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2 years ago in Epistemology , Philosophy By Jang Bahadur Singh
What are the main approaches or schools of thought that offer a fundamental critique of epistemology itself?
Epistemology asks "What is knowledge? How is it justified?" But some philosophers argue this entire project is flawed. I've heard of "anti-epistemology" in certain postmodern circles, Quine's naturalized epistemology which replaces it with psychology, and maybe Wittgenstein's quietism about philosophical theory. Are these all critiques? What do they reject—the quest for foundations, the "spectator theory" of knowledge, or the very concept of "justification"? I need a map of the major meta-epistemological critiques.
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By Bharat Answered 1 year ago
Major critiques of traditional epistemology include: 1) Naturalist Critique (Quine): Epistemology is not a a priori foundational project but a branch of empirical psychology studying how organisms form beliefs. 2) Pragmatist Critique (Rorty): The quest for certainty and correspondence to reality is a mistake; focus should be on socially justified belief and what works. 3) Relativist/Social Constructivist Critique: Justification is internal to cultural or linguistic paradigms; there's no neutral ground for epistemology. 4) Quietist/Therapeutic Critique (later Wittgenstein, some ordinary language philosophy): Epistemological puzzles are conceptual confusions generated by misusing language; the task is to dissolve them, not solve them. 5) Existential-Phenomenological Critique (Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty): Traditional epistemology assumes a detached "spectator" subject, ignoring our embodied, engaged being-in-the-world as the primary mode of "knowing." These critiques variously target foundationalism, the subject-object dichotomy, and the very idea of a theory of knowledge.
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