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Key Concepts in the Social Sciences and Humanities

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... Knowledge Part 2: Empiricism & Relativism. Outline. Scepticism ... Empiricism. All knowledge of the world is derived from sense experience and observation ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Key Concepts in the Social Sciences and Humanities


1
Key Concepts in the Social Sciences and Humanities
  • Theories of Knowledge Part 2 Empiricism
    Relativism

2
Outline
  • Scepticism Revisited
  • Perception
  • C.S.I.
  • Empiricism
  • Melinda, Melinda
  • Relativism
  • Problems with Relativism
  • Why all this is good for you

3
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

4
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

5
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

6
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)

7
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

8
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

9
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)

10
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

11
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.
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