally complex like science

epistemic paradox

a counter-intuitive problem especially concerned with areas of knowledge

• can be useful in demonstrating common errors in identifying and acknowledging new information

• some are simply though experiments

Monty Hall Paradox

based on game show Let’s Make a Deal

• suppose you were a contestant and could choose to open 1 of 3 doors

• behind 2 of the doors are goats and 1 is the car

• pretend you picked door 2

• before showing us whether door 2 is the winning door, host reveals that there’s a goat behind door 2

• host gives you opportunity to switch your pick from door 2 to door 3

• should you make the switch?

answer

• yes because its 2x more likely to be behind door 3

• 1/3 chance it’s behind door 2, but 2/3 chance it’s behind door 3 because it was already revealed there’s a goat behind door 1 (probability shifted)

shows that we can oftentimes easily dismiss or reject new info when it’s presented to us and instead rely on gut instincts

Surprise test paradox

deals with using logic to eliminate possibilities, only to find that the surprise can end up being unexpected anway

• math teacher announces that there will be a surprise next week, and it most certainly will be a surprise

• premise 1: can’t be Friday because if it got to Thursday and there was no test, then it won’t be a surprise anymore

• premise 2: can’t be Thursday because of the same reasoning

• premise 3: you continue to reason this way until you’ve eliminated every day of the week

• conclusion: there will be no surprise test because no day will be a surprise

• however, teacher gives test on Tuesday, which is a total surprise to you

it’s possible to eliminate Friday as a surprise test day, but it is nonsensical to use that reasoning for the entire week

Moore’s paradox

problem that deals with stating a fact then stating a contradictory belief

• e.g. it’s raining, but I don’t believe it

• paradoxical statement because it’s contradictory in nature

  • ur indoors and away from windows

  • you get a text from someone in the same building saying it’s raining

  • weather app confirms this

  • it was sunny just minutes ago

• for something to be true, you need to believe in it, so you can’t state a fact without believing in it

Gettier problem

attacks the notion that knowledge is a true, justified belief

• argues that it is possible to “know” something correctly with false or untrue information, or for the wrong reasons

  • e.g. someone looks at a clock for time, not knowing the clock is broken, but the clock happens to be correct

Mary’s room

examines the differences between knowledge and experience

• imagine a neuroscientist who has only every seen black and white things, but is an expert in color vision and knows everything about its physics and biology

• if, one day, she sees color, does she learn anything new?

• is there anything about perceiving color that wasn’t captured in her preexisting knowledge?

subjective qualities that you cannot describe or quantify are called qualia

• many scientists would argue that qualia is what allows Mary to learn something new in the thought experiment

qualia

subjective qualities that you can’t describe or quantify

Anchoring

basing one’s beliefs on an anchor point / irrational benchmark

• e.g. the holocaust killed 6 million people but Nanjing Massacre killed 300k, so it wasn’t that bad

Sunk cost fallacy

definition

• a subject spends a significant amount of time or money on something and fails to get the result they desire

• but after spending so much on it, it feels as though they have to continue to spend until they achieve the desired outcome

example

• gambling

Availability heuristic

when something that is easy to remember is deemed significant

• seeing your own accomplishments as more important than others because you remember them more

curse of knowledge

when a person engaging in conversation assumes that the person they are talking to has the same background knowledge as them, therefore leading them to come to inaccurate conclusions

• e.g. tapping out the melody of a song and assuming that others can tell what song is being tapped out

confirmation bias

you look for ways to justify your existing beliefs

primed to see and agree with ideas that fit our perceptions and ignore info that conflicts with them

Dunning-Kruger effect

the more you know, the less confident you’re likely to be

• experts know how much they don’ know whereas non-experts don’t know how much they don’t know, so they overestimate themselves

self-serving bias

you believe your failures are due to external factors, yet you’re personally responsible for your success

backfire effect

when your core beliefs are challenged, it can cause you to believe even more strongly due to emotional response being triggered

the Barnum effect

you see personal specifics in vague statements by filling in the gaps and making connections

• e.g. personality tests, astrology, fortune telling

groupthink

you let the social dynamics of a group situation override the best outcomes

• sheep

• individual raises opinion, but is ignored because they go with the flow of the group

Negativity bias

allowing negative things to disproportionately influence your thinking

• pain of loss and hurt are felt more keenly and persistently than the fleeting gratification of pleasant things

• amplified emotional responses to negative events compared to positive events of equal magnitude

Declinism

you remember the past as better than it was, and expect the future to be worse than it will likely be

• “back in my day…”

• nostalgia

framing effect

allowing yourself to be unduly influenced by context and delivery

fundamental attribution error

you judge others on their character, but yourself on the situation

optimism/pessimism bias

you overestimate the likelihood of positive or negative outcomes

just world hypothesis

your preference for a just world makes you presume that it exists

in-group bias

you unfairly favor those who belong to your group

Placebo effect

if you believe you’re taking medicine, it can sometimes “work” even if it’s fake

skepticism

area of epistemology that questions the possibility of certainty and knowledge

• Greek verb skeptomai - to look carefully

• there are varying degrees of philosophical skepticism that will determine how one internalizes new information

Credulity

tendency to be too ready to believe that something is real or true

• being gullible or easily convinced

denialism

choosing to deny reality as a way to avoid dealing with an uncomfortable truth

• if often used in discussions about science, history, and public health

pyrrhonism

• one of the earliest forms of philosophical skepticism

• founded by Pyrrho of Elis

• we can’t know anything for certain, and even the ability to reason is doubtful

academic skepticism

• developed as a school of thought around 266 BC in
  Greece

• founded by Arcesilaus

• argued that knowledge is improbable, but we can still make probabilistic judgments

cartesian skepticism

• atrributed to Rene Descartes

• similar to academic skepticism

• argued that knowledge of the world is virtually impossible considering everything we can plausibly be skeptical about

• “I think, therefore I am” is meant to be the sole truth claim accepted by Cartesian or Academic skeptics

common sense hypothesis

• argued by George Edward Moore

• argued it’s unnecessary to reject ordinary beliefs about the world

• we are justified in believing our own common sense

  • “here’s one hand… and here’s another”

pragmatism

• popularized by William James

• argued that philosophy (especially epistemic philosophy) is only really relevant of true if it has a practical impact on our everyday lives

• thus if different answers to an argument make no difference to us, then the dispute is trivial

representative theory of perception

• by John Locke

• argued that although everyday objects exist as distinct and separate entities from us, they exist in the mind as psychological entities

  • when you see something, your senses trigger the thought of the object, which is different from the object itself

• objects and ideas are separate and distinct

Phenomenalism

• knowledge comes from what we experience with out sensory perceptions

• we see only appearances of objects and the physical world

  • there is something more behind these appearances

• there are many different ways for people to perceive the external world and material objects

• there is a nature of material objects beyond what we can see in its appearance

CT: the moon landing never happened

• fake because of the rush to beat the Russians to the moon

• think they filmed it somewhere in area 51 or Hollywood

• 2001 space odyssey looks too similar

plausibility

• scientists believe the way flag was waving was impossible on the moon (but it could have waved from carried momentum)

• boot prints were different????

CT: aliens have visited earth at some point

• not many people in scientific community support this theory

• no evidence to back up these claims

• many people have claimed to see extraterrestrial things like UFOs

CT: extraterrestrials built the pyramids

• vast size and heaviness of stones = too impressive for that time because many construction methods and tools didn’t exist yet

• no concrete record to show how they moved the heavy stones without a wheel

CT: covid19 was created in a lab

• not natural phenomenon but an artificial creation stemming from genetic engineering research

• most commonly connected to the proximity of the Wuhan virology lab to the market where the virus infected patient 0

• lab was only 8 miles from sites of early cases

• majority believe it was of natural origin

• researcher claims with a variety of witnesses that he isolated the virus from a series of engineered proteins, which genetic studied reveal may have happened

CT: JFK was assassinated by the CIA

• he cut CIA’s budget by 20%

• fired the director of the CIA

• highly probable that a second gunman did fire on Kennedy

• group of right wing extremists were supposedly involved with elements of the CIA in a conspiracy to kill JFK

CT: flat earth

• earth is a flat disk, either circular or square shaped

• believed because horizon is flat, water doesn’t stick to a curved surface, and opposite gravity

• comes from lack of trust in authorities

• science says otherwise

Foundationalism

• we can only ever know something for certain if we can trace it back to an undoubtable, irrefutable truth

  • this truth = foundation from which all other knowledge and beliefs can be built and justified