Aristotle on Epistemic Justification and Embodied Understanding
| dc.contributor.advisor | Macbeth, Danielle | |
| dc.contributor.author | Stevens, Griffin | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2017-09-01T13:50:16Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2017-09-01T13:50:16Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2017 | |
| dc.description.abstract | This paper seeks to dissolve the apparent epistemological tension posed in Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics between, on the one hand, the infallibility of the knowledge-state we are in when we know scientific first principles, and on the other, the fallibility of the inductive process by which we are supposed to arrive at such knowledge. I claim that the tension feels especially pressing because it seems to us as modern philosophical readers to cast doubt on the very possibility of having scientific knowledge. The skeptic wants to press this point and claim that because we can in principle be mistaken when we think we know something scientifically, we may not be able to know scientifically at all. But for Aristotle, because his fundamental scientific conceptions of episteme and nous are about having explanatory knowledge, the justificatory sense in which nous is required has to do with understanding the knowledge we already have, rather than certifying the truth of our knowledge of particulars. Induction, based on embodied experience and perception, already gives us particular knowledge, which we are capable of transforming into understanding when we develop the right ‘why’ explanations of our particular knowledge. In interpreting Aristotle’s epistemology in this way, my hope is that we may reexamine and subsequently broaden our epistemological conceptions of our modes of intentional directedness and knowing with respect to the scientifically knowable world. | |
| dc.description.sponsorship | Haverford College. Department of Philosophy | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10066/19400 | |
| dc.language.iso | eng | |
| dc.rights.access | Open Access | |
| dc.rights.uri | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ | |
| dc.title | Aristotle on Epistemic Justification and Embodied Understanding | |
| dc.type | Thesis |