I've decided to swivel our path towards philosophy. I was going to continue on with our Nationalism saga, but I hear the call of philosophy, and seeing as we only have 8 weeks left until March, I think it's important we touch on some philosophy before time runs out.
Hello and welcome to our new philosophy saga: Epistemology. Finally, we are going to be addressing that word that gets thrown around by intellectuals and can make us feel small. I'm here to help clear things up (for myself as well).
Let's start off with some definitions:
Epistemology = The branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Considered a major subfield of philosophy (along with metaphysics, ethics, logic etc.)
A priori = Knowledge which is independent from experience (knowable without needing experience). An argument based on theoretical deductions rather than empirical evidence. E.g. five is a prime number OR Brothers are male siblings.
A posteriori = Knowledge which depends on empirical evidence (knowledge requires experience). Reasoning which proceeds from observations or experiences to the deduction of probable causes.
E.g. I am tall for my age OR My dog has fleas.
These definitions will help you understand what epistemology seeks to do: figure out where we get our knowledge from. Is it from experiencing the world or is it logic?
We've touched on the Rationalism vs. Empiricism debate in a previous newsletter, so in this newsletter, we'll be diving into the Epistemological Realism vs Idealism debate.
Philosophers have been fascinated by the fact that our human perception relies on our mind and that we know about objects is what our minds let us see. From this, many theories have emerged questioning what and how our minds perceive external reality.
Direct realism is the idea that we as humans directly perceive the world as it is – Ie. whatever we perceive in our minds is the direct world that exists and there is no difference between what exists external to the mind and what the mind perceives. Despite its seemingly attractive simplicity, this theory is often referred to as naive realism and David Hume believed that even just a little philosophical enquiry would lead someone to drop this theory. The theory of light, our perception of colour, and illusions are often used to refute this theory – that objects are only a certain colour because our mind sees it that way; and its colour is not its inherent characteristic.
Indirect realism is the idea that there is an external world beyond our mind, but we do not perceive this directly, but rather indirectly, and there is an intermediate between the external world and our mind: sense data. Sense data can be considered a mental image of an object; it projects off the external world into our mind, as if we have pictures in our mind that represent the outside world. When we perceive a piece of pizza, we perceive the sense data of that pizza: the smell, colour, taste. These senses are referred to as secondary qualities and have been widely developed by John Locke. Hence, there is an external world that we perceive, but we only perceive it through sense data. But if this is the case, how can we ever know that what we are perceiving is the truth of the external world? And how do we know that this gives the same projection on all minds? And if we never perceive the external world, why should we assume there is a physical world creating the ideas, rather than take the approach that reality is just a set of ideas and that there is no external world? This brings us to idealism.
Idealism is a theory put forward by George Berkeley, who argued that there is no external world, rather that reality is just a series of ideas. Everything is dependent on mind to exist and all we see are just ideas in our mind. In other words, nothing exists outside the mind. Crazy idea, right? Where indirect realism claims an external world exists but we only perceive it indirectly, idealism has good grounds to object the external world. But there are problems with this – if there is no external world outside my mind, what keeps my reality in such constant pattern? And how does it account for gaps in our experience and for the continuity of reality? And if everything is just a mental idea, are all people as well? Am I only imagining them?
Of course, Berkeley had an answer to this too – God. God handles the regulating and the continuity. Without God though, this argument tends towards Skepticism, which we'll discuss next week.
Philosophy can be very confusing, I know. So, why is this useful for the GAMSAT? Well, the way I see it, epistemology questions how we know what we know. In GAMSAT essays, we make a lot of statements explaining what we know. So, I figure, if we learn together in this newsletter how philosophers have explored the potentials and limits of knowledge, existence, aesthetics, ethics, and logic, we might be able to question the stuff we write in GAMSAT essays to improve the accuracy of statements, others actions, and the quality of our ideas. And this, as we all know, ACER loves to see.
