Two archetypes pervade Western thinking on the subject of how reality is best apprehended, archetypes that have their ultimate ori...gin in Plato and Aristotle. For Plato sense data were at best a distraction from knowledge, which was the province of unaided reason. For Aristotle, knowledge consisted in generalizations, but these were derived in the first instance from information gathered from the outside world. These two models of human thinking, termed rationalism and empiricism, respectively, formed the major intellectual legacy of the West down to Descartes and Bacon, who represented, in the seventeenth century, the twin poles of epistemology.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is not a single rule, however plausible, and however firmly grounded in epistemology, that is not violated at some time or o...ther. 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.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account f...or its origin. At last we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint. And lo! It is our own.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Avrum was there in the audience, I believe, in Berkeley on the afternoon in 1941 when, in conformity with the law subsequently enu...nciated by Murphy, what could go wrong, epistemologically, did. G.E. Moore was delivering the Howison Lecture in Wheeler Auditorium, which had a handsome coffered ceiling inset with glass panels. Giving a local angle to his defence of common sense, Moore declared that among the things he knew there and then was that light from the sun was streaming through the roof. Most in the audience were aware, however, that the glass panels were diffusers for electrical illumination; the roof of the building was solid and opaque. Someone had the temerity to point this out to Moore in the question period. He responded, "Oh dear me!" and went on to the next question.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Thales claimed that everything was water. He also put wine into water to sterilize it. Did he really believe he was putting water ...into water to sterilize it? Parmenides, like most Greeks, knew that wine was not water. But while lifting a glass of wine to his lips, he denied that motion was possible. Did he really believe that the glass was not moving when he lifted it?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Esse est percipi, to be is to be perceived, said good old Berkeley; but, according to most philosophers, he was wrong. Yet, obviou...sly, there are things for which the adage holds. Perception, trivially, to begin with. If elements of conscious awareness--pains, tickles, feelings of heat and cold, sensory qualia of colors, sounds, and the like--have any existence, it must consist in their being perceived by a subject.... This shows, of course, that such experiences are epiphenomenal, at least with respect to the physical world.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »