EPISTEMOLOGY

1. EPISTEMOLOGY

2. Fundamental Questions • Cognitive states • What are our cognitive states? (Knowledge, belief, perceptual state etc.) • How are they related? • What are their objects? • When are they acceptable? • Cognitive methods • What are our cognitive methods? (Inference, perception, etc.) • Are they domain specific or universal? • When are they acceptable? Epistemology is essentially normative: it is to deliver standards of evaluation for our cognitive states and methods. • Where are the limits of our knowledge? What can be known and what cannot?

3. Epistemology in a Narrower Sense • What is knowledge (the most precious cognitive state)? • Is knowledge possible at all? • What are the sources of knowledge and how can they produce knowledge? (What justifies our beliefs?) • (Epistemology = theory of knowledge)

4. Philosophy and Psychology About Knowledge I. • Psychology: • Mainly descriptive: How do we see, come to believe etc.? • Impartial: true and false beliefs included • Knowledge, truth and falsity etc. are taken for granted • Uses the methods of science, and takes it for granted • Philosophy • Normative: What is knowledge? What are the criteria for correctness, rationality etc.? • Interested in truth, veracity etc. • Uses the methods of philosophy • Reflexive: the philosopher’s and the scientist’s knowledge are also part of the problem

5. Philosophy and Psychology About Knowledge II. • The relationship between epistemology and cognitive psychology: • Epistemology is prior to and should serve as a foundation for cog.psy • Epistemology and cog.psy complement each other talking about different aspects of knowledge (conceptual and empirical) using different methods etc. • Epistemology is just part of cog.psy • They are independent talking about different things: the concept of „knowledge” and the way we acquire beliefs, respectively. What knowledge should be and we acquire whatever we call knowledge.

6. Examples: Two Philosophical Projects • Two important philosophical projects stimulated and contributed to epistemological enquiry particularly: • Definition of knowledge • Skepticism • Good points to start our philosophical journey.

7. Knowledge and Belief • Knowledge: propositional knowledge (knowing-that), non-propositional knowledge (knowing-how) (E.g. I can swim, I know how to drive a car with manual transmission) • Knowledge is a special kind of belief-state (Perhaps special kinds of other cognitive states – e.g. special perceptual states -- also constitute knowledge without beliefs: non-propositional knowledge) • Knowledge is justified true belief, that is, s knows that p if, and only if • s believes that p • s is justified in believing that p • p is true • Justification supplies reasons for the belief thatp. (It is a matter of degree.) • This definition captures pretty much of what we require of knowledge.

8. Gettier’s Problem • Gettier’s counter-examples: • Smith and Jones have applied for the same job. Smith is justified in believing that (a) Jones will get the job, and that (b) Jones has ten coins in his pocket. On the basis of (a) and (b) Smith infers and, thus, is justified in believing, that (c) the person who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket. As it turns out, Smith himself will get the job, and he also happens to have ten coins in his pocket. So, although Smith is justified in believing the true proposition (c), Smith does not know (c). • It follows that something more is needed for knowledge than the 3 conditionsof the definition above.

9. Questions • Do you need a definition of knowledge in cognitive psychology? Do you need to know what knowledge is to do proper research in cog.psy.? • What difference could different notions of knowledge make in cog.psy. research?What consequences could different concepts of knowledge have in cog.psy.? • Could you design an experimental situation in which it does make a difference what notion of knowledge is applied?

10. The sceptical arguments • Knowledge is impossible: one does not know that p because one cannot know . • Justification is impossible because any belief / no belief can be justified.

11. Neuroscientists and Other Demons • Brain in a vat (BV) and • Descrates’ evil demon

13. Questions • Is the question whether we are brains in a vat irrelevant to • our everyday knowledge? • our cog.psy. research? That is, should we worry about the BV problem?

14. The Skeptical Argument Ex hypothesis: You don’t know that you are not a BV. (Becauseordinary and BV experiences are identicaldue to the setup.) P1 You know that you are reading this. P2 You know that (if you are reading this then you are not a BV.) C1= P3 Therefore if (you know that you are reading this) then (you know also that you are not a BV). P4 You do not know that you are not a BV. C2 Therefore you do not know that you are reading this. C3 Therefore you do not know anything about the world. • You can replace „know” with „are justified”, and you will get the skeptical conclusion about justification.

15. The Use of the Skeptical Argument • The argument does not show that • we are BV. • we know nothing. • we must be skeptic . • our beliefs are false etc. • It shows that the premises are inconsistent with that we do know quite a few things (the denial of C3). So some of the premises must be false (or indeed we do not know anythingabout the world). • By analyzing the inconsistency, we can learn a lotabout knowledge.