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Epistemology Quotes

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Epistemology Quotes

“Each species has its own sensory world, which are often very different from each other species sensory world. There is some overlap between these worlds but there are many aspects of one species world which will be completely unknown to members of other species. The human view of the world is only one view and is no more valid than that of any other species.”

RealityEpistemologyOntologySense PerceptionObserver Dependent UniversePhilosophy Of PerceptionPerceptual RelativityAnimal SensesHuman Sensory WorldSensory Worlds
Book:Sense Perception and Reality: A Theory of Perceptual Relativity, Quantum Mechanics and the Observer Dependent Universe
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“This bowl of bone covered with its lid and its movable hide, this was where it all came from: the other people, the world, the war, the dreams, the words, the deeds that seemed to happen so automatically as if one’s deeds were the world’s thoughts. You would need a second head to understand what the first head was, but I only had one, here in my hands, holding it in a way people never hold anything else. Yet, if not for the claims of scholars, you wouldn’t know your head was any different from your hand or foot.”

ThinkingBrainConsciousnessEpistemologyWorld War TwoPhenomenologyDutch Literature
Book:Het behouden huis
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“Some animals can see only in black and white, so everything is a shade of grey, others can see in various colors. If you cease to look at something and it continues to exist, what color does it have? The color one species sees it in, or the color another species sees it in? Clearly it can't be grey and have another color at the same time. The same applies to other sense perceptions, a vibration in the air sounds different to different species, the same odour can smell different to different species. Remove the observer, what sound or smell continues to exist. The way one observer hears the sound or the way the other observer hears it? Does an odour continue to exist the way one observer smells it or the way another smells it? Something cannot be of different colors, smells or sounds at the same time. Clearly the sense perceptions a particular observer has disappear when the observer ceases to be making an observation.”

RealityExistenceEpistemologyOntologySense PerceptionTheory Of KnowledgeObserver Dependent UniversePhilosophy Of PerceptionPerceptual RelativitySensory Worlds
Book:Sense Perception and Reality: A Theory of Perceptual Relativity, Quantum Mechanics and the Observer Dependent Universe
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“[W]here the rationalist sees contact with theoretical considerations as a source of contamination, we should instead view such influence as potentially beneficial. Theory-mediated judgment is not automatically “contaminated”; under the right circumstances, and under the guidance of appropriate theory, it is instead a source of correction and illumination. We should not search for a realm of reason somehow insulated from and uninformed by our best available theories. Instead we should welcome the prospect of a conception of rational inference which is itself fully vetted by all available evidence.”

EpistemologyRationalismEmpiricismA Priori Judgments
Author:Hilary Kornblith
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“Thought and science are therefore raising problems which their terms of study can never answer, many of which are doubtless problems only for thought. The trisection of an angle is similarly an insoluble problem only for compass and straight-edge construction, and Achilles cannot overtake the tortoise so long as their progress is considered piecemeal, endlessly having the distance between them. However, as it is not Achilles but the method of measurement which fails to catch up with the tortoise, so it is not man but his method of thought which fails to find fulfillment in experience.”

ScienceMeasurementEpistemology
Book:Nature, Man and Woman
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“Scientists study only those aspects of the universe that it is within their gift to study: what is observable; what is measurable and amenable to statistical analysis; and, indeed, what they can afford to study within the means and time available. Science thus emerges as a giant tautology, a "closed system". It can present us with robust answers only because its practitioners take very great care to tailor the questions.”

ScienceEpistemology
Author:Colin Tudge
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“نظرا لضخامة كمية المعرفة التي تم إنتاجها في العصر الحديث فقد تسرب لدى الإنسان قناعة أن أي سؤال يدور بخاطره سيجد حتما شخصا ما يعرف الإجابة عنه، ولذا لم يعد هناك حاجة للإيمان بالله لتفسير الكون؛ وهذا أبعد ما يكون عن الصواب وأكثر الناس معرفة بذلك هم علماء الطبيعة أنفسهم”

ScienceEpistemologyPhilosophy Of Scienceفلسفة العلممعرفةنظرية المعرفة
Book:معادلة الإيمان
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“There are no doubt brain-states associated with every experience, transcendent or mundane; why, then, should the trivial truth that mystical or contemplative insight is correlated with a distinctive set of neural activities be taken as evidence that such insight is merely a psychological state, without a real object? By that logic, the reality that there’s a brain-state associated with hearing a performance of Bach means that I can’t believe in the objective reality of that music. Whatever the case may be, I know this: to imagine that a “science of mind”—a science of irreducible first-person experience—is possible in terms purely of the third-person facts of neurophysiology, without reference to what mental interiority discloses to itself about itself, is worse than folly. The only “science of mind” that might actually reveal the intrinsic nature of the mental would be something like the contemplative disciplines proper to the great mystical traditions of the world’s religions. There can be no real science of mind that’s not, to put it bluntly, a spiritual science.”

SciencePsychologyEpistemologyPhylosophy
Book:All Things Are Full of Gods: The Mysteries of Mind and Life
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“All science is an attempt to cover with explanatory devices-and thereby to obscure-the vast darkness of the subject. It is a game in which the scientist uses his explanatory principles according to certain rules to see if these principles can be stretched to cover the vast darkness. But the rules of the stretching are rigorous, and the purpose of the whole operation is really to discover what parts of the darkness still remain, uncovered by explanation. But this game has also a deeper, more philosophic purpose: to learn something about the very nature of explanation, to make clear some part of that most obscure matter-the process of knowing. (Epilogue, 1958)”

ScienceKnowledgeAnthropologyEpistemology
Book:Naven, Second Edition
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“The reality is; there is something which exist but what that something is; remains a question. Either because we are not capable to reveal it yet or because with time and movement it changes itself and has no truth in it. But what’s the reason for its existence without having or revealing any truth, that’s the evidence we need to find.”

PhilosophyRealityTruthChangeExistenceEpistemology
Book:EVIDENCE To Know and Have It All?
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“If we care about knowledge, freedom, and peace, then we need to stake a strong claim: anyone can believe anything, but liberal science—open-ended, depersonalized checking by an error-seeking social network—is the only legitimate validator of knowledge, at least in the reality-based community. Other communities, of course, can do all kinds of other things. But they cannot make social decisions about objective reality. That is a very bold, very broad, very tough claim, and it goes down very badly with lots of people and communities who feel ignored or oppressed by the Constitution of Knowledge: creationists, Christian Scientists, homeopaths, astrologists, flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers, birthers, 9/11 truthers, postmodern professors, political partisans, QAnon followers, and adherents of any number of other belief systems and religions.”

RealityTruthBeliefKnowledgeIdeologyLiberalismRationalityObjectivityEpistemologyLiberal Science
Book:The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth
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“Whatever is known has always seemed systematic, proven, applicable, and evident to the knower. Every alien system of knowledge has likewise seemed contradictory, unproven, inapplicable, fanciful, or mystical. May not the time have come to assume a less egocentric, more general point of view and to speak of comparative epistemology?”

RealityScienceFactEpistemology
Book:Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact
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“I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built upon the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think. Whereas if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better , if less "showily." Let him come and go freely, let him touch real things and combine his impressions for himself... Teaching fills the mind with artificial associations that must be got rid of before the child can develop independent ideas out of actual experiences.”

IfsThinkingMindKindChildrenIdeasRealSeemsLeftTeachingSpecialTaughtBuiltIndependentImpressionIdiotSuspectsAssociationArtificialComes And GoesReal ThingsEducation SystemSchooledEpistemologyHomeschoolingUnschoolingPedagogySupposition
Author:Anne Sullivan Macy
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“Most artists, or at least most of the ones I know, deny having a philosophical outlook that they try to translate into their works. Some had thought of the work of Cezanne and others as being a 'painted epistemology.' But Cezanne himself denied this and Daniel-Henri Kahnwiler, the art critic and art dealer, insisted that none of the many painters he had known had a philosophical culture.”

KnowsTryingArtPhilosophyArtistCultureKnownPhilosophicalCriticsDenyPainterDeniedTranslateOutlookDealerEpistemologyCezanneArt Critic
Author:Semir Zeki
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“Because those who hold conspiracy theories typically suffer from a crippled epistemology, in accordance with which it is rational to hold such theories, the best response consists in cognitive infiltration of extremist groups. Various policy dilemmas, such as the question whether it is better for government to rebut conspiracy theories or to ignore them, are explored in this light.”

LightGovernmentSufferingGroupsPolicyTheoryResponseVariousRationalConspiracyDilemmaExtremistCognitiveEpistemologyConspiracy TheoryCrippledInfiltrationExtremist Groups
Author:Cass Sunstein
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“The authority of science promotes and encourages the activity of observing, comparing, measuring and ordering the physical characteristics of human bodies. Cartesian epistemology and classical ideals produced forms of rationality, scientificity and objectivity that, though efficacious in the quest for truth and knowledge, prohibited the intelligibility and legitimacy of black equality. In fact, to "think" such an idea was to be deemed irrational, barbaric or mad.”

ThinkingHumansIdeasFactsBodyFormBlackActivityAuthorityIdealsMadCompareCharacteristicsQuestsIrrationalRationalityHuman BodyObservingObjectivityMeasuringLegitimacyEpistemologyBarbaricTruth And Knowledge
Author:Cornel West
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“One might get the impression that I recommend a new methodology which replaces induction by counterinduction and uses a multiplicity of theories, metaphysical views, fairy tales, instead of the customary pair theory/observation. This impression would certainly be mistaken. My intention is not to replace one set of general rules by another such set: my intention is rather to convince the reader that all methodologies, even the most obvious ones, have their limits.”

UseMightScienceViewsTheoryReaderLimitsIntentionObviousImpressionTalesObservationFairyConvincePairsFairy TaleMistakenMetaphysicalMultiplicityScientific MethodEpistemologyMethodology
Book:Against Method
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“There is not a single rule, however plausible, and however firmly grounded in epistemology, that is not violated at some time or other. It becomes evident that such violations are not accidental events, they are not results of insufficient knowledge or of inattention which might have been avoided. On the contrary, we see that they are necessary for progress.”

Has BeensMightScienceResultsProgressEventsContraryEvidentGroundedMight Have BeenAvoidedViolationScientific MethodPlausibleInsufficientEpistemologyInattention
Book:Against Method
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“The world of physics is essentially the real world construed by mathematical abstractions, and the world of sense is the real world construed by the abstractions which the sense-organs immediately furnish. To suppose that the "material mode" is a primitive and groping attempt at physical conception is a fatal error in epistemology.”

WorldRealMaterialsErrorsPhysicsMathematicalConceptionReal WorldOrgansPrimitiveAbstractionEpistemology
Author:Susanne Katherina Langer
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“Internalist approaches to epistemology, I believe, have a great deal of intuitive appeal. Internalists believe that the features in virtue of which a belief is justified must somehow be internal to the agent. On some views, this amounts to the claim that these features must be accessible to introspection and armchair reflection. On others, it amounts only to the claim that they must be mental features.”

BelieveBeliefI BelieveViewsDealsVirtueAmountApproachReflectionClaimsAgentsAppealsFeaturesInternalsIntrospectionJustifiedIntuitiveEpistemologyArmchairs
Author:Hilary Kornblith
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“I do think that an understanding of contemporary work in the cognitive sciences has a profound effect on how one views the workings of the mind. It doesn't work the way we pretheoretically think it does. Such an understanding, of course, should have a large effect on one's views in philosophy of mind, but also in epistemology.”

ThinkingWayShouldMindDoePhilosophyCoursesUnderstandingViewsEffectsShould HaveProfoundContemporaryCognitiveEpistemologyCognitive Science
Author:Hilary Kornblith
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“The great philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries did not think that epistemological questions floated free of questions about how the mind works. Those philosophers took a stand on all sorts of questions which nowadays we would classify as questions of psychology, and their views about psychological questions shaped their views about epistemology, as well they should have.”

ThinkingShouldMindWellsViewsPsychologyCenturyShould HavePhilosopherPsychologicalEpistemology18th CenturyGreat Philosophers
Author:Hilary Kornblith
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“One of the goals of scientific theorising is to develop concepts which are adequate to the phenomena under study. In my view, things should work the same way in epistemology. We want to know what knowledge actually amounts to, not what our folk concept of knowledge is, since, just as with our pretheoretical concept of acidity, it might contain all sorts of misunderstandings and leave out all manner of important things.”

KnowsWayWantShouldImportantMightGoalViewsStudyAmountConceptsImportant ThingsFolksMisunderstandingAdequateEpistemology
Author:Hilary Kornblith
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“Bealer argues that the kind of naturalistic view which Quine holds will rob him of the ability to make the normative claims which (many) naturalists wish to make in epistemology. I don't think this is right about Quine, but I'm certain it's not right about my own view. To the extent that I can show that talk of knowledge is firmly rooted within empirical theories where it plays an important explanatory role, I thereby demonstrate its naturalistic credentials.”

ThinkingKindI CanImportantPlayShowsCertainWishMy OwnAbilityViewsRolesTheoryClaimsArguingRootedEpistemologyNaturalistCredentials
Author:Hilary Kornblith
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