Paradigm Shifts – A Major Change in How We Look At Something.

-They can be in science, society, philosophy, anything

-This change usually has almost a “pop” effect – like the idea just popped (although there’s a process behind the pop).

A few examples:

-The Reformation:  Information is now for everyone

-Flat Earth – The Earth is no longer flat.

-The Heliocentric Theory:  Earth is NOT in the center.

-The Age of Empiricism:

-A theory of epistemology

-Led to physics as respected vs. frowned on.

-Industrial Revolution: Machines come out of nowhere.

-Plate tectonics: Continents move

-Collapse of Soviet Block - Europe is back to one

-Flat Earth II – We’re back to being flat “technologically speaking”.

In the old days mom said, Bobby eat your peas because someone in China wants that food.  Now the wise mom says Bobby, try not to be wasteful and eat all the peas you choose to take, but if you don’t eat them realize that no one will starve because of it because starvation is a problem of distribution of resources.  But Bobby, do worry about studying because someone in China wants your job! 

Theories of Epistemology:

Rationalism:  Descartes 1560-1650

-He was wealthy, very smart, very religious, and a little crazy

-Predecessor to Empiricism

-True knowledge is known only from deduction of self-evident principals.      

-Self Evident Principals = “Intuition” and come from God

(which is interesting because the feminist philosophers have a high regard for “intuition” as well).

          : 2 + 2 = 4 is self-evident

          : “__________” is a line and not a set of keys or a rock.

-When you take things you know from Intuition and apply them to other situations through deductive reasoning, you have “Absolute Undisputable Truth”.

-Deduction:  The process of reasoning – beginning with self-evident principals

Method Of Doubt/ Radical Doubt:  Truth must be certain so you must ask these specific questions

          -Does the mind accurately represent the reality?

          -How do I know this is not an illusion?

          -Am I being deceived? (by the deceiver)

Doubt everything first, then let that process lead to truth.  The old way was to accept things first (flat Earth, Geocentric Universe), and then build your philosophy around it (Scholasticism).

  He was criticized – and this bothered him greatly.  It was a great “moral dilemma” for him.

His Grand Conclusion:  The Cogito Ergo Sum:  I can’t actually know if you exist.  I can’t know if the physical world I seem to be a part of is real.  The only thing I know for sure is that I think.  Since I think, that makes me not unreal – so I am real.  Therefore:  I think, therefore I am.

Empiricism:  (Locke, Berekley, and Hume) 1600-1700

Predecessor to Newtonian Science – Paved the way for science to be respected.

-Metaphysics is not as important:   Hume:  “its garbage”.

-True knowledge comes from the senses, NOT reasoning out some sort of “first truths”.

-Locke:  Mildest of three

          -Put the emphasis on experience over reason.

          -Tabula Rasa

          -Even though ideas may “seem to be universal” (Innate) that does not prove anything.

          -Said that there are Primary Qualities of Reality and Secondary Qualities of Reality – a mind-world connection.

Berkeley: 

-All experience is in the mind. 

-There is no Mind-World connection.

-We only know objects indirectly through perception.

-In the end God rescues us and keeps the world from falling apart.

Hume:

-Radical, Skeptical, but popular and nice – had many friends

-Metaphysics, Free Will, God, Innate knowledge are all self-created.

-We have no certain knowledge about the world, only what we “feel” might be true

-Old Way:  Higher knowledge based on reason and the spiritual

                   Lower Knowledge based on experience and the physical

                   (notice the Plato in the above)

-Hume:       There is nothing but experience.

Experience proves nothing.

All experience can be doubted.  All action can be based on cause and effect and it all has “deniability”.

-We get “Impressions” from the most vivid experiences

-We create psychological pictures form the impressions “ideas”

-So everything in the end is nothing more than a feeling

-Analytical Truths – Nothing in experience can refute them.

          -They are demonstratively certain

          -They are true in the “absence of experience”

-Matters of Fact – Based on Analytic Ideas, but not analytic.  These are math and geometry and that’s it.

They all have “deniability” – “The sun shall rise”. They give us a “good feeling” of what is, but not certainty of what is.

Logical Positivism:  A lifestyle of living “Humean”.  You live as if the only things that matter are those things that can be directly experienced and connected analytically.

Empiricism’s Contribution:  It integrated the acceptability of science to the Church to the degree that Newton could work freely.