Epistimology 101 and a request
So there are three major positions as to how human beings learn and know things. They are roughly as follows:
Empricisim - probably the most popular, this is the belief that you learn things through your senses. i.e. you see lots of trees in your life and learn from those examples what a tree is.
Rationalism - Knowledge comes from some place or process outside of your experience. They call this a priori. Many diferent ideas of where it comes from have been proposed but the imoportant thing is that at least some knowledge is innate from birth and that you know something you have never experienced.
Constructivism - This is the idea that knowledge doesn't exist outside of what we as a group create. The truth is fluid and changes as people's perceptions change. It's really hard for me to come up with a non biased or linguistical sounding argument for this view. It kind of sounds like anarchy or moral relatavisim, but it's really not at all. Suffice it to say that most constructivists believe that there is no such thing as moral right or wrong except what society as a whole agrees on. Really hardcore constructivists also think that 600 years ago when almost everyone thought the world was flat, it really was flat.
There are *valid arguments* for and against all of these. If you're reading this, I'm really interested to know where you stand on the issue. How do people learn things? is it all learned through your senses or is there some a priori knowledge that you're just born with. It should be noted that none of these three points of view are mutually exclusive. You could easily mix and match with differt kinds of knowldege. for example you could be a constructivist when it comes to morality and an empricist when it comes to trees. Mostly I want to know if people have ever thought about this stuff and what they think of it. Please leave a comment and please cross polinate and point other people here. The more responses I get for this little survey the better. If anyone doesn't understand anything, has questions or wants more details, I'll try and answer them.
Thanks
*Please note I use "Valid Argument" in a logical sense here. As in the form of the argument is valid, not that the conclusion is true. The form of an argument is expressed in Ps and Qs (If P then Q, P Therefore Q). If the form is valid, it means that if all the premises are true the conclusion must be true as well. That is not to say that all of the premises are in fact true. For Example.
This argument has a valid form (If A then B, A Therefore B)
Argument
P1. If it is raining then there is at least one cloud in the sky.
P2. It is raining.
C1: There is at least one cloud in the sky.
This argument is always valid, however the conclusion isn't always true. assuming everyone will give me P1 as always being true, look out your window and see if P2 is true. if it is then C1 must be true, if P2 isn't true then C1 could be true or not. It is not autamatically false if p2 is false, we just can't rely on this argument for the answer as to if there are any clouds in the sky.
Empricisim - probably the most popular, this is the belief that you learn things through your senses. i.e. you see lots of trees in your life and learn from those examples what a tree is.
Rationalism - Knowledge comes from some place or process outside of your experience. They call this a priori. Many diferent ideas of where it comes from have been proposed but the imoportant thing is that at least some knowledge is innate from birth and that you know something you have never experienced.
Constructivism - This is the idea that knowledge doesn't exist outside of what we as a group create. The truth is fluid and changes as people's perceptions change. It's really hard for me to come up with a non biased or linguistical sounding argument for this view. It kind of sounds like anarchy or moral relatavisim, but it's really not at all. Suffice it to say that most constructivists believe that there is no such thing as moral right or wrong except what society as a whole agrees on. Really hardcore constructivists also think that 600 years ago when almost everyone thought the world was flat, it really was flat.
There are *valid arguments* for and against all of these. If you're reading this, I'm really interested to know where you stand on the issue. How do people learn things? is it all learned through your senses or is there some a priori knowledge that you're just born with. It should be noted that none of these three points of view are mutually exclusive. You could easily mix and match with differt kinds of knowldege. for example you could be a constructivist when it comes to morality and an empricist when it comes to trees. Mostly I want to know if people have ever thought about this stuff and what they think of it. Please leave a comment and please cross polinate and point other people here. The more responses I get for this little survey the better. If anyone doesn't understand anything, has questions or wants more details, I'll try and answer them.
Thanks
*Please note I use "Valid Argument" in a logical sense here. As in the form of the argument is valid, not that the conclusion is true. The form of an argument is expressed in Ps and Qs (If P then Q, P Therefore Q). If the form is valid, it means that if all the premises are true the conclusion must be true as well. That is not to say that all of the premises are in fact true. For Example.
This argument has a valid form (If A then B, A Therefore B)
Argument
P1. If it is raining then there is at least one cloud in the sky.
P2. It is raining.
C1: There is at least one cloud in the sky.
This argument is always valid, however the conclusion isn't always true. assuming everyone will give me P1 as always being true, look out your window and see if P2 is true. if it is then C1 must be true, if P2 isn't true then C1 could be true or not. It is not autamatically false if p2 is false, we just can't rely on this argument for the answer as to if there are any clouds in the sky.