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Knowing & Knowledge
2
Justified True Belief = Knowledge
Epistemology
What is knowledge?
How can we be sure?
The Classical Positions
Empiricism
- Experience
- The 5 senses
- The "knower" & the "known"
- Principles are a posteriori
- Deductive Thinking
- Verifiable by others
"My god. There's a tiger in the bathtub with Rosa!"
Rationalism
Rationalism
- Absolute knowledge possible
- Built on axioms
- Perfect forms or ideals like
beauty, truth, justice
- Truth precedes knowledge
- Principles are a priori
- Inductive thinking
The Case for Rationalism
Book of Genesis
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, "Let there be light": and there was light.
"Normal science...is a highly cumulative enterprise, eminently successful in its aim, the steady extension of the scope and precision of scientific knowledge" (136).
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Empiricism + Rationalism
The Critique
- What is studied?
- What effect does the observer have on the observed?
- How are the findings applied?
Evelyn Fox Keller: "Feminism and Science"
- Classical epistemology separates the "knower" and "known"
- Ignores the subjective element
- Ignores how social values influence science
- Male dominated for millennia
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"...feminist philosophy should be an essential resource for all philosophers whatever their views about its political agenda" (2).