How to improve one's epistemology ?

[Reciprocality]

On 21.2.2022 at 9:04 PM, melontonin said:

@Reciprocality

This is a really interesting point. I've been thinking a lot about the beliefs and assumptions I operate on the basis of and how although they seem to be justified, I don't know they are in some direct and immediate sense. I've been struggling with that because I've been thinking that if I just operated on the things I know in some direct and immediate sense then I'd have nothing to go off and some of them are a lot more justified than others.

The concept "objects of reason" though is really useful because it means I'm not negating the utility of justified beliefs, I'm just not mixing them up with actual knowledge. I think I've been looking at it as though by distinguishing beliefs from the knowledge I'm going to abandon completely all the justified beliefs.

It's interesting how just learning a concept can completely change your view of a situation or what you think is possible. Thanks for sharing.

@melontonin Yes it is amazing how putting things in a new way can radically change the complete picture, schema, paradigm, whatever.

I were hoping someone would get that reason/knowing distinction, and you did.

Justified beliefs are a reference to our faculty of synthetic a priori intuitions both beyond pure logical certainty as in the analytical a priori but also beyond the synthetic a posteriori experience, this 'glue' in the middle is referenced further down in the same comment you responded to.

Imagination is the fuel by which this faculty is running, without it consciousness may be completely impossible. (and I would argue so)

You can never justify believes at a faster pace then you can imagine the completeness of the ego. Nothing is ever really justified (in the pure logic sense), though no less or more so then what is minimal for surviving by the second.

[Reciprocality]

@DocWatts

The bricks of which this wall beside me is composed, they are known by me as i experience them, yet this knowing of them which i reference now contains the inner and not the outer intuition of objects, that the outer experience of a brick can follow with an inner intuition of its meaning with certainty outside the realm of dispute is in general the reason rational men confuse the map for the territory, epistemic humility occurs first when neither is taken for the completeness of the other. Such that the knowledge of the outer intuition is radically removed from both thoughts and even more so language.

Even in this language above I speak of knowing as though it were different than the brick, it is not, for this reason Epistemology and Ontology must collapse into a non-duality which permeates all differences yet reference non trough reason, except only to the limits of reason from being itself.

[DocWatts]

@Reciprocality

I'll admit to having a bit of trouble following what you're trying to say.

(You might want to consider using shorter sentences and more direct language to convey your point. For what it's worth, you're in good company at least with the likes of someone like Hegel ).

If part of your point is that Reality doesn't consist of discreet objects with fixed boundaries, you'll find no argument from me. I'm well aware that Materialism is ontologically and epistemologically problematic.

When you mention epistemology and ontology collapsing in to non-dualism, is your emphasis more that both epistemology and ontology are limited ways of viewing Reality?

Or is the emphasis more on the fact that ontology and epistemology are grounded in the same way?

Because both seem like reasonable statements.

Or is your point more along the lines of : Reality is exactly how it appears? If this is your point, I might disagree, at least to an extent. 

'Hard' skepticism seems far less plausible than some version of a shared Reality, even if skepticism can't ultimately be disproven.

[Carl-Richard]

52 minutes ago, DocWatts said:

@Reciprocality

I'll admit to having a bit of trouble following what you're trying to say.

(You might want to consider using shorter sentences and more direct language to convey your point. For what it's worth, you're in good company at least with the likes of someone like Hegel ).

? Good that it's not only me.

[Reciprocality]

@Carl-Richard @DocWatts Haha well I be damned, I could do a different approach. It is a silly game in some sense though it has become natural for me to not write more than necessary, yet at the same time defend against the senseless interjections that are so common before they occur.

First of, there are no discrete objects, your consciousness is the minimal and only evidence required for the certainty thereof.

The bricks are clearly here beside me, yet it is not they that are bricks but instead me who make them such.

The 'them' that I call bricks are never also there when i close my eyes, yet something necessarily remains, for now I speak of the very predicate to which the bricks could be proven if I so chose to look at them.

I call it, as others have before me an outer and inner experience, (you would be forgiven for finding that absurd), there is an intuition which connects the content of both. (i cringe now for that is not always the case but this is the new approach)

 

This is not some ultra skepticism/empiricism (i do not reference my imagination as they do for the potential of being wrong, that is a Humean insanity), I am only skeptical of one thing so far as i know, and that is the idea of a separate existence beside my own as knowledge from reason. I am a closed system at perpetuity, yet new things unfolds all the time, so very strange don't you think? 

I probably should stop giving answers, it is likely a pathology of mine. You would like me more if I begun asking the questions instead.

[Reciprocality]

Lets do it this way, lets say that bricks are bricks.

Lets say that we have a concept of bricks because we have seen them again and again so to at last make a category out of them. (empiricism) And that the bricks are out there whether or not we see them. (rationalism)

First of, trough which means could we make a category of bricks? Well the category 'brick' would depend on the very same thing the independent brick did, as in first and foremost time and space. Time and space must therefore either be themselves something that we have understood from perpetual experience which begs the question of what they themselves depend on etc. or time and space must be themselves be inner as well as outer experience.

The Skeptic (because he do not dare to admit the system being closed despite a priori certainty) then sinks into an absolutist realm of imagination from where space and time as that upon which the bricks depend could come from anywhere and therefore claims uncertainty to why they can comprehend it. 

They would simply say "prove to me! prove to me!" a posteriori on matters that are purely a priori.

 

The rationalist is both worse and better than the empiricist, in the construction of the category of brick rationalism is a necassary evil so to say but the same is NOT the case for time, space and causality (and more). But the empiricist remain humble to the idea of an independent existence of time and space from himself.

[Reciprocality]

On belief (i will not continue writing with myself after this)

 

How can I believe in an independent world from myself? The very object of belief would be included in the self that I believe it to be independent from.

I want to say that i believe in a physical world, for my emotions want it that way. But the contents of this independent thing is completely empty! Would you look at that!

It is a nothing theory, a nothing philosophy. At best it must be god, as the will of all things. My logic can not accept a god that creates itself for all my experience says that existence is a necessity. So now I ask, why us? why me, why then this particular configuration? 

All such questions are included in the self that asks them, they can not be beheld to an answer beyond myself. I can not conceive going deeper than this except 1. enlightenment and 2. a teleology which speaks on the place we are headed towards and not merely the things that are.

Edited February 24, 2022 by Reciprocality