PH402S Epistemology & Metaphysics

Reading list
• Dialogues of Plato, The Republic, Theaetetus,
Parmenides, Crito
• D.M.Dutta, Six Ways of Knowing
• Heidegger, Being and Time
• Aristotle, Metaphysics, Nichomachean Ethics
• Thirteen Principal Upanishads
• Rg Veda Samhita
• There will be occasional references to Vedanta, Nyaya-
Vaisheshika, Sankhya, Buddhism besides Kant, Hegel
and many more.
 KNOWLEDGE – Epistemology

Episteme/Doxa, Pramā, Jnāna, Gnosiology,

Vidyā (parā&aparā), Video, Vision, Prakāsh, Light
(from darkness to light)
Knowledge as Liberation vs Knowledge as
Bondage
Jnāna-vastu tantram, kriyā- purush tantram
Four components- Subject-sources-means-
object; pramatā (knower), prameya (world),
pramiti (result/knowable), pramā
Symbol, typal, convention, beliefs, reason,
Information, Knowledge & Wisdom
Information (what, when, where…), Knowledge (how,
why, skill), Knowing ‘that’- Culture, Community and
Tradition
and Wisdom (Goodness, Happiness, Dignity,
Welfare, …)
Knowledge of objects, of persons and of knowledge
Objectivity, human emotions (care, concern, love,
etc.)
Communication, preservation, sustenance and
impart of knowledge
Certainty, Truth Construction and Responsibility
 Paradise and Loss of Paradise
Adam and Eve Adam and Eve expelled from
by Lucas Cranach the Elder Eden, detail of a Baroque pulpit
 From Mythos to Logos
• Myth (creation of the world, Joshua commanding the earth
to stand still, Adam- Eve & apple episode, man in the image
of God, fall, paradise/ loss of paradise, sin, curse,
redemption, etc.).
• Logos (word, reason/ rationality, change, etc.)
• Heraclitus (ca. 535-475 BC)- ‘If we speak with intelligence,
we must base our strength on that which is common to all
(i.e. logos), as the city on the laws (nomos), of the society
nomos…’
• From logos to dia-logos: Socrates and Plato
• From dia-logos to dialectics: …upto Kant, Hegel and Marx.
 MYTH, PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE
• Myth: A community-forming narrative on "big questions“:
origins of the universe, human beings, their good, etc. It
involves a calendar of celebrations (cycles in nature & in the
community). It requires a "priesthood."
• Philosophy: A systematic inquiry, by way of dialectic from
what is better known to what is less known on "big
questions", and then from general principles to particular
conclusions. It involves a "way of life”.
• Natural Science: A systematic theoretical & experimental
inquiry into principles and operations of nature. No "way of
life”.
 PHILOSOPHY?
• Everything is not philosophy but everything
can be philosophized.
• Discrepancies/ contestations
• Contested and contestable
• Philosophy as a Second Order enquiry
• Dichotomizing the concepts
• Agreeing to disagree
 CONTESTATIONS
• Aristotelian Society on 12 March 1956, Walter Bryce Gallie
(1912–1998) introduced the term essentially contested
concept
• Garver (1978) describes their use as follows: The term
essentially contested concepts gives a name to a problematic
situation that many people recognize: that in certain kinds of
talk there is a variety of meanings employed for key terms in an
argument, and there is a feeling that dogmatism ("My answer is
right and all others are wrong"), skepticism ("All answers are
equally true (or false); everyone has a right to his own truth"),
and eclecticism ("Each meaning gives a partial view so the
more meanings the better") are none of them the appropriate
attitude towards that variety of meanings.
 Knowledge: Pessimism vs Optimism
Pessimism concerning Knowledge
• SCEPTICISM
• RELATIVISM
• AGNOSTICISM
• DOGMATISM
Knowledge as Progress
• Progressive replacement theory (Comte, “father of
positivism")
• Hermeneutics ( Dilthey)
• Non-interactive parallelism ("Two-truth“ theory)
•
 ON KNOWING
Socrates, ‘An unexamined life in not worth
living.’ Phaedrus
Plato, ‘Knowledge is true on certain account.’
Theaetetus
Aristotle, ‘All men by nature desire
understanding’. Metaphysics, 980a1.
‘Knowing’ is a process in which subject,
sources, means and objects interact with one
another. It presupposes jijnāsa
KNOW THYSELF: GNOTHI SEAUTON
THE PRESOCRATIC PHILOSOPHERS
• PHILOSOPHERS OF NATURE
• SOURCE OF EVERYTHING: ARCHE
• CHANGE: ONE & MANY
• PRINCIPLES: MATERIAL (WATER, AIR)
+
EFFICIENT (ATTRACTIVE &
REPELLING FORCE)
 THE FIRST ELEMENTS
• ESSENTIAL PROPERTIES:

i. FIRE---------------------------HOT
ii. WATER-----------------------WET
iii. EARTH-----------------------COLD
iv. AIR----------------------------DRY
SOCRATES (469-399 B.C.)
 Socrates
• An unexamined life is not worth living.
• Unsatisfied Socrates is better than a satisfied
pig
• People act immorally, but they do not do so
deliberately.
• Two improvements in philosophy:
• Universal definitions
• Inductive arguments
 SOCRATES’ METHOD OF DIALOGUE
• Form of ‘dialogue’ or conversation;
• Effort to bring out ideas on some subject;
• From less adequate definitions to a more
adequate one;
• From particular examples to universal
definition;
• Process of induction;
• Socractic Irony (midwifery): Ignorance to
discover truth: right action – Ethical concern.
 ETHICAL INTELLECTUALISM
• Knowledge = Virtue: Wise man does what is
right.
• No one does evil knowingly.
• Aristotle says that Socrates forgot irrational
soul and moral weakness (akrasia).
• Right action promotes man’s true happiness.
• Importance of real personal conviction.
• Socrates’ Ethics is founded on human nature
and its good.
 SOCRATES’ MISSION: ETHICAL
• To stimulate men to care for
their soul: wisdom and virtue.
“He was no mere pedantic
logician, no mere destructive
critic, but a man with a mission
… with a desire to promote the
good of his interlocutors and to
learn himself.” (Copleston)
DEATH OF SOCRATES
 WHY BE MORAL?
• Socrates was sentenced to death, and was in a prison
awaiting his sentence of death. Crito suggested him to
escape and save himself. Socrates argues about moral
standard of such an act- escaping from the prison would
definitely be an action out of FEAR and not of COURAGE.
• When Crito asks Socrates, "In what way shall we bury
you?”
• Socrates answers, “In any way you like, but first you must
catch me, the real me. Be a good cheer, my dear Crito, and
say that you are burying my body only”.
Trial and Death
 SOCRATES AND TRUTH
“If you take my advice, you will
give but little thought to Socrates
but much more to the truth. If
you think that what I say is true,
agree with me; if not, oppose it
with every argument” (Phaedo
91b-c).
Metaphysics: Monism, Dualism & Pluralism
• – Being, Brahman, Becoming, Momentariness and
Nothingness, Shūnya
• – Appearance, Vyāvahārika, and Reality,
Pārmārthika
• – Self, Ātman
• – Theories of Metaphysics
 Heidegger on Ontology/Metaphysics
• Ontology is a study of Being concerning what exists permanently in
contrast with what only seems to exist temporarily, momentarily.
• Metaphysics is also the way of thinking that looks beyond beings
fundamentum absolutum, the ground of such a metaphysics which
presents itself indubitably.
• Metaphysics inquires about the being of beings, but in such a way
that the question of being as such is disregarded, and being itself is
obliterated. Each metaphysics aims at the fundamental.
• To obliterate is to remove all the signs like humanity, horseness,
cowness, etc.
(Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (1929). Translated as Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics,
(1997) Richard Taft)
 Heidegger on Being
• In Being and Time (1927) where the question
of the meaning of being is first developed, but
still expressed in the language of metaphysics.
• Human being as Da-sein can be understood as
the “there” (Das) which being (Sein) requires
in order to disclose itself. The human being is
the unique being whose being has the
character of openness toward Being. “… the
thinking of thinkers is the thinking of being.”
 Pre-Socratic thinkers

• Early Greek thinking is not yet metaphysics.

• Pre-Socratic thinkers ask the question concerning
the being of beings, but in such a way that being
itself is laid open. They experience the being of
beings as the presencing (Anwesen) of what is
present (Anwesende). Being as presencing means
enduring in unconcealment, disclosing.
• What-is, what is present, the unconcealed, is “what
appears from out of itself, in appearing shows itself,
and in this self-showing manifests.” (Sein und Zeit)
 Plato and the Birth of Metaphysics
• Pre-Socratics ask: “What are beings as such as a
whole?” and they answer: aletheia—
unconcealment. They experience beings in their
phenomenality: as what is present in presencing.
But the later thought which begins with Plato and
Aristotle is unable to keep up with the beginning.
With Plato and Aristotle metaphysics begins and
the history of being’s oblivion originates.
• He perceives the metaphysical culture of the West as a
continuity. It begins with Plato and ends with modernity,
PLATO: 428/7 BC – 348/7 BC
 PLATO
• Plato, the second of the great trio of ancient
Greeks who laid the philosophical foundations
of Western culture.
• His thought has logical, epistemological, and
metaphysical aspects; but its underlying
motivation is ethical.
• Born in Athens (Aegina?) in 428/7 BC.
Aristocratic family.
• He founded the Academy in 387.
• Died in 348/347.
 THREE MAIN FEATURES
• KNOWLEDGE AS
RECOLLECTION;
• TRIPARTITE SOUL;
• THEORY OF FORMS/IDEAS