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RE: "Doing" Epistemology?



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Dear All,

To add to my last post...

The interesting issue raised by the question is *meta philosophical* Epistemology is in the business of answering questions like:
1. what can we know?
2. what are the nec and suff conditions for knowledge?


In answering these questions we are *doing* epistemology

But consider the following questions:
1. what are the conditions of *sense* of epistemological questions?
2. what are the conditions of *possibility* of epistemic discourse?
3. what are the presumptions of the epistemologist. Either methodology presumptions or otherwise


What is *clear* is that answering the second set of question will have a bearing on the answers we give to the first.

But in answering the *second set* of questions, are we *doing* epistemology or are we doing something different? If we are doing something different, what is it we are doing? Should the questions in the second set be answered PRIOR to any question in the first set?

These a difficult issues.

Personally, i think (at least some of the) question in the second set *should* be tackled first. We dont even know what we are saying, let alone what we are doing, in for example, giving nec and sufficent conditions, if we do not know, for example, the conditions of sense of the terms that we are using. The conditions of sense will tell us when we can and when we can not apply epistemic terms like justification....

What do you think?

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