Epistemology Part 1: Quine, Sellars, Gettier, and Putnam

Having gotten a sense of the continental and analytic traditions in contemporary philosophy, we are ready to examine advancements in the field of epistemology that occurred around that time. Let's see how Willard Quine, Wilfrid Sellars, Edmund Gettier, and Hilary Putnam contributed to this progress.

Script by Luca Igansi

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[jmike]

Im so glad you are covering philosophy Dave, i see too many people just erroneously dismiss it like a flat earther does the shape of the earth, and its really annoying. I hope this encourages people to read it before criticizing something they don't understand

[PhillipMoore-tdyi]

Dave you encouraged me to start a band and play drums. Your videos also convinced one of my creationist friends to take a more rational position. Thank you for spreading knowledge. I have seen it shield people from misinformation already.

[CaseyW]

I'm quickly becoming an absolute fanatic for this channel. Like suddenly getting prescription glasses after a lifetime of blurry vision.

[malusofficial]

Thank you for covering epistemology Dave, I'm looking forward to this series!

[SeanAnthony-jf]

Popular philosophy are just getting into my nerves from depicting philosophers as something get high or oversimplications of big concepts. Academic philosophy is way different and a real and true way of doing philosophy.

[wmradar]

It feels weird hearing Quine's name without the middle two ones.

[nyzeleanor]

Excellent video. Thank you, Professor Dave.

[bajan]

Perfectly timed given the new age of Howardism

[Z-Diode]

Quine was far ahead of his contemporaries in every respect, which corresponded to his view of language and reality. I gravitate toward to esteem his holistic approach to language and reality. His philosophy emphasiszd the interconnectedness of language, meaning, and reality. He rejected the traditional analytic-synthetic distinction and reductionism, instead advocating for semantic holism and ontological relativity. This perspective challenged the dominant logical positivist views of his time.

[martsawup]

I've been putting off learning about this so glad im subbed

[CoolpieGaming]

Would you ever be down to make a series on first order logic and set theory? I know you have a couple of videos up, but the series would maybe include things like formal proofs and translations. I used to watch you for chemistry and physics and really enjoy your style of videos!

[g.r.]

Yes! I was reading quite a bit of Wittgenstein and this drops. 👏🏻

[katinapac-baez]

Perfect timing, was just wondering about this

[ThePathOfEudaimonia]

Oooh, I would love to see more philosophy (of science)!

[elvinc.brasov]

If you are going to do epistemology please do infinitism as well! Pretty please??

[johnrainsman]

I'm working on a picture of two guys playing catch. If I post the picture on my channel, can I get your opinion on the geometrical direction of the two throwers and the ball in between?

[misterdoctor]

I was in an anti-intellectualism, fundamentalist Christian church. Now I don't know most of this vocabulary and I can't grasp any of the concepts. It's very frustrating.

[James-lljb]

"Hillary Putnam, one of Quine's most famous students, attuned much of his work with the second Wittgenstein and the current discussions on epistemology toward what he cslled 'the death of ontology, ' or of metaphysical theories of language and knowledge. Going beyond the coherentist aantifoundationalist Quinian perspective of truth and meaning, Putnam brings nathematics and physics to thoroughly criticize Heidegger and metaphysicians in general. He does so by claiming that any concept can be associated with other concepts as freely as we want, as long as we can communicate with others using them. Any concept then, broadly speaking, can represent anything without requiring a metaphysical anchor to support it. If you take a shoe and the Eiffel Tower, both share concepts such as "left", "solid", and others, even though they seem utterly different. Thus, meaning does not need to have any sort of ontological foundation, and it is a useless tool which is dead, according to his interpretation, and succeeding in the original intent of Mach and the Vienna Circle. He even criticized some formulations of Quine's philosophy of mathematics as having a metaphysical approach, however faintly. This anti-metaphysical linguistic perspective of epistemology is what is called 'conceptual relativity, ' where optional languages describe objects by convention of the given group dealing with it in specific contexts. And again similarly to Quine, this process would develop in a coherentist manner, as our conceptual resources would interact with our capability of describing the world toward enhancing each other and thus allowing for greater knowledge of the world."

[lwandomakaula]

Can professor Dave debunk the "Be inspired "s videos on YouTube because wow they are something else

[ampman]

Have you read Ayn Rand's "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology"? Anybody thoughts?