ON with sticking to the group list title. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/ The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Defined narrowly, epistemology is the study of knowledge and justified belief. As the study of knowledge, epistemology is concerned with the following questions: What are the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge? What are its sources? What is its structure, and what are its limits? As the study of justified belief, epistemology aims to answer questions such as: How we are to understand the concept of justification? What makes justified beliefs justified? Is justification internal or external to one's own mind? Understood more broadly, epistemology is about issues having to do with the creation and dissemination of knowledge in particular areas of inquiry. This article will provide a systematic overview of the problems that the questions above raise and focus in some depth on issues relating to the structure and the limits of knowledge and justification. .... Sources of Knowledge and Justification * 4.1 Perception * 4.2 Introspection * 4.3 Memory * 4.5 Reason * 4.6 Testimony COMMENT: ? Each and all of these can be collective and/or individual. Memory can be justified individually but as collectively the entirety of past knowledge can be included which is not suitable to a new paradigm. Old knowledge relies on only collective averages. ========= http://www.iep.utm.edu/e/epistemo.htm The internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Epistemology is the study of knowledge. Epistemologists concern themselves with a number of tasks, which we might sort into two categories. First, we must determine the nature of knowledge; that is, what does it mean to say that someone knows, or fails to know, something? This is a matter of understanding what knowledge is, and how to distinguish between cases in which someone knows something and cases in which someone does not know something. While there is some general agreement about some aspects of this issue, we shall see that this question is much more difficult than one might imagine. Second, we must determine the extent of human knowledge; that is, how much do we, or can we, know? How can we use our reason, our senses, the testimony of others, and other resources to acquire knowledge? Are there limits to what we can know? For instance, are some things unknowable? Is it possible that we do not know nearly as much as we think we do? Should we have a legitimate worry about skepticism, the view that we do not or cannot know anything at all? COMMENT: Here too the issues of a radical, new epistemology, error, lies, false knowledge, disinformation are not clearly addressed. This ignores progress and changes in knowledge.
http://www.newciv.org/ISSS_Primer/seminark.html This one seems to me to offer new ideas, based on Systems Theory, towards a mereological or whole'part together approach. HINTZ PAGELS: ""We live in the wake of a physics revolution comparable to the Copernican demolition of the anthropocentric world -- a revolution which began with the invention of the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics in the first decades of this century and which has left most educated people behind" . COMMENT: Pagels makes a valid point about leaving most educated people behind. Past based authority relies on introspection, especially in the case of those who become an authority. Recent findings about real effects by consciousness on material events, proof of the paranormal, Halton Arp's electric universe and the redefinition of reality as an entire whole renders the opposition of induction and dededuction in doubt. We cannot deduct unless from universals which, as shown by Plato, include all instances of a given pattern. But "All" includes its own contrary which forces us to accept enantiodromic principles in our mereology. Here Karl Popper offers the notion that falsification of a hypothesis governs. But there again the same isue of truth governs here too. We can have an erroneous falsification. In brief, short of valid introspection, we cannot be sure of anything, for which again its validity will be suspect to those who cannot validate such experience. This breaks the belief in a one and only correct answer to the riddle of the universe and forwards the notion that if error correction can be only known to those who made this error in the first place, can we speak of validity. By all this We cannot have any collectively valid beliefs. Reverting to ancient, mythological period and mystical beliefs, only when our experience is governed by a cosmic sentience - which applies to everything around - can we be sure of our knowledge. Although an experient of that can be sure, others lacking such experience cannot be sure..That means we have to enquire where Freud stopped, at his ID or instinct as a suitable source, our unconscious. Curiously it has been the very promoters or subscribers to the material hypothesis who, coming to the end of its logic, found it logically limited and incomplete and proposed universal sentience a governing rule of reality. "We must assume behind this force [in the atom] the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter." -- Max Planck, accepting the Nobel Prize for Physics, 1918. ""Dr. Werner Heisenberg, said, “The opinion that living processes can be explained only by the methods of physics and chemistry and that there are no biological forces is not in congruence with quantum theory.” Q Physics also has not arrived at a one and only unarguable answer so we are, for the moment, left with bioresonance as a venue of enquiry. It follows then that in so far as sentience is an integral part or aspect of reality, already proven by Alan Aspect in 1982 and others that the very thing medieval science rejected, magic, has come into the foreground as feasible. Isaac Asimov parodied this nicely when saying that any more advanced science looks like magic, to the less advanced. More humbly put if someone does not understand something it may look like magic and other things as well. Ironically then, the entire facade of knowledge erected over the last few centuries, has come apart. We are back at where antiquity left off, with the exception of recent exploration into alternative possibilities. We are facing an overhaul as radical or more as that of Galileo. Although still widely scattered, when gathered up the prospects are quite good. With 6,470,000 Websites a small but significant number exists. It's early days yet for theories. What I find telling is the many 'paradigm' changes in business advertising tactics as the appeal to hitherto 'common' beliefs breaks down. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Epistemology" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/epistemology?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
