Epistemology - Phenomenalism, Knowledge, Beliefs

epistemology

Table of Contents

Introduction
The nature of epistemology
- Epistemology as a discipline
- Two epistemological problems
  - Knowledge of the external world
  - The other-minds problem
Issues in epistemology
- The nature of knowledge
- Five distinctions
  - Mental and nonmental conceptions of knowledge
  - Occasional and dispositional knowledge
  - A priori and a posteriori knowledge
    - Necessary and contingent propositions
    - Analytic and synthetic propositions
    - Tautological and significant propositions
    - Logical and factual propositions
    - Necessary a posteriori propositions
  - Description and justification
  - Knowledge and certainty
- The origins of knowledge
  - Innate and acquired knowledge
  - Rationalism and empiricism
- Skepticism
The history of epistemology
- Ancient philosophy
  - The pre-Socratics
  - Plato
  - Aristotle
  - Ancient Skepticism
  - St. Augustine
- Medieval philosophy
  - St. Anselm of Canterbury
  - St. Thomas Aquinas
  - John Duns Scotus
  - William of Ockham
  - Scientific theology to secular science
- Modern philosophy
  - Faith and reason
  - Epistemology and modern science
  - René Descartes
  - John Locke
  - George Berkeley
  - David Hume
    - Kinds of perception
    - Relations of ideas and matters of fact
    - Cause and effect
    - Substance
  - Immanuel Kant
  - G.W.F. Hegel
- Contemporary philosophy
  - Continental epistemology
  - Analytic epistemology
    - Commonsense philosophy, logical positivism, and naturalized epistemology
    - Perception and knowledge
    - Realism
    - Phenomenalism
    - Later analytic epistemology

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In light of the difficulties faced by realist theories of perception, some philosophers, so-called phenomenalists, proposed a completely different way of analyzing the relationship between perception and knowledge. In particular, they rejected the distinction between independently existing physical objects and mind-dependent sense-data. They claimed that either the very notion of independent existence is nonsense—because human beings have no evidence for it—or what is meant by “independent existence” must be understood in such a way as not to go beyond the sort of perceptual evidence human beings do or could have for the existence of such things. In effect, phenomenalists challenged ...(100 of 23160 words)

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