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TACT Glossary Clin Ter 2010; 161 (3):?-? Epistemology A. Marcos

Department of , University of Valladolid, Spain

Abstract Pythagoreans believed that the Earth was spherical, but they had no real justification for this , so they did notknow This entry begins by presenting the origin, history and etymology that Earth was spherical. also believed that it was of the term, as well as a short definition of epistemology as the disci- spherical, but he also had the right to justify his pline that deals with the nature, origin, validity and limits of . belief. Here are the three elements of knowledge. Each one Then we focus on the classical platonic analysis of knowledge as is a necessary condition and the three together are sufficient justified belief. Against the backdrop of this platonic notion we condition for knowledge to exist1. present other relevant perspectives. It is essential to follow the history also left us, in his dialogue The (Book of the relation between origin and justification of knowledge until the 7, 514a.520a) the famous The Myth of the Cave, in which contemporary separation of both problems. The study of the origin of he expounds different aspects of knowledge. The object of knowledge seems to require a , while the prob- genuine knowledge is Ideas. Regarding its nature, it is con- lem of justification is usually approached from a philosophical point ceived as the participation of our beliefs in Ideas. As for types of view, whether coherentist, foundationalist or fallibilist. However, of knowledge, the most important distinction is between currently some authors are advocating for a full naturalized epistemol- () and (mere , belief without ogy, while others are extending the philosophical point of view also to justification) (Rep. book 6, 509d–513e). Knowledge consists the genesis of knowledge. Clin Ter 2010; 161(3):?-? of a two-way journey, leaving the cave and returning to it, that is, rising from phenomena to Ideas and falling back to Key words: epistemology, knowledge, justification, truth the phenomena. On the way up, knowledge is acquired, on the way down, that knowledge is applied to the explanation of phenomena. What is important is that Plato includes the Epistemology questions of the origin and validity of knowledge in the same phase, the ascent. Origin and validity both depend on the Epistemology, from the Greek, episteme y , con- correct method of ascent. cerns the philosophical or scientific study of knowledge. The Platonic analysis has marked the debate on episte- The introduction into English of the term epistemology is mology and against the backdrop of its positions the other attributed to the Scottish philosopher James Frederick Ferrier theories of epistemology can be identified. If for Plato the (1808-1864). The semantic field of the term overlaps with nature of knowledge is participation, for others it is the corre- others, like theory of knowledge, gnoseology, philosophy spondence between belief and , the formal unification of science and cognitive science. In short, epistemology is of mind and reality, the representation of reality through the discipline that deals with the nature, origin, validity and simplified models or ever the pure construction of reality. limits of knowledge. Where Plato recognizes Ideas as the object of knowledge, The classical analysis of knowledge is to be found in Pla- others have set the forms that are present in palpable reality to’s dialogue . He distinguishes three components of knowledge: belief, truth and justification. This analysis corresponds to our intuitive idea of knowledge. In the first place, nobody knows anything without believing it. Secon- 1 In 1963, Edmund Gettier published some sophisticated counter- dly, we would not say that there is knowledge in a belief, if examples of cases which, though having belief, truth and justification, the belief is not true. Nobody can know that the Earth is flat, were doubtful regarded as knowledge (“Is Justified True Belief Knowl- because it is not. But even in the case of true belief, we would edge?”, Analysis, v. 23, available at www.ditext.com/gettier/gettier. not say that knowledge exists if there is no justification. html). The so-called “Gettier problem” consists in finding the condition Validity of knowledge also depends on its justification, for, which, together with the other three, would create sufficiency. Such without it, the truth of a belief becomes mere chance. The authors as Goldman, Dretske and Nozick have questioned this point.

Correspondence: Dott. Alfredo Marcos, Department of Philosophy, Plaza del Campus, 47011-Valladolid, Spain. E-mail: [email protected] 2 A. Marcos

(Aristotelism), and even individual entities (). origin of all knowledge is experience, and the only method Aristotle, for example, investigated the practical knowledge that allows us to go beyond experience, to the general law of contingency and change through his notion of and prediction, is induction. But at the same time, he slams (). Although such knowledge is not actually episte- the inductive method as one of justification. The dilemma me, it does merit serious consideration ( to Nicomacus, therefore arises of accepting either that our knowledge does Book VI), for it is not mere unjustified opinion, as it has some not attain truth (scepticism) or that it can be true, but without truth and validity. Where Plato states that genuine know- rational justification (irrationalism). ledge has a theoretical character – nowadays we should say Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason, tackles Hume’s propositional (know that) – other authors also accept know- dilemma. His aim is critical, to find the limits, but also con- how as knowledge worthy of epistemological study, and, in structive, to ensure knowledge within those limits. Euclid’s general, practical aspects of knowledge (). If for geometry and Newton’s physics would come within the sure Plato the subject of knowledge is the human , for other limits of knowledge, but would not. In fact, the thinkers, animals can also know. Aristotle even attributes a validity of knowledge within the sure limits is decided by certain very elementary kind of phronesis to some animals the activity of the subject. The subject establishes certain a and Popper attributes a non-conscious knowledge to plants. priori structures, i.e., structures independent of experience In recent years, computers and robots have been considered that are a necessary precondition for it. Space and time are as subjects of knowledge (artificial intelligence). necessary conditions for perception, the object of which is a But it is around the question of truth and justification result of those structures. Space is investigated by geometry, that the most defining epistemological debates have arisen. time by arithmetic, so what these really know are We find a strong concept of truth as a correspondence, as the subjects’ a priori structures – not those of a given em- a formal unit between the mind and reality. According to pirical subject but those of any possible cognitive subject. Aristotle’s classical definition, taken up again in the 20th The same is true for the relations of causation on which century by Tarski, truth is “to say of what is, that it is, or to physics is based. The Critique of Pure Reason set the bases say of what is not, that it is not” (Meta, 7, 1011 b 26-28). and the agenda for all subsequent epistemology, almost to And opposed to this we find a great variety of weak notions the present. It is understood that insistence on the subject’s of truth. Nietzsche’s text On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral contribution would bring about idealist, subjectivist and even Sense presents the repertory of weak versions of truth: co- solipsist tendencies. maintains that the object of herentist, instrumentalist, conventionalist, relativist (truth knowledge, rather than in a reality outside the subject, is in relative to each individual, people, species or language), Ideas themselves. The reactions of to Kantian constructivist, idealist, truth as convenience or as a biological standpoints are also to be understood. This tradition imme- expedient for survival. In the extreme, scepticism denies diately thought of isolating the subject’s action in order to our knowledge the capacity to attain truth, either because preserve . Post-Kantian empiricists like Herschel our knowledge is weak or owing to the non-existence of an and Whewell proposed separating the two problems that had independent and intelligible reality. thus far been dealt with together: origin and justification. As for justification, the variety of epistemological stan- Thus, all of the subjective would be on the side of the pro- dpoints is also great. For centuries, epistemology sought a duction of knowledge (ascendant phase), while objectivity reliable method of production and validation of knowledge, would be obtained from the empirical consequences of but at the beginning of the 20th century the two problems knowledge (descendant phase). Logical empiricists like were clearly separated: the genesis of knowledge resides in Reichenbach and Carnap set it out in these terms: a distin- the ascendant phase, while justification must be looked for ction must be made between the context of discovery and the in the descendant one. To understand this process and its context of justification. No method is valid for both. Husserl consequences, we need to look briefly at history. expresses himself in a very similar way. Plato’s and Aristotle’s ideas on knowledge, the latter Contemporary epistemology thus distinguishes origin having drawn up a theory of deductive and inductive methods from justification. This has given rise to two ways of un- (Analytical), formed the basis of medieval epistemology. derstanding epistemology: a scientific or naturalist one and Thomas Aquinas built a very elaborate realist theory of a philosophical one. Scientific, or naturalist, epistemology knowledge, on mainly Aristotelian lines. In the closing cen- deals with the genesis of knowledge. Naturalized epistemolo- turies of the Middle Ages, developments were more critical gy, that is, epistemology developed according to the method than constructive. In philosophers like Ockham, nominalist of natural sciences, admits a great diversity of approaches. In and probabilist tendencies arose. has recent decades, an evolutionist epistemology has developed, returned to constructive epistemological work. It seeks to which explains the origin of knowledge thanks to the concepts find a method that produces knowledge and at the same time of Darwin’s theory of evolution. Studies have also appeared justifies it. Two main branches of , on the biological bases of knowledge, based on neurophy- Carthesian and Baconian empiricism, agree siological research. There are also epistemological studies on this, although they propose different methods. For the made from psychology. Cognitive science, which brings in empiricists, the origin of knowledge is in experience, which the contribution of linguistics, computer science, neurophy- also provides justification. For rationalists, both origin and siology and philosophy, among other disciplines, has also justification must be sought in innate or a priori ideas, in undergone a major development. We could even consider the rational evidence. With Hume and Kant, criticism came to sociology of knowledge as naturalized epistemology. the fore again. The limits of knowledge came to the fore- Alongside these studies of a scientific character, there front of epistemological studies. According to Hume, the still exists a philosophical epistemology, which deals above TACT Glossary: Epistemology 3 all with the truth, validity and justification of knowledge. Popper, who used the advances in the theory of evolution Unlike scientific epistemology, it has a normative, evaluative and of neurophysiology in the elaboration of his epistemo- or critical nature. The positions in this field are also very di- logy. Furthermore, recent philosophical epistemology has verse. seeks justification for the whole edi- extended its research also into the field of the production of fice of knowledge through supposedly unquestionable basic knowledge. The American philosopher C. S. Peirce showed principles, while understands that knowledge that this part of the cognitive process also has its own , functions more like a network maintained by the support which is neither algorithmic nor infallible but is rational. of nodes, or mutual tension between them. Recently there That logic follows the patterns of the so-called ampliative have been attempts to mediate between the two standpoints inferences, specifically of abduction. Both Peirce and Popper (Susan Haack’s foundherentism). Internalists understand state that knowledge is always fallible. This position, which that the justification of knowledge has to be sought in the is sceptical regarding certainty but not regarding truth, is cal- mental states of the subject, while externalists seek it in the led fallibilism. It has historical precedents, like the socratic way in which reality causes beliefs or in the reliability of attitude of humility (“I only know that I know nothing”) the mechanisms whereby they are produced. Specifically in and the “docta ignorantia” of Nicholas of Kues. But it has the field of the epistemology of science, there are those who recently undergone its greatest development, a profound defend the idea that the justification for theories takes place change in the axiology of knowledge: the greatest epistemic through their empirical verification (), while for value is not subjective certainty but objective truth. others only attempts at falsification offer any justification Lastly, let us note that contemporary epistemology has (Popper’s falsificationism). also trodden the path of specialization of other disciplines The coexistence of the two forms of epistemology does regarding and approach. Today, then, we can find not occur without tension. Some thinkers advocate a radical research concentrating on the epistemology of science, of naturalization of epistemology and, in their view, know- mathematics, of computing, of morals, of religion, of art or ledge must be studied by science, like any other natural even with a social or feminist approach. phenomenon. Philosophy would not contribute anything of importance. Opposed to this, some philosophers think that naturalized epistemology is irrelevant to normative References questions. There is obviously a moderate point where both approaches can come together, a standpoint according to 1. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/ which philosophical epistemology is essential, for without 2. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cognitive-science/ it we lose sight of axiological, normative, evaluative and cri- 3. BonJour L. Epistemology. Classic Problems and Contempo- tical aspects. Indeed, even if scientific epistemology went as rary Responses. Lanham, Rowman and Littlefield, 2002 far as studying the procedures of justification, it would do so 4. Sosa E, Kim J. Epistemology: An Anthology. Oxford, Black- descriptively. Without a philosophical approach, the strong well, 1999 notions of truth and justification are lost and we drift into 5. Moser P. The Oxford Handbook of Epistemology, Oxford, . In return, we must recognize that epistemology OUP, 2002 cannot be treated as in Plato’s time, without bearing in mind 6. Greco J, Sosa E. Blackwell Guide to Epistemology. Oxford, the valuable recent contributions of the different sciences. Blackwell, 1998 Examples of this moderate version of the naturalization of 7. Thagard P. Mind: Introduction to Cognitive Science. Cam- epistemology are to be found in such philosophers as Karl bridge (MA), MIT Press, 2005