Thursday, March 12, 2020

Epistemology And Moderation

When I apply the metaphysical principle of moderation to epistemology, I am starting to craft a epistemological view of reality that I have worked on or sensed was the reality about knowledge for many years.

This continuum is crude and simplistic, but is indicative as I seek to be more fluent in discussing epistemic concerns.

From Left to Right we have: Extreme skepticism, moderate skepticism, fallibilism, dogmatism and strong infallibilism.

Extreme skepticism would be the stance that one is justified in one's unmitigated denial that certain or objective truth does not exist, or, even if it was, would not be intelligibly accessible by the human mind.

Weak skepticism or mitigated skepticism would be one's outlook if one asserted that there may some beliefs that are accepted as knowledge, albeit not universally are necessarilt true.

Fallibilism, is a roughly moderate approach to knowing that we can know something for sure--perhaps a direct, intuitive apprehension of God's existence or presence, or logical and mathematical truths, a common sense perception of objects outside the self, and the personal apperception of self-consciousness, but I do not know with utter certainty  that I know anything or for sure that I do not know anything at all. Still, I would suggest that achieving probable certainty is very possible. With that solid basis of justified belief, we can proclaim metaphysical, theological, ethical and philosophical oughts with confidence.

I would avoid asserting dogmatism about having all the answers or the final answers. This strong infallibilistic claim to knowing is not what I believe I will ever know. And so bragging and crowing would turn one into a radical ideologue, and that stance pushes the holder of this outlook close to embracing evil, lies and self-delusion.

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