Philosophical and Scientific Methods: Reality and Knowledge

Posted on Dec 8, 2024 in Philosophy and ethics

Empiricism and the Evolution of Scientific Thought

From the standpoint of method, figures like Galileo, Descartes, Bacon, Kant, Comte, and John Stuart Mill are generic. In the field of empiricism, we can emphasize Mach, Duhem, the Vienna Circle, and Quine. The Vienna Circle advocated for verification, proposing that all scientific experiments be proven by an empirical method to make them true. K. Popper challenged this with falsificationism, arguing that it is not possible to verify all hypotheses. Instead, hypotheses must be tested to see if they can be falsified, as this strengthens the hypothesis. Ad-hoc hypotheses attempt to save a theory by adding more definitions to it. I. Lakatos focused on scientific research, aiming to strengthen hypotheses through strict research criteria. K. Feyerabend, an epistemological analyst, argued that there is no single method but many (multi-methods).

General Systems Theory and the Concept of Definition

The General Systems Theory was developed by von Bertalanffy. Regarding definition, the concept must be related to division and consists of demonstration. The definiendum is the term of reference, and the definiens is the meaning or referent.

Characteristics of a Good Definition:

1. The definiens must be clearer than the definiendum.
2. The definiendum must not be part of the definiens.
3. The definiendum and the definiens must be convertible.
4. The definiens must be brief and not negative.
5. The definiens must not be wider than the definiendum.

Some realities cannot be defined by the following rules: indefinite (axioms, mathematical concepts on experience like pain, madness, infatuation, etc.).

Modalities of Knowledge

• Science: Autonomous and not pantonomous (not sufficient).
• Philosophy: Autonomous and pantonomous, studying all or at least raising all things.
• Religion: Not autonomous but pantonomous, attempting to explain everything. It has to find its basis outside of religion.
• Poetry/Literature: Autonomous, subjective, and personal knowledge. It is also a knowledge of uncertainty and is irresponsible because poets/writers create a world but do not live in it.

Philosophy is the attempt to know absolute uncertainty. It seeks radical knowledge. We have come to this uncertainty because we think objectively and radically. It is intrasubjective. The need for evidence in philosophy leads to responsibility.

Understanding Reality: Perception, Existence, and Categories

The Nature of Human Reality

Reality is what is human; it is radical. Human reality not only acts in response to a stimulus but understands the reality of the stimulus, is situated in front of it, reflects, and understands itself as being real. It acts in both ways because it is inscribed in reality and knows reality from reality.

Plato’s Allegory of the Divided Line

The Visible:

• Images (Imagination): The shadow or reflection of things. The level of speculation.
• Sensitive Objects (Belief): Opinion not justified by rigorous reasoning.

The Intelligible:

• Mathematical Objects (Thought): Discursive knowledge of the exact sciences.
• Ideas (Knowledge): Rigorous knowledge respecting ideas and referring to a principle.

Types of Reality

1. Conceived Reality: The image that the human mind produces when it thinks about reality.
2. Felt Reality.
3. Real Reality: It seems that, regardless of access to reality, it has a real dimension as if it exists.

Realism vs. Idealism

Realism: The philosophical position that considers humans can access existing reality. Reality is something we can know. The perception of reality is misleading and conditioned by physical factors and cultural support, but it is real to our knowledge.

Idealism: The philosophical stance that affirms the nonexistence of material reality. Reality is only a product of our thought or an ideal entity, not a material substrate that we observe.

Ways of Being Real

• Possibility: Reality may be, even if it is not yet. It is not even all that can reach being.
• Contingency: Reality can be and has been. That which is not real but would have equal existence, which might not occur, which might disappear, or which might be a different way.
• Necessity: The reality that is necessarily the real substrate, the reality that cannot be thought not to exist.

Modes of Reality

• Reality as Physical Dimensions of the World: It really exists in the form of a thing.
• Existence: The reality of its own, the real being of the same reality.
• Reality for Me: The experiential dimension of reality in my reality.

Categories of Human Thought

• Cause: The origin of something.
• Substance: The essential determinant of the reality of something, which makes it what it is.
• Accident: Adventitious, incidental, and contingent characteristics of things.
• Time and Space: The determination and space-time situation of things, their registration coordinates.

Diversity of Approaches

• Hume: Causal relationships we establish are derived from a habit or custom of always relating phenomena in temporal succession, but without any solid foundation for making the actual cause and effect.
• Kant: Realities have two dimensions: the phenomenon, which is what manifests itself, and the noumenon, the thing in itself. Kant believed there must be something real that is the origin of appearances we can observe.
• Nietzsche: He did not distinguish between appearance and reality but denied the existence of any reality other than what is apparent. If so, the truth value is defined by practical absence. He said there are no pure facts but only interpretations of phenomena; the only thing real is the different perspectives that are listed as ratings.