Just where is the error? Or: epistemology as the history of error?
This essay is not concerned with what philosophers have said about truth and error, but rather with how they increasingly turned their gaze back on their philosophizing itself, having grown suspicious that they are conducting their studies in the wrong way. The advent of modern philosophy came on th...
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| Опубликовано в: : | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/napis, |
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| Главный автор: | |
| Формат: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Язык: | Anglais |
| Опубликовано: |
Napis
2022
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| Предметы: | |
| Online-ссылка: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Итог: | This essay is not concerned with what philosophers have said about truth and error, but rather with how they increasingly turned their gaze back on their philosophizing itself, having grown suspicious that they are conducting their studies in the wrong way. The advent of modern philosophy came on the heels of the erosion of the ‘classical’ world view passed down from the Greeks and the Medievals in thrall to transcendental Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. Philosophical scepticism reared its head as the new science prompted doubts about the reach of human knowledge – how do we determine whether our beliefs about the ‘world’ amount to objective knowledge at all? The search for what were later to be called ‘foundations of knowledge’ began, a search that gave rise to ‘epistemology’. Matters reached an early critical point in Kant’s Critiques. Subsequently, it became rare to come across the philosophers who would not adopt, to some degree, a self-reflexive stance with respect to their ‘methods’. The author of the article proposes a random sampling of some recent critical self-reflexion, the conclusion of which is that the epistemological turn in modern philosophy has been largely a mistake or at least is deficient in essential respects. Charles Taylor questions the ‘representationalist’ concept of epistemology stemming from Descartes; historians of science (Lorraine Daston, et al.) examine how the priority attributed to the image of the autonomous rational mind ran against the grain of concrete scientific practice. It is merely a step to consider a proposal for a ‘communitarian epistemology’ in which reliable testimony and trust displace the standard reliance on the perceptions and inferential powers of the individual knower. The author recalls Thomas Kuhn’s controversial thesis concerning ‘scientific revolutions’ which put in question both the belief of science’s ‘convergence’ on the truth and of the (im-)possibility of epistemological realism. Concerns about realism/ antirealism also raise questions about the status of the things believed to exist: are most of us in error in believing that the everyday ‘manifest image’ of the world is consistent with the ‘scientific image’ advanced presented by physics? The author concludes with an account of ‘error theory’ in today’s moral philosophy according to which the belief that value-statements have meaning insofar as they refer to objective values is false. But let the illusion be granted, for although it is an error to think such statements are true, they do enjoy a performative role within our communities. In conclusion: the history of epistemology and its applications has been concerned with rooting out what cannot be correct in approaches to questions about knowledge, truth, and error. It remains to wonder whether we do ‘know’ what the correct approach is. |
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