greetings and welcome to philosophy 101
basic concepts this is lecture 2 in the
series and we will address the question
what is epistemology on the screen are a
number of philosophers who have
contributed to the question of what is
epistemology Plato
Epicurus san agustin William of Ockham
Rene Descartes Baruch Spinoza Gottfried
Wilhelm Leibniz John Locke Bishop George
Berkeley David Hume Immanuel Kant Georg
Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel John Stuart Mill
Audrey Bergson GE Moore and Bertrand
Russell we mentioned these philosophers
only in passing for this lecture but we
will return to them in greater detail in
later lectures in the series first let's
review the sources for today's lecture
we have the taxonomy of educational
objectives by Benjamin bloom we have the
encyclopedia of philosophy we have the
philosophy of a ZF by Hans Wagner we
have the internet Stanford encyclopedia
of philosophy
we have the internet encyclopedia of
philosophy and of course we have
Wikipedia
let me show you my copies of the print
versions of our sources for today this
is the taxonomy of educational
objectives handbook 1 the cognitive
domain by Benjamin bloom and his
colleagues it was begun as a research
project from the American Psychological
Association in 1948 and this vol 1 was
published in 1956 this this is a 1956
original copy this is volumes 1 & 2 of
the encyclopedia of philosophy it comes
in it was originally published in 1967
and 8 volumes and then reprinted in 1972
in four volumes two volumes per book and
that's the copy that I have and then
finally this is the philosophy of a ZF
by Hans flying er I was originally
published in German in 1911 and then
translated by CK Ogden in 1925 this is a
nineteen what is this this is 2009 this
was reprinted in 2009 so it was out of
print for quite a while next let's take
a look at some of the online resources
we have available to us and some of the
ways that you can purchase the print
books in case you'd like to add them to
your own library this is a list of the
bookmarks for all of the you know
Wikipedia articles and other online
articles that I consulted for this
particular lecture here is the Amazon
page for the taxonomy of educational
objectives so Amazon has a copy of it
new from one OS 105 used from $35 so if
you'd like to get your own copy I would
highly recommend having one it's been
updated it was updated in 2000 this is
that updated version it's $45 for a used
copy and $90 for a new copy the
encyclopedia of philosophy is available
from a number of different booksellers
ranges from forty eight forty to forty
dollars on eBay
there is a new version of it published
in 2005 in ten volumes a second edition
Amazon has it listed as $1400 I would
recommend that you go to your university
library and check out that rather than
spend that money
finally the philosophy of as yeah if
there's only 13 dollars I would highly
recommend you get this copy for yourself
this is one of the most unique books in
all of philosophy and we'll be analyzing
it in more detail in later later on in
the series now we come to the online
resources this is the Stanford
encyclopedia of philosophy this is the
home page so if we're just going to use
the search let's type in epistemology
and it will bring up all of the entries
there's 906 documents with epistemology
in the title the first one of course is
just general - pista mala G so just
click on that and this will this is
their entry on epistemology the same
thing with the internet encyclopedia of
philosophy go to e and then find
epistemology and these are two very good
online resources they are curated they
are peer-reviewed they are updated
constantly
they're run by universities so you know
they've got a continuous source of
material and staff - to keep them up to
date it's always a good idea to know who
the people are that you're referring to
so we're going to go over the eight
experts that we're going to refer to in
this lecture first is Benjamin s Blum he
was a professor of educational
psychology at the University of Chicago
next is David W Hamlin he was a
professor of philosophy at the
University of London next Sir Bernard
Arthur Owen Williams professor of
philosophy at the University of London
as well next Richard Henry Popkin
chairman of the philosophy department
University of California at San Diego
next Ronald W Hepburn a professor of
philosophy at the University of
Edinburgh
Hans fine year professor of philosophy
at the University of Halle in Germany
next Harry burrows Acton a professor of
moral philosophy at the University of
Edinburgh and finally Rodney Julian
Hurst head of the department of logic at
Glasgow University Scotland all of our
lectures are guided by the educational
principles outlined by dr. bloom and his
colleagues in the taxonomy of
educational objectives the six elements
of the cognitive domain are 1 knowledge
two comprehension 3 application for
analysis 5 synthesis and 6 evaluation
now because these are a taxonomy and a
taxonomy is hierarchical it is important
to understand that knowledge must come
before comprehension knowledge and
comprehension must come before
application knowledge comprehension and
application must come before analysis
and so on
all of the lectures in the philosophy
101 series are concerned with levels 1 &
2 knowledge and comprehension mostly
with knowledge just simple understanding
of basic concepts the names of the basic
philosophers and simple information like
that the later lectures in the series
will deal with the upper levels of the
taxonomy here is just a quick review of
what we discussed in the first lecture
philosophy is basically divided into
five domains metaphysics epistemology
logic ethics and aesthetics and
metaphysics is further subdivided into
three sub classifications ontology
cosmology and teleology epistemology is
defined as the study of knowledge it
answers the question what is knowledge
and what can be known it comes from the
Greek word episteme II which was their
word for science or knowledge
the definition of epistemology by
Professor David W Hanlon in his article
in the encyclopedia of philosophy says
that epistemology or the theory of
knowledge is that branch of philosophy
which is concerned with the nature and
scope of knowledge its presuppositions
and basis and the general reliability of
claims to knowledge it is important to
note that there are only three possible
theories of knowledge one is empiricism
which is knowledge from experience two
is rationalism which is knowledge from
reason and three - scepticism which
holds that no knowledge is possible at
all there are three other specialized
sources of knowledge when it's feeding
ism knowledge from faith the second is
mysticism which is knowledge from
meditation or contemplation and the
third is is outlined in the philosophy
as if which is knowledge is fictions and
finally because metaphysics and
epistemology are linked inextricably
there are only two possible metaphysical
theories idealism which is that the
world is mental or spiritual and realism
the belief that the world is material
professor Hamelin defines empiricism as
the theory that experience that is sense
data rather than reason is the source of
knowledge and in this sense it is
opposed to rational design dr. Williams
defines rationalism as the philosophical
outlook or program which stresses the
power of AA priori reason to grasp
substantial truths about the world and
correspondingly tends to regard natural
science as a basically a priori
enterprise
dr. Popkin is the world's foremost
expert on skepticism and he says that
skepticism has a critical philosophical
attitude questions the reliability of
the knowledge claims made by
philosophers and others originally the
Greek term skeptic oast meant
Inquirer's they the skeptics have
questioned whether any necessary or in
due
information can actually be gained about
the real nature of things fede ISM is
closely linked with skepticism and dr.
Popkin says that fede has a mr. view
that truth in religion is ultimately
based on faith rather than on reasoning
or evidence this claim has been
presented in many forms usually as a way
of asserting that the fundamental tenets
of religion cannot be established by
proofs or by empirical evidence that
must be accepted on faith
dr. Hepburn says about mysticism that a
mystical experience is not the act of
acquiring religious or theological
information but is often taken to be a
confrontation or encounter with the
divine source of the world's being and
man's salvation
dr. finer talks about fictions and
reminds us that it was in William of
Ockham not the alternative spelling for
for Bacchus name that we find for the
first time a clear and definite
treatment of the fictional nature of
general ideas he fully understood that
Fichte as they were called in the
writings of the Middle Ages are
practically necessary and must be
recognized in this sense
dr. Acton says that idealism in its
philosophical sense is the view that
mind and spiritual values are
fundamental in the world as a whole
thus idealism as opposed to naturalism
that is to the view that mind and
spiritual values have emerged from or
are reducible to material things and
processes philosophical idealism is also
opposed to realism dr. Hurst says that
realism in modern philosophy is used for
the view that material objects exist
externally to us and independently of
our Sense experience realism is the
supposed to idealism which holds that no
such material objects or external
realities exist apart from our knowledge
or consciousness of them the whole
universe that's being dependent on the
mind or in some sense mental
now let's review Bloom's taxonomy of the
cognitive domain is divided up into six
elements first is knowledge second
comprehension thirds application fourth
is analysis fifth the synthesis and
sixth is evaluation all of the
philosophy 101 lectures are dealing with
knowledge at the first level of the
cognitive domain all of the later
lectures will be dealing with the upper
levels of the domain now because we are
dealing with knowledge the first level
of the domain it is important that you
commit each of these terms to memory and
that you understand their definitions
because they will be kur again and again
and again in all of our discussions so
first there are only three possible
theories of knowledge the one is
empiricism knowledge from experience
second is rationalism knowledge for
reason and the third is skepticism and
no knowledge is possible at all there
are three other specialized sources of
knowledge fede ism which is knowledge
from faith mysticism which is knowledge
from meditation the philosophy of as if
which describes knowledge as fictions
and there are only two possible
metaphysical theories idealism which is
the belief that the world is mental or
spiritual and realism the belief that
the world is material thanks for
watching I hope you enjoyed the
presentation and I hope you stay tuned
for more lectures in this series
