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Summary Philosophy of Science
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Philosophy of ScienceLecture 1
Epistemology=the theory of knowledge
EPISTEMOLOGY = THEORY OF KNOWLEGDE
• Philosophy of science began with epistemology;
• Epistemology asks three questions:
• (1) What is (certain) knowledge?
• (2) How can we justify that knowledge?
• (3) What is the source of knowledge?
• Traditionally there are two views:
• (1) rationalism: real knowledge is derived from the ratio,
reason;
• (2) empiricism: real knowledge comes from sensory
experience.
-Socrates -skepticism / asked difficult questions
-Rationalism-real knowledge stems from our reason/ there is innate knowledge , nativism ,
Plato
-to learn is to remember
• The source of knowledge is our reason;
• Plato: To learn is to remember ( = anamnèsis);
• In other words: There is no new knowledge – you do not
really learn anything (But did you know this?)
• Question: Why did he claim this?
• Plato believed in reincarnation
FORGOTTEN EVERYTHING
• Plato believed that before you were born, you had all
real knowledge (& you lost that knowledge when you
were born).
-episteme knowledge of how things are
-doxa opinion about how things are
,-plato says that knowledge is a justified and true belief
PLATO RESPONDS TO HERACLITES
• Panta rhei;
• If in our world (= the world we perceive with outr senses)
everything changes constantly, then nothing is;
• And that means we can only acquire doxa, not
epistème….
• (And that would amount to skepticism)
PLATO’S ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE
• Ideas / Forms exist apart from us in a World of Ideas /
Form World;
• The soul is akin to those ideas;
• Acquiring knowledge is to remember these Ideas –
anamnèsis.
-MENO
• This is obviously unacceptable: Socrates is puts the slave
of Meno words in the mouth;
• This kind of rationalism is very extreme;
Empiricism
• General claim: Empiricists believe that the source of
knowledge is the experience gained through sensory
perception;
• This is a common sense view: If you want to know how
something is, you have to look (or listen ...).
THE TERM 'EMPIRICISM'
• The central claim thus is that you gain knowledge from
the experiences you have;
• Greek: empeira;
• Latin: experienta;
• Associated claim: If all knowledge comes from
experience via perception, there is no innate
knowledge.
EMPIRICIST #1: ARISTOTLE
• Rejected Plato's two-worlds theory: There is only one
,world, and that is the one we can perceive with our
senses;
• This also implies a rejection of innate ideas: Man is a
tabula rasa (= a blank wax tablet).
ERIPATETIC PRINCIPLE
• Aristotle was the founder of the Lyceum, where he
taught while walking (peripateo in Greek);
• Hence Aquinas later called the empiricist principle
peripatetic principle: Nil est in intellectu quod non prius in
sensu fuerit (Nothing is in the intellect which was not first
in the senses).
UNIVERSAL CONCEPTS
• According to Plato the (general/universal) Idea Chair is
an entity existing in the World of Ideas;
• Aristotle rejects this;
• Aristotle accepts only the existence of concrete,
individual things (the individual chair);
INDUCTION
• ‘Aristotle called the empirical procedure by which we
move from the concrete to the universal induction (or
epagogè in Greek)[.]’ (Dooremalen, De Regt, &
Schouten, 2021, p. 40)
• Take an abstract, general statement like ‘all humans are
mortal’;
• What you perceive are just real people, and you can
establish that they are mortal.
ARISTOTLE’S SOLUTION
• Induction is therefore only a first step;
• There is need for a second step: Through our unfailing
intellectual capacity of the mind (nous) we can
understand that abstractions like ‘all humans are mortal’
are necessary truths;
• This is intuitive induction (= understanding);
• But that is a rationalistic element in his epistemology.
ARISTOTLE’S SOLUTION
, • When Aristotle had found a general statement, he was
not very critical towards that statement;
• That is understandable: he though he had established
via intuitive induction that the statement was true.
THOMAS AQUINAS
• Aquinas tried to unite Christian teaching with the pagan
ideas of Aristotle (‘The Philosopher’).
AN EXAMPLE
• Aristotle had a theory about matter and form,
• Matter (such as a piece of marble) is potentially
something (a statue);
• The shape makes something that actual thing (think of a
statue that may potentially be present in a piece of
marble);
• The statue can break again;
• This is a process of creation and decay.
IDENTIFICATION WITH THE CREATING GOD
• Aquinas argued that God has put this process of
creation and decay in motion;
• Aristotle's unmoved mover (= the first cause).
• Aristotle did no experiments because he thought that
they would not teach us anything about the natural
world.
ARISTOTLE’S REASON
• Aristotle wanted to acquire knowledge about the
natural world;
• He already had a classification of plants and animals (in
which he classified whales as mammals);
• He used the method of observation;
• By manipulating (say by lifting a stone) we make the
world go against the natural ways of things and as such
we do not learn anything about the natural world.
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