Intro to Epistemology #1: The Nature of Knowledge

This video gives an overview of epistemology and a detailed exposition of knowledge as justified, true belief. Various theories of truth, especially the correspondence theory, are also covered in detail as well as the topic of justification as a normative concept.

[kiwicoproductions]

I know you haven’t posted for years but I just wanna say I listened to this lecture when I was in college as an undergraduate and, almost 6 years later, I’m still re visiting it. Thanks again for your work!

[HarishKumar-lufd]

Not sure why this was not discovered earlier or came in searches earlier. Very clearly explained. Albeit I had to reduce speed to 0.85 to absorb things properly. But a very properly and clearly explained concept. Thanks for same. And hope you resume posting more content.

[PhilHelper]

Thanks again to all of you who posted below. You keep me motivated to keep pumping out these videos!

[amadoudiallo]

very interesting to watch the video and also to learn the opinions of other individuals. extremely interesting.

[shizfergus]

Great start! I'm looking forward to more.

[waynecamino]

These videos are great, thank you so much!

[Duzziez]

Wow thank you for this video! It was so informative. It helps out in my epistemology class.

[CVEOR]

seems like a fun topic, i'll continue, thanks for creating

[sackclothandashes]

Excellent video! My friend recommended me to come here (he was the first comment), I can see why.

[tingoorensis]

Keep it up please Phil. Personally I think your presentations are very valuable. 

[arande]

"Beliefs successfully correspond to reality" That's a hard one there I say matey

[talhandaq]

Useful intro with some cute graphic relief: perhaps you could speak just a little more slowly and have a few more pauses. But, hey, kind of you to upload. Looking forward to Gettier probs.

[snapman]

Any well defined epistemology can be defined mechanically. 

[PhilHelper]

Thanks! I have 2 more on Gettier prepared. Just fussing with my computer to get them published!

[vectorshift]

Propositional knowledge is an idealized concept that assumes that there is some way to obtain "sufficient" justification which will ensure the correctness of the belief. There is no way to obtain justification that will ensure the correctness of any belief( even math proofs might be wrong). Give it up. Everything that we believe is a guess. Live with it and stop trying to find a "practical" definition of "knowledge." It is an idealized that is never realized.

[Lobpreisfreak]

As far as I know - eventhough James wrote much about religion - he wasn´t very religious himself. At least not in the classical way. The best we could say is that God was a somewhat necessary regulative Idea that we need to uphold standards of truth and rightness

[bgrant]

Can mutual coherence be used normatively used as a proxy for a claim that can't objectively be proven? For example morality? Political views? Aesthetic judgment? Correspondence seems reasonably worthwhile but has the potential to be nihilistic with moral matters. Moral claims have tended to evolve with mutual coherence it would seem.

[Giant_Meteor]

The number of atoms in the universe is constantly changing, due to fusion and fission. In the time it takes to utter their sentences, the number would have toggled from odd to even and back again, innumerable times. They may both be unjustified, but their statements, on average, likely share an equal amount of time being true and being false.

[ANSIcode]

As someone who got on this topic looking for definitions of formal mathematical systems that don't use the notion of sets (I BELIEVE that I'm not crazy), I find this discussion to be extremely ambiguous. Without trying to determine to what extent that ambiguity could be resolved in principle, I still think a list of possible definitions for "belief" should not have been omitted at the start. All the people I bothered to ask for their definition of "belief" (about 15) stated that "any statement can count as a belief" (I then refrained from asking them for a definition of "statement") ; in any case that is without the need for a justification. Is there a motivation to define belief using justifications, "moral" considerations aside?

[BrianVandrian]

There are so many categories and connections that are totally foreign to me in this. I feel utterly lost. I thought I would understand most of this and then find a few new ideas to contemplate and derive some value from doing so. So far I feel like I have entered some Dr. Seuss circus. I went and watched a couple of others on the same subject and they all have really weird ideas that I either don't even understand why they are sying these things, or I think I do understand and it seems foolishness. I m coming from a background in programming and statistics and trying to understand cognitive structures... and now I feel so lost I don't know how to even stay.