Epistemology

Psychology, as a natural science, however, occupies a different field, and has quite a dif ferent problem from epistemology. It is true that attempts have frequently been made to explain knowledge by beginning with cogni tive mental states viewed as psychological proc esses. But the characteristics of the mental states and functions with which psychology deals have no immediate bearing on the prob lem of knowledge. For psychology is con cerned only with the mode in which ideas exist; it investigates their quality, duration, intensity, etc., as well as their various modes of com bination, viewing them as particular forms of psychical reality. Epistemology, on the other hand, is interested not in the existential aspect of ideas, but in their significance, in the uni versal and objective validity of experience as a body of truth. It thus seeks to bring to light the forms and functions of intelligence, noting the conditions and presuppositions under which it works, and the laws by which knowledge develops from its simpler and more fragmentary stages to the more complicate and cohorent structure of science. It is a philosophy of experience rather than a descrip tion of individual states of consciousness.

Reflection on the nature of knowledge does not arise until a somewhat late stage in the development of the thought of the individual and the race. Thought first announces its conclusions confidently and fearlessly. It is not until this naive confidence fails and scep ticism arises that it is forced to reflect upon the nature of knowledge and its grounds of certainty. This is illustrated in the history both of ancient and of modern philosophy. The early Greek philosophers, as Hegel re marked, thought away fearlessly regarding the nature of reality. It was the collapse of those early systems and the scepticism of the Sophists (q.v.) which forced Socrates to take up the epistemological problem. In the same way the Stoic and Epicurean discussions re garding the canon of truth arose in response to the more outspoken and thorough-going scepticism of later times. In modern times the epistemological interest did not come into the foreground until Locke's Locke's account of the origin of this work brings out very clearly the way in which problems of this character naturally arise: •Five or six friends meeting at my chamber, and discoursing on a subject very remote from this, found them selves quickly at a stand by the difficulties that rose on every side. After we had awhile puz zled ourselves, without coming any nearer a resolution of those doubts which perplexed us, it came into my thoughts that we took a wrong course, and that before we set our selves upon inquiries of that nature, it was necessary to examine our own abilities and see what objects our understandings were, or were not fitted to deal with . • . . Some hasty and undigested thoughts on a subject I had never before considered, which I set down against our next meeting, gave the first en trance into this discourse; . . . and at last it was brought into that order thou now seest Kant's (Kritik of Pure Reason> was the work which placed epistemology in the fore ground of continental philosophy. In the Pref ace to that work, he showed that the motives that led to his undertaking were very similar to those which influenced Locke. The scep ticism of his time, he says, "is clearly the result, not of the carelessness, but of the ma tured judgment of an age, which will no longer rest satisfied with the mere appear ance of knowledge. It is, at the same time,

a powerful appeal to reason to undertake anew the most difficult of its duties, namely, self-knowledge, and to institute a court of ap peal which should protect the just rights of reason, but dismiss all groundless claims, and should do this not by means of irresponsible decrees, but according to the eternal and un alterable laws of reason." Kant has a poor opinion of Locke's account of knowledge, and characterizes it as "a certain physiology of the human understanding." He himself pro posed to inaugurate a method of Criticism which should give a new direction to philo sophical inquiry, and at the same time furnish to it a sure foundation for further advance. Since Kant's time epistemological problems have largely dominated modern philosophy; and indeed, it has been maintained by many thinkers that the criticism of knowledge is the sole function which philosophy is able to per form, and that ontological speculation is vain and fruitless.

In the Pre-Kantian philosophy Rationalism (q.v.) and Empiricism (q.v.) were the main types of epistemological theory. The basis of the former was laid by Descartes (q.v.), who sought to universalize the method of mathe matics, and by this means to secure the cer tainty of absolute demonstration in all fields. As mathematics start from axioms and prin ciples which are intuitively certain, and pro ceeds by means of reasoning to deduce all its other propositions from these as necessary consequences, so all science must derive its conclusions from fundamental and indemon strable principles. These principles exist in the mind as a priori truths, and are universal and necessary in character. All science is thus built up by reasoning from general prin ciples. Sense-perception and observation of particular facts were neglected, since it was held to be impossible to arrive in this way at the universal and necessary form of truth which science demands. It is evident that this theory of knowledge could more readily be applied to the general features of reality than to a determination of its particular details. As in the hands of Wolff (q.v.) and other continental rationalists it was occupied mainly in furnishing formal proofs of the existence of God, the nature of the soul, and the external features of the physical universe. Empiricism (q.v.), on the other hand, emphasizes sense perception as the basis of all knowledge. Ex perience is described as a series of particular sensations and ideas in consciousness which are given to the mind from some external source. The mind itself is regarded as merely receptive, without any store of innate ideas, or of organizing principles. It was not strange, then, that in the hands of a genius like David Hume (q.v.), who carried this point of view to its logical outcome, empiricism should issue in scepticism. For if experience is nothing hut a series of conscious states, each of which is "loose and separate" from all the others, it is impossible to know anything except these particular states in their isola tion; impossible, therefore, to reach any uni versal propositions such as science demands. Again, if knowledge is limited to states of consciousness, it follows at once that there can be nothing known either of the nature of objects or of the subject or soul.