Which means, I think, that on his account, that no knowledge can be arrived at 
empirically. 

 

n

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

 <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected]

 <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> 
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Tuesday, March 3, 2020 8:27 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Acid epistemology - restarting a previous conversation

 

>From the web:

 

 Aristotle agrees with Plato that knowledge is of what is true and that this 
truth must be justified in a way which shows that it must be true, it is 
necessarily true.

---
Frank C. Wimberly
505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

 

On Tue, Mar 3, 2020, 8:23 PM Frank Wimberly <[email protected] 
<mailto:[email protected]> > wrote:

When I was a sophomore at Berkeley majoring in philosophy I was taking history 
of philosophy.  My TA was a PhD student who had graduated from Harvard.  He 
asked the section, "What does it mean to say that you know something?"  I 
raised my hand and said that it means that you believe it and it's true.  He 
said, "Ah, an Aristotelian!"  

---
Frank C. Wimberly
505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

 

On Tue, Mar 3, 2020, 9:28 AM <[email protected] 
<mailto:[email protected]> > wrote:

Two things, Dave,

Peirce had actually 4 ways of knowing.  Stubbornness, Authority, 
Reasonableness, Experience, which he tries to treat with equal respect, but his 
heart is obviously with the last.  (The Fixation of Belief).  You make me 
wonder about the relation tween Peirce and that Vedic text.  


But this begs the most fundamental question raised by your post.  What is 
knowledge, other than belief, and what is belief other than that upon which we 
are prepared to act?  There is one member of our group who, very much in the 
spirit of William James's altered states, wants to work on aura's  He has a 
tentative belief in aura's.  When through experiment and analysis he renders 
that belief "firm", does he then have knowledge.  Already he believes in the 
possibility of aura's.  We know that this is the case because of the effort he 
is willing to expend in their demonstration.  Does he have knowledge of the 
existence of auras?  Does he already know that aura's exist?

I think problems with the very idea of knowledge lie at the core of this 
discussion, and we need some sort of working understanding of what we mean by 
it, if we are to precede. 

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> 
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/



-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > On 
Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Tuesday, March 3, 2020 1:48 AM
To: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> 
Subject: [FRIAM] Acid epistemology - restarting a previous conversation

Epistemology, loosely speaking, is the “theory of knowing.” What can we know; 
how do we know we know it; the difference between knowing that, knowing how, 
and knowing about; and, issues of the “truth” of what we know and/or 
justifications for thinking we know anything?

An associated issue concerns how we come to acquire knowledge. Two means of 
acquisition are commonly proposed: a priori (independent of experience) and a 
posteriori (by experience).

A Vedic text, Tattirtiya Aranyaka (900-600 BCE), lists four sources of 
knowledge, roughly translated as: tradition/scripture, perception, authority, 
and reasoning/inference. Of these the fourth and second seem to map onto a 
priori and a posteriori.

Scholasticism — exemplars include Albertus Magnus, Duns Scotus, and Thomas 
Aquinas — was concerned with integrating three of the Vedic sources of 
knowledge: tradition/scripture (Christian theology), authority (Aristotle and 
Plato), and reasoning/inference.

Modern epistemology (and Peirce) seems to be concerned with two of the sources: 
tradition/scripture (peer reviewed science journals) and reasoning/inference.

Claims to "know" something, in a naive sense of know, like "I know that I am," 
"I know that I am in love," "I had the most interesting experience at FriAM 
just now," mystical visions, kinesthetic “muscle memory,” chi imbalance, and, 
of course, hallucinogen induced altered states of consciousness.

Is it possible to construct a theory of knowledge that could extend to, 
incorporate, a wider range of experience and especially mystical and 
psychedelic experience? If it was possible, would it be of value? If possible 
and of value, what parameters could be set to limn the resulting philosophy?

davew

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