RE: "Doing" Epistemology?

["Pete Wolfendale" <pete.wolfendale@gmail.com>]

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I think this is a very interesting question actually, because the
answer to it has implications not only for how we engage in
philosophical practice, but whether epistemology is a useful activity
to be 'doing'.

We can generally agree that epistemology is the study of knowledge,
but really this does not tell us much. Of course we should specify
that it is not the study of particular knowledge, but of knowing in
general, but this still does not give us any hints as to how to
approach such an inquiry, or even if it is possible.

For instance, some will claim that epistemology involves a
clarification (and perhaps ultimately, definition) of concepts such as
knowledge, evidence, proof, falsification, reliability and so on
(although some of this will obviously overlap with others conception
of the philosophy of logic). From here it then might be possible to
question the conditions to which such concepts refer. But, if this is
what it means to study knowledge or knowing in general, there are
certain important questions to be asked:-

1) If we are involved in a kind of conceptual analysis, then precisely
what are the conditions under which such an
analysis/clarification/definition is successful?

It is all very well to perform a lot of thought experiments, and test
different definitions against one another, but to merely engage in
such practices without understanding what the conditions of thought
experiment, or definitional comparison is precisely 'doing
epistemology' without really understanding what it is you are doing,
in the same way in which many of us 'do recycling' without ever seeing
or for the most part understanding the processes both physical,
political and economical upon which its potential viability rests.

2) What is the relation of these general analyses we perform to the
particular procedures of knowledge production/acquisition? This can be
broken down further into: How does this conceptual enquiry relate to
actual scientific research, rather than 'rational reconstructions' of
said research? How does it relate to the theoretical enquiries that
take place in both the hard and soft social sciences? How does it
relate to our own philosophical/epistemological enquiries?

All of these questions are important, because one cannot truly make a
general enquiry into 'knowledge', or whatever concept we choose by
focusing on a narrow section of its field of application. Talking
about our knowledge of the existence of the table in front of us (as
many philosophers are wont to do) is a rather trivial subsection of
the fields of human knowledge, and even if analyses of such situations
could be valid, we can only confirm this by expanding them to include
the far more exotic questions of our knowledge that space is four
dimensional (or grossly multidimensional if you're of a
string-theoretical bent), or even our knowledge that interest rates
have certain proportional relations to inflation, other factors
considered. We could say that here we find the borders of epistemology
and philosophy of science (and associate philosophies of x); it is
here that the question as to whether there can be a general inquiry is
most important.

3) What are the ontological commitments of our conception of
epistemology? What are concepts, and how is it that we gain access to
them (or interact with them) in the course of 'doing epistemology'?
What is it to create or redefine them?

This is the most abstract of the questions, and one that I think is
the least investigated, at least with reference to the act of doing
epistemology. Often there is a tendency to defer such questions to the
philosophy or mind, or philosophy of language, or to no one in
particular, and simply get on with using concepts and defining them.
The word 'concept' is essential to most philosophical discussion, and
can take on the character of something familiar and fixed that we
don't need to question, but when we are engaging in a specifically
conceptual endeavour such an attitude can prove dangerous.

There is a sense in which we end up being incredibly self-reflexive
here, trying to ask 'What is it to know?' and 'What is it to know what
it is to know?' at one and the same time. Some people will say that we
must start on the first before we can gain a retrospective
understanding of the second. My personal perspective is that by being
sensitive to the second question we open up the first to the kinds of
analysis and thus the existing conceptual tools (hehe) of the specific
study of knowledge (e.g. the philosophy of science) and related fields
(philosophy of language, sociology, linguistics, etc.). I would
venture that there is no perfect or proper starting point from which
to 'do epistemology', but that rather that all we can do is open
ourselves up to these different fields and different questions, and
try to synthesize an understanding, no matter how reflexive such a
procedure might be.

Hopefully this might point out just how important this question is.
I'd like to go into a few of these issues further, as I believe I have
answers to a few questions, but for brevity I'll leave it at this for
now.

Pete


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