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RE: "Doing" Epistemology?

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I think the questions of the second set you elegantly outlined are not questions that belong to the practice of epistemology, as you say, they are metaphilosophical (or meta-epistemological), as such, they do not involve us in "doing epistemology". What is interesting about such questions - not that I want to prejudge the answers to them - is that they have the potential to drastically alter our very conception of doing epistemology, so much so that they may destroy the practice of doing epistemology (negative), or improve or solidify the practice (positive). Either positive or negative construal will require argument. I suppose the negative outcome is a worrying one... how radical would it be if a metaphilosophical investigation revealed that our practice of doing epistemology as we know it was some how bound up in confusion. 

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-----Original Message-----
From: owner-bups-dis@purplepancake.com [mailto:owner-bups-dis@purplepancake.com] On Behalf Of none of your business
Sent: Saturday, October 07, 2006 1:26 PM
To: BUPS-DIS@bups.org
Subject: RE: "Doing" Epistemology?

To reply to this message or start a new topic please email: BUPS-DIS@bups.org


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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