Hello, everyone welcome to our second unit, on epistemology--which is another, or
a fancy way of saying the study of knowledge, the  study of what we know.
This unit unit two is broken up into three parts, so this is the first of three parts
So a few definitions about the word of epistemology is one of the branches of philosophy
That's specifically concerned with the theory of knowledge
The methods, the validity-- how do we know what's valid as knowledge?
And what counts as knowledge when we say scope, what are the endpoints of what you can count as something that is knowledge?
another way of saying this is that epistemology is the
investigation of what's the difference between
Just your opinion and something that's known as justified belief or - true justified belief is another phrase
Now your midterm  will require you to know the difference and to consider
differences between
justified belief and opinion
Just a little little hint here. For those of you who are etemologist
fans who like to know where words come from, it comes from the Greek word episteme which has
Knowledge and logos which has to do with logic the discourse as you see that's a lot of what this
epistemology of studying Knowledge is
Have you arrived at a logical explanation or how do you use logic to arrive at something?
as truth
The two philosophers that you'll be working with in this unit are Plato and Descartes. These are not the only two names associated with
epistemology or even more specifically
rationalism which is one
Field I guess you could say under the larger branch of epistemology, but these are the two that we're working with today
plato is
Quite a big name in it. He would be one of the first
He you can't really call him a rationalist. He would be under something called Idealism, but later philosophers
Who followed his methods and who are called rationalist follow?
There's a there's overlap between them
now plato
is
one of the sort of founding Fathers
of Western philosophy
he
There's sort of three big names. You've probably heard of socrates plato and aristotle
plato is the student of socrates who's
Really, maybe the father made the grandfather of philosophy who didn't write anything down?
It's plato who wrote down socrates teaching and then aristotle as a student of plato, so these three
socrates plato, Aristotle
Are the sort of the famous three who start western Philosophy if there's a famous name for the east would be Confucius
But but plato is a big one
Western Philosophy and descartes that has been called the father of Modern philosophy
And we'll get to him
so
as I said
The post apology is the big umbrella
definition for theories of knowledge
Within that you have different schools different
The same thing we could say hockey
that's that's a giant sport and then you've got the Toronto Maple leaves and the Boston Bruins and whoever else write the
Ottawa senators
So we have that same type of thing fields underneath
Victimology and what we're working with this week is
Rationalism, and that's basically the view that knowledge is acquired through reason rather than through the aid have any other
specifically any of your senses
I've got basically three different definitions kind of saying all the same thing
Rationalism is the view that regards reason as the Chief source and test of knowledge?
Or it's any of you appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or as justification for knowledge. So keep that in mind here
It's that the source how will you arrive at knowledge is through reason not through?
Something and when we say the senses I mean sight hearing but it's literally it's who thought that
and rationalist tend to think that reason and the ability of a human to reason provides a source and
quality or a kind of knowledge that can't come from any other sources so it's almost as if the the
quality of
Reasoning or the or the products you've got from you get from reasoning is a product that you can't get any any other way
So it's a definitely privileged
Source of information or source of not information knowledge
so
One of the things that links plato with descartes and other rationalist is this idea that there is
Innate knowledge that some of us are just born with certain
Kinds of knowledge built into us and the key term here is called a priori which means
if you think of it in terms of prior to something
meaning before
So a priori means if it's in there already we have an innate
Ability to sort of access it now if you were D card or plato you would think it's because we all have a soul
Our soul we inherit from God and God is the source of all knowledge
so therefore we are born with kind of his little link to God and
Which would be our ability to reason and these kinds of knowledge now plato obviously is not Christian
But he did believe that we have innate knowledge of what he called forms
and I've given you some links here or some examples what he means by a fool he would consider a
mathematical object and mathematical concepts like triangles are large natural quality, so
mathematical objects and then also Moral concepts goodness beauty virtual piety
All of these things he thinks were just born with this kind of knowledge
It's almost like you just need to tap into it something that's in
Now descartes who's A 16th century Philosopher?
and Christian he thought that the idea of God which was associated with Perfection and infini
Sorry infinity as well as knowledge of my own existence. These are anything that were born with
And we don't have to sort of search outside as long as we think as long as we can reason we can
access this kind of knowledge
Oh now. There's a big debate within philosophy
within the field of philosophy
Between the rationalist and another group is called the empiricists and part two of this unit is looking at the pierces point of view
So the rationalist, and I'm just going to give you the quick overview now
Rationalist claims that concepts and knowledge are gained independently of sense experience
And that these are more certain source of truth than the kind of knowledge you get through sense experience
so they're not arguing that you can't get knowledge from
Sense it's just that they're kind you get through a reason is more certain
It's more valid you can be more sure of it than you can through
through
through your senses
Now empiricists say no sense experience is the ultimate source of all our concepts and knowledge
There's no way that you can know anything
Without experience first so when I say the big debate because this is that this is where it comes down to right here?
This is what they're arguing over
Don't think of this in terms of what comes first
But first we get experience and then get knowledge, and no first we have a knowledge, and then we have experiences
It's more about which one is more sure which one
So when we say the source is not necessarily time wise but sources in most valid most
Reliable and that's a big difference to keep in mind now. I want to just go over really quickly some of the plato concepts
He has something called a dividing line, and so I've given you two different ways of thinking of this
The part of your reading that's called the allegory of the cave
You nearly really need to pay attention to that word allegory. He is using this as a
Little story to help you understand what he means?
About the difference between the world of matter and the world of ones
Or the world of the body and experience and senses and the world of the mind and logic
so
There's a nice little animated video. Which is quite funny to watch but don't take it literally remember this isn't allegory
So the idea there is that this there's the realm that's visible
That's the realm that he associates with the cave and you would call that the realm of the opinion
This is where we see something. We think what we're seeing is the truth we act on it. We
Talk about it. We argue about it, but when he says is
it's all just a reflection of a
simpler version a shadowy version of
What is something?
We can't see but is we're actually through knowledge or the form precise
and so I've given you some different terms here a
mathematical understanding
To know that a triangle has three sides
And I'm never gonna draw a triangle with four sides because I know from the word triangle, but it has three sides
I don't need to I
Don't need to go look at five different triangles to say
Oh look all these triangles have three sides with triangles must have three I just no triangle three sides
They will always have three sides they might know they might be different shapes, but it will always be three
so so there's kind of this hierarchy of
Gradual Growth towards having to knowledge, but but also think of it. So there's kind of four different stages
And the Philosopher is somebody who's made it to the end
Now trying to teach everybody thinks they're nuts
But you can also think of it as two parts right there's the world that's in the cave
That's everybody who's only operating by opinion, and then there's the world outside of the cave, and those are the people who have knowledge
so keep that distinction in mind between
The world of opinion, which is if I base claims to truth on what I see or hear?
it's knowledge if I base it on my understanding of rational thought and my
knowledge of the true form itself or the concept rather than just my particular understanding of it, so
You think of this in terms of the concept of chair?
So I'm sitting in one chair
Beside me is another chair the two chairs look very different if all I ever see is a particular kind of chair
I'm going to think that's what your chair looks like it's not until I see say 40 different kinds of chairs
I realized oh, there's something
there's something that exists that's called that that we would call chair nests or
The idea of Chair and you can have a hundred different varieties
But each one of those are particular each one of those are what you would call the shadow of what?
Exists some more out there in the world of the idea of chair
Which is something to sit in and has legs that hold you up right? So it might look different forms
Maybe it doesn't have legs. Maybe he's got one leg. He was actually on the ground, but all of these things
Are just particular?
manifestations of One Higher larger
internal eternal concept of a chair hopefully that makes sense to you, so
Just to explain an allegory a little bit more
we call it rationalist because he says there are distinct ways and arriving at Knowledge and
Privilege in one kind over the other and he says very clearly that what the sense is what your eyes where your ears reveal is
The same thing as just seeing shadowy images on a wall of a portable tape
But your intellect what your reason can reveal is like being outside
In a brightly lit sunshine where you can see everything clearly right?
so if you use reason you're in the sun if you're using their senses your eyes and your ears
It's like being in this cave where all you get to see are the shell so that is my quick introduction. I am leaving
introductions that are used in the past which were much longer in the unit, so if you want additional information
but this should hopefully
Orient you to the text you're reading this week. I look forward to reading your poems
