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Questions in Knowledge
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Hi my question is about what we know about things we know because they are what they are or we know because they are what we perceive them to be. ...
August 12, 2010
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There are many attributes that are commonly attributed to God, or at least some versions of the Christian God, one of which is omniscience. I have my doubts that omniscience ...
July 29, 2010
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Is testimony subsumed by empirical knowledge? In other words if I know some historical fact by the testimony of a text book do I have empirical knowledge or is testimony ...
July 29, 2010
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I have had this issue circulating in mind probably since I was in kindergarten. The basic question is this: how – being conscious of my own being, seeing through my ...
July 22, 2010
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I have a practical question that arises from my Solipsistic views. The more negatively I view my life as a whole, the more disturbed I am by the prospect of ...
July 22, 2010
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Hi! I just read the five-part series New York Times published about anosognosia (the condition of not knowing what we don't know), written by Errol Morris. Since finishing the series, ...
June 29, 2010
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Why does someone believe you when you say there are four billion stars, but check when you say the paint is wet?
June 27, 2010
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How do you know when you are in love?
May 26, 2010
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I recently had an argument in an epistemology class about the relationship between facts and human minds. I argued that a fact cannot exist until a human mind knows it. ...
May 27, 2010
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What does a person mean when somebody says they have faith in something but don't know that something to be true? Is this a psychological evasion?
May 13, 2010
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Wow, fantastic email -- getting at the heart of some major philosophical ideas and movements. Empiricists tend to stress the role of perception/experience in producing knowledge, while rationalists tend to promoe the role of reason, often arguing on the basis of such considerations as those you mention. A couple of quick thoughts about the specifics of your message. Your example of a problematic perception (spinning cube looks like sphere) doesn't quite/fully show that perception is problematic, partly because some other perception is relevant to getting at the truth, ie seeing the cube not spinning. The rationalist might say that reason is needed to process these otherwise conflicting perceptions, but even if this so, it does seem that perception is playing a key role in generating our knowledge of the world (that a cube exists, and that, when spun, it looks spherical) -- so what you've raised is a kind of problem for perception, but not one which obviously (to me anyway) undermines the importance of eprception in generation knowledge. Second, you mention the 'gap' between reality and minds -- and probably need to say more there. Even if everything we come to know about the empirical world were ultimately, in some way, derived from perception, it remains possible that perception is 'veridical' -- gives us true information about the world -- so the sheer fact that our access is mediated via perception does not entail that perception isn't veridical, or even direct .... This doesn't fully answer your excellent question -- how do we know we have knowledge not just perception? but aims to suggest that perception may well play important roles in generating knowledge despite the two kinds of worries you raise ....
hope that helps!
best,
Andrew