Meghan Sullivan - Epistemology: How Do We Know What We Know?

What do we know and how do we know it? What is knowledge? What is belief? How is belief justified? What justifies us in believing what we believe? Is justified belief knowledge? These questions constitute “epistemology” – the theory of knowledge.

[mikedziuba]

Ancient Greeks had three Delphic maxims: "Know thyself", "Nothing to excess" and "Surety brings ruin". The idea of knowing yourself sounds similar to Descartes' idea, "I think, therefore I am." Which suggests people's knowledge and their confidence in their knowledge comes from knowing themselves, including knowing their values.

So, if you start doubting whether your government is doing right or wrong, then you can easily know this when you know what right and wrong is in your own values.

The problem with asking other people to clarify for you the issues of right and wrong in politics and government is that those other people might have a conflict of interest, where they get some money from the government for their work and their livelihood. Or they might indirectly depend on some government contracts, that you don't know about. Or they might be associated with some political party, and they have some kind of an agenda and ideology that they don't tell you about. So, you might get biased advice and whitewashing of what the government is doing, rather than the truth.

Descartes said that he couldn't be sure of anything, except his own existence. And not being sure like this is actually a good thing, according to ancient Greeks. Because their third Delphic maxim said, "Surety brings ruin". So, being sure about everything you know is actually a bad state to be in. Doubt is better than being sure. Because doubt is the source of people's curiosity and progress in human knowledge.

But doubt shouldn't be excessive. Which is the second Delphic maxim, "Nothing to excess". This second Delphic maxim, Aristotle later rephrased as the "Golden Mean".

[raresmircea]

2:49 hyperbolic discount, as it's called, is believed to be the case because that was the mindset that maximised inclusive fitness. the passing of genes to future generations was helped by this particular way of viewing the world, and automatically those who had it furthered their respective types of mindsets to their offsprings. hence today we all care about the present-moment selves way more than we care about our future self in 2 years time. this is why we so casually borrow from the wellbeing of our far-future selves (smoking, drinking, over-spending, getting in debt, you name it). this is not a ''truthful'' way of seeing life, it's just the way we humans see the world, and perhaps in 100 years time there will be experiments where neuroscientists stimulate and inhibit bits of the brain in such a way that we perceive life in a very different way. similarly, alien creatures might look at us and see a huge bundle of biases and nonsense.

[AndrePAuger]

On the question of bias, I have found Bernard Lonergan's Insight (1959) an invaluable analysis of forms f bias that distort our knowing.

[ericpham]

If we really look at it is that all of our senses can be fooled and there are special thing or knowledge that happened to us but never repeated or visible to other for us to prove it to them what we saw

[ericmatthew]

Im very interested in the topic but some of these words im still learnin🤓! Lol

[ronpaulrevered]

Its seems obvious to me that there are at least two kinds of knowledge; the empirical that studies the physical reality and the conceptual that studies the truths that arise from reason itself. I don't think you can even begin an empirical expedition without assuming that reason is true and real.

[ericpham]

Existentialism is reality or more meaningful at least in human term because the limited information available to others

[saiedkoosha]

Why doesn’t she answer the question? She goes into psychology of belief and Kuhn too forgets what was his question. Overall, not a deep conversation, as if you’re listening to a segment of a sitcom on TV.

[ericpham]

Like the Constitution mean differently at different time then it is hard to say anything except violence is not acceptable

[stevesayewich]

I would highly recommend this woman read Donald Hoffman's recent book, "The Case Against Reality-why evolution hid the truth from our eyes." Although, I thought Rene Descartes was important to the development of the Enlightenment, I think the idea of a blank slate is dated. Couldn't help notice they were sitting in Christian church, perhaps Roman Catholic. I was educated in one of the Jesuit's top schools in the US. Not a bad start but had to leave that foundation behind on my way to thinking critically.

[michaeltellurian]

The blurry fade-in to these videos is very annoying.

[pointdot]

What evolutionary ancestors? 🤔
Bacteria turned rational being trying to arrive at truth?

[redglazedeyez]

omg i farted in bed.. it stinks like a rotten egg barn!!

[AhlusSunnahwalJamah]

Anyone that uses the phrase “our evolutionary ancestors” in a conversation is most likely not smart enough to be trusted on any topic, let alone epistemology.