Epistemology - How Do You Know That?

How do you know you aren't a brain in a vat being fed electrical impulses by a mad scientist? How do you know this blog post isn't a hallucination?

Welcome to Epistemology: the study of knowledge.

Before we can claim to know anything about the world, we have to determine what "knowing" even means.

For thousands of years, the gold standard for knowledge was Justified True Belief (JTB). To say "I know X," three things must happen:

1. You must believe X. (You can't know it if you don't think it's true).
2. X must actually be true. (You can't "know" the earth is flat, even if you believe it).
3. You must have justification. (You can't just guess correctly; you need a reason).

This is the biggest cage match in the history of philosophy.

1. Rationalism (Team Descartes)

• Core Idea: Reason is the chief source of knowledge.
• The Vibe: "I can figure out the universe just by thinking hard enough."
• Key Figure: René Descartes. He doubted everything—his senses, his memory, the physical world—until he hit bedrock: "I think, therefore I am." He couldn't doubt that he was doubting.

2. Empiricism (Team Locke/Hume)

• Core Idea: Sensory experience is the source of knowledge.
• The Vibe: "Show me the data."
• Key Concept: Tabula Rasa (Blank Slate). We are born knowing nothing, and experience writes upon us.

If you take doubt far enough, you end up at Solipsism: the idea that only your own mind is sure to exist. Everyone else might be an NPC (Non-Playable Character).

It's a lonely philosophy, but logically, it's incredibly hard to disprove. (Try it. Go ahead. Prove to me you exist. I'll wait).

1. The Website: SEP - Epistemology

• Dive into the deep end.

2. The Movie:

• The Matrix (1999)
• It is literally just Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" with kung fu and leather trench coats. Essential viewing for this topic.

Next up, we ask the question that usually follows a bong rip: What is actually real? (Metaphysics).