Key Concepts in the Social Sciences and Humanities

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Key Concepts in the Social Sciences and Humanities

• Theories of Knowledge Part 2 Empiricism
  Relativism

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Outline

• Scepticism Revisited
• Perception
• C.S.I.
• Empiricism
• Melinda, Melinda
• Relativism
• Problems with Relativism
• Why all this is good for you

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Scepticism Revisited

• Do you know, with absolute certainty, whether the
  following statements are true?
• S1. Houston is the largest city in the USA.
• S2. Hellboy cost 63 million to produce.
• S3. I am not dreaming right now.
• There is insufficient evidence to know whether S3
  is true or not

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Scepticism Refuted Radical Scepticism

• Descartes
• There is nothing in a perception itself which
  allows us to judge its genuineness
• We can only judge whether our perceptions are
  genuine (or a dream, or the work of an evil
  demon) in the context of our other past and
  future perceptions
• David Hume (1711-1776)
• That thoughts and perceptions exist is not
  evidence that I exist
• Scepticism's role is to ask But how do you know
  that

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Perception mind-independent objects

• We assume the existence of an external world
  populated by objects independent of our own minds
• All we directly experience of that external world
  are our own sensations/perceptions of it
• We cannot conceive of mind-independent objects
  other than through our own minds/perceptions

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Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

• Distinguished between
• The world of objects as revealed by experience
• The phenomenal world
• The world of things in themselves
• The noumenal world
• Knowledge is restricted to the phenomenal world
• Reality is something that our minds construct
  (not something the mind passively receives)
• Perceptions represent objects in the world (but
  these represented objects are not things in
  themselves)

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Empiricism

• All knowledge of the world is derived from sense
  experience and observation
• Cognitive objectivism
• There is a mind-independent world made up of
  objects whose existence is independent of what
  anyone happens to think
• Correspondence theory of truth
• The truth of a statement is determined by whether
  or not that statement corresponds to one of the
  facts true of this mind-independent world
• When I perceive, the objects represented by those
  perceptions are those objects

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Relativism

• C.S.I. is expensive to produce
• The truth value of some statements is relative
• If reality is something that our minds construct,
  isnt the truth or falsity of all statements
  relative?
• No says Kant, because we all share the same
  innate cognitive machinery
• But we dont all share the same conceptual
  schemes
• We can interpret the same raw sense data in
  different ways

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Problems with Relativism

• Morality
• If a persons actions are ethical relative to
  their ideology, then that person cannot be
  acting immorally
• How then can we condemn slavery, the oppression
  of women, suicide bombers?
• If a persons actions are ethical relative to
  whether or not they infringe on the rights of
  others, then we can
• To be moral is to act rationally, that is, in
  accordance with principles that are binding for
  all rational beings (Kant)

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Problems with Relativism

• Intellectual Investigation
• If, as Nietzsche argues, There are no facts,
  only interpretations
• What is the point of searching for knowledge?
• How do you explain scientific and technological
  development?
• Absolute certainty may be unattainable in many
  instances, but enquiry can aim for what is most
  probable or beyond reasonable doubt

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Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

• Philosophy, though unable to tell us with
  certainty what is the true answer to the doubts
  which it raises, is able to suggest many
  possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free
  them from the tyranny of custom.