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Former good articleEpistemology was one of the good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
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October 31, 2005Featured article candidateNot promoted
February 9, 2006Good article nomineeListed
February 25, 2006Good article reassessmentDelisted
Current status: Delisted good article

Link to German article on Epistemology[edit]

In the list of links to articles in other languages German seems to be missing even though there is an article called "Erkenntnistheorie" that links to this English article (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erkenntnistheorie). I could not figure out how to add German to the list myself or I am lacking the necessary admin privileges. Maybe anybody who has the necessary privileges to edit that list could help out? Greetings Sidonius (talk) 10:40, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Sidonius: As I understand it, the language links are taken from wikidata. The English article is linked to https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q9471. The German article is linked to https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q116930361. One way to fix this would be to link the German article to https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q9471. Before you do that, you should probably check to corresponding talk pages to see whether there is a reason for having the German article linked to a different item. Phlsph7 (talk) 12:49, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I will look into it. The English page that redirects to Epistemology is linked to the wikidata-page where the German article points to. Probably a left over from earlier times. Greetings Sidonius (talk) 08:09, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The new paragraph on Descartes[edit]

Some arguments used in the contemporary externalist/internalist debate in philosophy of mind refer to the relation between mind and body that Descartes introduced in the early modern period.[note 1] Descartes' answers to epistemological questions are not so easily related to contemporary justificatory views in naturalized epistemology and in the epistemological counterpart of this debate in particular,[note 2] but both debates have been related[1][2][3][4] and constitute together a fundamental part of contemporary epistemology and of key contemporary epistemological concepts such as virtue epistemology.[note 3] Descartes is well known for his dualism, but he is mostly known for his skeptical approach. He used this approach, not to deny that the objects of sensory experiences follow precise laws that can be known, but to gain certainty in the mind side, in the cogito, and he used this as a platform to get to other truths.[note 4] In that respect,  Descartes was influenced by Plato.[note 5] However, Descartes argued for a different kind of dualism. The new aspect of Cartesian dualism, with no counterpart in Plato's dualism, is the existence of a real physical world behind the sensory experiences with its own laws and a real mental substance behind our mental experiences and a causal relation between these two worlds. The part of this view, which says that "the external world is real but known to us only indirectly, is called indirect realism".[5] In that sense, Descartes was the father of modern realism and, for realists, of modern philosophy as well. Descartes's interactionism (interaction between the physical reality and the substance of the mind) was abandoned in the nineteenth century because of the growing popularity of philosophical mechanism. Realism itself was not abandoned, only the coexistence of an independent substance behind the mind was abandoned.[note 6]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ Richard Fumerton presents an argument based on Leibniz's law against externalism (Fumerton 2003) and then writes: "This kind of argument has a troubled history. A much criticized version of it seemed to constitute the basis of Descartes’ argument for dualism."
  2. ^ Hilary Kornblith argued in an entire paper (Kornblith 1985) that Descartes made assumptions that are not compatible with contemporary epistemology. For example, in section III of this paper, he wrote: "How ought we, subjectively speaking, arrive at our beliefs? What processes available to us, if any, seem conducive to truth? The role an answer to this question is likely to play in a naturalistic epistemology is radically different from the role Descartes believed it would play." Nathan Ballantyne suggests that Descartes did not even share our contemporary epistemological concerns. He wrote (Ballantyne 2019): "Descartes set for himself a far more ambitious goal than most epistemologists aim at today. He didn't seek to describe the nature of knowledge, justified belief, or any other epistemic state—he wanted to eliminate his mistakes and ignorance so he could act more effectively."
  3. ^ John Turri, Mark Alfano, and John Greco wrote (Turri, Alfano & Greco 2021): "Sosa applied his « virtue perspectivism » to adjudicate disputes in contemporary epistemology [...] between internalists and externalists."
  4. ^ In a chapter about Descartes's skepticism (Popkin 1979, chap. IX), Popkin wrote: "The method of doubt leads naturally to the cogito, and not supernaturally to truth as the 'nouveaux Pyrrhoniens' claimed. [...] However, the one truth produced by the method of doubt is not a premise from which all other truths follow. Rather it is a basis for rational discourse which makes it possible to recognize other truths." and in chap. IX, p.189: "Each stage on the way to absolute truth after the cogito strenghtened the escape from scepticism, and made more secure the stages already passed. The criterion led [...] to knowledge of the mechanistic universe."
  5. ^ Already with Plato, there existed a duality between the Forms and transitory experiences in space-time. For Plato (see SEP Episteme and Techne), the Forms informed a kind of techne. Dorothea Frede wrote (Frede 2020): "There is just too much evidence that Plato never discarded his theory of independent Forms but continued to regard them as the invariable principles of the nature of their changeable and variable representatives."  Maria Rosa Antognazzia says (Antognazza 2015) that, for Plato, one can only have knowledge (episteme) of Forms: Plato uses "doxa" when referring  to transitory particulars. See also Ayers & Antognazza 2019, Sec.1.4.
  6. ^ Howard Robinson wrote (Robinson 2023): "A crisis in the history of dualism came, however, with the growing popularity of mechanism in science in the nineteenth century. According to the mechanist, the world is, as it would now be expressed, ‘closed under physics’. This means that everything that happens follows from and is in accord with the laws of physics. There is, therefore, no scope for interference in the physical world by the mind in the way that interactionism seems to require. According to the mechanist, the conscious mind is an epiphenomenon (a notion given general currency by T. H. Huxley 1893): that is, it is a by-product of the physical system which has no influence back on it."

References[edit]

  1. ^ Chase, J. (2001). "Is Externalism about Content Inconsistent with Internalism about Justification?". Australasian Journal of Philosophy. 79 (2): 227–246. doi:10.1080/713659224. ISSN 0004-8402.
  2. ^ Brueckner, A. (2002). "The consistency of content-externalism and justification-internalism". Australasian Journal of Philosophy. 80 (4). Routledge: 512–515.
  3. ^ Carter, J. A.; Palermos, S. O. (2016). "Epistemic Internalism, Content Externalism and the Subjective/Objective Justification Distinction". American Philosophical Quarterly. 53 (3). North American Philosophical Publications, University of Illinois Press: 231–244. ISSN 0003-0481. Retrieved 14 November 2023.
  4. ^ Morvarid, M. (2021). "A new argument for the incompatibility of content externalism with justification internalism". Synthese. 198 (3). Springer Verlag: 2333–2353. doi:10.1007/s11229-019-02208-7.
  5. ^ Frankish, Keith (2020). "The Lure of the Cartesian Sideshow". The Philosophers' Magazine (88): 69–74. doi:10.5840/tpm20208814. ISSN 1354-814X.

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References specific to notes[edit]

[1][2][3] [4][5][6][7][8][9][10]

  1. ^ Popkin, Richard H. (1979). The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza (1 ed.). Berkeley Los Angeles London: University of California Press. doi:10.2307/jj.6142252.
  2. ^ Robinson, Howard (2023). "Dualism". In Zalta, E. N.; Nodelman, U. (eds.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2023 ed.). Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University.
  3. ^ Kornblith, H. (1985). "EVER SINCE DESCARTES". The Monist. 68 (2). Oxford University Press: 264–276. ISSN 0026-9662. Retrieved 14 November 2023.
  4. ^ Ballantyne, Nathan (2019-10-31). Knowing Our Limits (1 ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oso/9780190847289.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-084728-9.
  5. ^ Parry, Richard (2021). "Episteme and Techne". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2021 ed.).
  6. ^ Frede, Dorothea (2020-12-18). "Plato's Forms as Functions and Structures". History of Philosophy & Logical Analysis. 23 (2): 291–316. doi:10.30965/26664275-02302002. ISSN 2666-4283.
  7. ^ Antognazza, Maria Rosa (2015-01-02). "The Benefit to Philosophy of the Study of Its History". British Journal for the History of Philosophy. 23 (1): 161–184. doi:10.1080/09608788.2014.974020. ISSN 0960-8788.
  8. ^ Ayers, Michael; Antognazza, Maria Rosa (2019-04-18). "Knowledge and Belief from Plato to Locke". Knowing and Seeing. Oxford University Press. pp. 3–33. doi:10.1093/oso/9780198833567.003.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-883356-7. Retrieved 2023-11-15.
  9. ^ Turri, John; Alfano, Mark; Greco, John (2021). "Virtue Epistemology". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  10. ^ Fumerton, Richard (2003). "13: Introspection and Internalism". In Nuccetelli, Susana (ed.). New essays on semantic externalism and self-knowledge. MIT Press. pp. 257–276. ISBN 0262140837.

Dominic Mayers (talk) 18:36, 15 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relevancy[edit]

@Dominic Mayers: The time and effort you have invested in this section are inspiring and your recent adjustments solve the problem of the initial version. As the text in the paragraph suggests, the way the topic of the paragraph is related to epistemology seems to be rather complicated and indirect. Let's see if I can get it straight:

  1. Contemporary epistemology is part of epistemology
  2. The internal-external debate in epistemology belongs to contemporary epistemology
  3. The internal-external debate in epistemology is not the same as the internal-external debate in philosophy of mind but there are relations between them
  4. Various arguments are used in the internal-external debate in philosophy of mind
  5. Some of these argument refer to Descartes' dualism

It seems that this chain of connection is not made in a single source that is cited but several sources need to be combined to sketch out this path. Are you sure that this rather distant relation justifies adding a full paragraph to a wide overview article like this one (see WP:PROPORTION)? This issue could be avoided by instead adding this discussion to an article that has the internal-external debate in philosophy of mind as a main topic. Phlsph7 (talk) 08:56, 18 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Descartes is such an important figure that I do not see a need to prove the relevancy of a paragraph on Descartes in that section about how contemporary epistemology is historically informed. At the same time, claiming that Descartes had epistemological questions or finding contemporary epistemological concepts in Descartes' philosophy is something else. It is, in Barry Stroud's terminology, a "historically 'oriented' contemporary epistemology", a very different and controversial subject: many say that it is incorrect to use past philosophies in that manner. I am not saying that we should not present all pertinent view points on this, but it should be covered elsewhere, not in that section. This section is different. It must consider Descartes' philosophy as standardly seen by historians and present sources that discuss how this could inform, if at all, contemporary epistemology. I am not trying to infer that Descartes' dualism informed contemporary epistemology. On the contrary, contemporary epistemology is centred around justification and there are sources that say that Descartes was far away from contemporary justification concerns. So, the paragraph is just being plain direct about it. There is no OR at all, but I know that is not your concern. It is relevancy. In view of the importance of Descartes, the question whether it has informed contemporary epistemology is relevant. Let me add that I looked at Descartes' skepticism to see if it could have informed contemporary epistemology. Sources such as Popkin explain that Descartes used skepticism in a very special manner, not to deny knowledge of the laws of transitory external phenomena, but to gain certainty in the mind side. It is paradoxical to use skepticism to gain certainty, but that is what sources say. Descartes' argument is that God gave us a priori knowledge and skepticism is a systematic way to unveil this gift of God. No source explains how this part of Descartes' view might have informed contemporary epistemology or even philosophy of mind and I guess it did not.It is not that sources completely ignore this. For example, Robert Audi wrote "... Descartes’s well-known denial that God would allow such a world, but I cannot pursue it here."[1] On the other hand, we have sources that explain how Descartes' dualism informed the internalist/internalist debate. The more I think about it, the content of that paragraph is not that Descartes has informed contemporary epistemology, but that he has not, except indirectly through the externalist/internalist debate in philosophy of mind. This is clearly relevant in that section and interesting. Dominic Mayers (talk) 10:37, 18 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Phlsph7 again. And this whole new excursus here is nothing more than WP:OR in my view. Descartes was no skeptic at all. He recognized the challenge of Skepticism (which is an ever present challenge which Epistemology cannot avoid), and tried to provide paths for the achievement of knowledge and certainty, which are the goals of Epistemology. I went through the Britannica entry on Epistemology again, and it is overall much better that what we have here, in my view. There is no mention in it whatsoever of the internal-external debate in so-called "comtemporary epistemology" as far as I can see. Thank you, warshy (¥¥) 19:51, 18 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The part about Descartes' skepticism is from Popkin, which you suggested. Moreover, the paragraph, referring to Popkin, says what you say: Descartes found his base for certainty in the cogito. You further say that Descartes had the same goal as epistemology, but if by "epistemology" here you mean contemporary epistemology, this is controversial and requires attribution and it's not the subject of that section anyway. This section is not about whether or not contemporary epistemological questions or concepts can be located in past philosophies. Dominic Mayers (talk) 20:47, 18 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yep, it is a big mess, in my view, nothing else unfortunately. Simple misunderstandings. warshy (¥¥) 21:02, 18 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In any case, I am going to take into account what was said here. The paragraph seems to fight in a weak manner (by referring to philosophy of mind) to say that Descartes informed contemporary epistemology. I think that Phlsph7 correctly noticed that. There is something interesting to be said about the question how Descartes informed contemporary epistemology, but that one thing (the indirect connection through philosophy of mind) is only a part of it and not the first thing to be said: though I still think it is very interesting and relevant, it must be given its just place. Kornblith's view point that it did not inform naturalized epistemology is also interesting on its own. Note that he did not say that Descartes did not inform contemporary epistemology at large, because that would be a very big statement to make: there might be contemporary epistemologists that take a metaphysical view similar to Descartes' view based on apriori given to us by God (renamed as Nature). Dominic Mayers (talk) 22:40, 18 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Notes

  1. ^ Audi, Robert (2018-09-04). "Intellectual Virtue, Knowledge, and Justification". In Battaly, Heather (ed.). The Routledge Handbook of Virtue Epistemology (1 ed.). Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315712550. ISBN 978-1-315-71255-0.

We can proceed with the central concepts and see what context is needed[edit]

The context that was moved at the end might not be what people in the contemporary epistemological bubble expect, but Wikipedia is not the place to reproduce bubbles that occur in academic circles. I mean, one might feel that the section on central concepts is self sufficient and does not need context, but that is because it is presented as a bubble that stands on its own. It presents a view of analytic philosophy on knowledge, in particular, the justified true belief view, as if it was the only view. This is not what Wikipedia must do. The whole point of having a context is to change that. But, we can start with the central concepts and try to present them in a way that acknowledges the specific place contemporary epistemology has within its context. Will see how it goes. Dominic Mayers (talk) 12:38, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that articles should not ignore alternative views. But as I see it, our main job is usually to present the dominant views as discussed in the reliable academic sources. That doesn't mean that critical voices stating alternative views are ignored or silenced. But they don't receive the same attention in terms of coverage and placement. So whatever bubble the academic discourse may be in, it's not our responsibility to burst it or to protect our readers from the dominant views in it. The discussion of justified true belief and alternative characterizations is not at the beginning but found in a later section. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:16, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I find annoying that you suggest that I want to protect our readers from the dominant views in the subject—I am not even sure what you mean by this and that makes it even more annoying. The natural interpretation of "protect against a content" would be not to present that content, but that leads to a ridiculous concern: my entire goal is to present the dominant and contemporary view in epistemology within its context. Dominic Mayers (talk) 19:10, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry to be the cause of annoyance. If your bubble remarks were meant in different sense then I'm happy that we are on the same page. Phlsph7 (talk) 07:59, 29 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

image for lead[edit]

A B-class article that gets as much traffic as this one ought to have an image in the lead so that it is appealingly decorated in search results. I am adding Mind in Cave by David S. Soriano. If this is too flashy, a couple other options would be [1] or [2]. I don't have strong views on what the image should be, just that the article ought to have one.

Cheers, Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 18:48, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with your image is that it suggests that modern epistemology asks the same questions which Plato also asked, but many philosophers disagree with that. Not only the text of a Wikipedia article, but also its images cannot present a view point in Wikipedia's voice. Dominic Mayers (talk) 22:54, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My only request then would be to replace it with something you deem more neutral rather than simply removing it. Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 22:58, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(Although, honestly, if I wanted to, such a distinctly modernist take on an ancient allegory could easily be defended as making precisely your point: the same abiding interest in knowledge takes on different forms under different historical circumstances.) Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 23:03, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Changes to the article[edit]

I was thinking about implementing changes to this article with the hope of moving it in the direction of GA status. The article has 12 unreferenced paragraphs and the following maintenance tags: 1x More citations needed, 3x clarification needed, 1x page needed, 1x citation needed, 1x dead link.

The article has an odd structure. It has a section dedicated to schools of thought but many schools of thought have their own subsections elsewhere, like internalism, virtue epistemology, and foundationalism. Knowledge is defined first in the subsection "Knowledge" and later in the section "Defining knowledge". Redundancies are also a problem in the two separate subsections dedicated to the apriori-aposteriori distinction and the discussion of skepticism first in the subsection "Skepticism" and later the section "Epistemological concepts in past philosophies". The section "Schools of thought" has too many subsections, some of which are quite short. It would probably be better to only use separate subsections for the most important traditions and merge the remaining subsections. The definition of epistemology should be discussed somewhere in the body of the article so that the lead can summarize it rather than present information not found in the body of the article.

The article has some historical information but it lacks a structured discussion of the history of epistemology regarding the main positions in ancient, medieval, modern, and contemporary philosophy. The pieces that are already there could probably be included in a more organized presentation as parts. Various important topics are also missing from the rest of the article or are only alluded to, such as applied epistemology, evidentialism, fallibilism, contrastivism, epistemology of religion, and moral epistemology. It also wouldn't hurt to mention the problem of knowledge of other minds and the problem of induction somewhere. The article is already quite long so some of the current contents would need to be summarize to keep the length managable. There is a lengthy paragraph on words for knowledge in other languages that could probably be removed and getting rid of some redundancies would also help reduce length.

Various smaller adjustments are needed but they can be addressed later since the ones mentioned so far will already involve a lot of work to implement. I was hoping to get some feedback on these ideas and possibly other suggestions. I still have to do some research to work out the details. After that, I would start implementing them one at a time but it will probably take a while to address all the points. Phlsph7 (talk) 07:57, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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