Philosophy: Epistemology

[ABostonCatholic]

Plato’s thought that we can only know the forms, but once we doubt the forms, we end up in scepticism.

Aristotle denied the existence of absolute forms and said that the forms exist only in the objects themselves and in the mind of the knower, but God is absent from the picture, even as the first cause of the forms.

Augustine is Platonic but dependent upon divine illumination by Christ, and Aquinas is a blend of this with Aristote.

Rationalism relies too much on innate ideas.

Empiricism relies only on experience, which leads to scepticism.

Kant takes the worst from rationalism and empiricism and results in not being able to know “things in themselves” and a sense in which the mind is innately divine, which turns into a bizarre "proof’ for God’s existence and leads to the destruction of metaphysics.

From a Christian standpoint, Aquinas and Augustine are the way to go. Outside Christianity, Aristotle seems to make the most sense.

My question: do you think it is possible to formulate a sound epistemology without framing it in an explicit Christological context (I don’t want to say apart from all Christology, for as Christians, we cannot ascribe anything as being separate from Christ!)

 

[Truthstalker]

How about some links, and three months to answer this?

 

[Ani_Ibi]

My question: do you think it is possible to formulate a sound epistemology without framing it in an explicit Christological context…

Yes and no.

 

[Truthstalker]

Yes and no.

You wanna, maybe, be more concise? Or less prolix?

 

[Ani_Ibi]

You wanna, maybe, be more concise? Or less prolix?

:nope:

 

[John_Hiner]

No, I do not think that it is possible to frame such an epistemology. It is Christ as the bridge between God and human perception that provides the objective verification that human perception reflects reality. The Savior is needed to rescue us from the Kantian trap.

The trick of science is to use faith in the Savior to ground the reliability of perception, and then to set that issue aside, as it proceeds to explore the empiricism which Christ makes reliable.

Christ Jesus must therefore lie at the root of epistemology. This is one of the reasons that science as we use the term today arose from the Church and the culture based on the Church.

The unique merger in the Savior of God’s knowledge of reality and human perception give us a calibration of the human senses. In this way it is clear that only in Christ can one be objective in the scientific sense.

What other form of verification could human perception have? Without such verification, how could epistemology be reliable?

I hope this is helpful in beginning this discussion.

Spiritus Sapientiae nobiscum.

John Hiner