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Theories of Knowledge: How to Think about What You Know
Humans have been attempting to understand for thousands of years what knowledge truly is and how we acquire it, but the more we learn about the human body, our brains, and the world around us, the more challenging the quest becomes. The 21st century is a fast-paced world of technological change and expanding social networks, a world where information is plentiful and cheap, but where truth seems in short supply.
12 pages, Audible Audio
First published January 1, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
July 11, 2022
Definitely on the must-read list of every SJW wannabe. The author is a self claimed “externalist”, by which he means that you should completely relinquish your own logical reasoning and submit to the “knowledge” perpetuated by all the fact checkers media and MSM, the authorities. And if you don’t believe Me Too, you are commiting “testimonial injustice”, an absolute atrocity in every sense. According to him, nothing is more disastrous than capable critical thinking cuz it’s “pseudo philosophy” aimed at radicalizing you. As someone who has been proudly radicalized by Descartes, Aristotle, Kent, Russell and someone actually has studied formal logic and a practitioner of Machine Learning and Bayesian statistics for over 20 years. I can guarantee you this guy is one of those who pretend cuz they don’t actually understand and find defining the truth of knowledge as only socially provable as the easiest to get himself funded.
An absolute fluke and a total disagrace to philosophy.
An absolute fluke and a total disagrace to philosophy.
April 11, 2022
"I liked it." - 3 out of 5 star rating.
I have a love/hate relationship with philosophy, the study of questions such as existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, soul, language, and so much more. I feel like for the most part a lot of these conversations loop, present both sides (as they should) and in the end you are ultimately left with... everything and nothing at the same time, pretty much the core of most philosophical debates.
Things I liked:
- Transformative experience(s) decision point (Y/N)
-- This is presented with the classic question of: "Should I have kids or not?" Essentially, weighing the pros and cons of raising children versus being single and free to focus inwardly
- Factual knowledge versus belief/experience based bias
- What actually happened versus human memory (aka false memories appearing real)
- "Blindness", meaning being set in your ways either intentionally or subconsciously and therefore lack of change takes place.
Overall I enjoyed this and would recommend this Great Course. I am just a bit psychology/philosophy fatigued, as my wife majors in this and I hear all about it on a nearly daily basis. For folks with less exposure, I think this would probably fall more in line with a 4/5.
I have a love/hate relationship with philosophy, the study of questions such as existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, soul, language, and so much more. I feel like for the most part a lot of these conversations loop, present both sides (as they should) and in the end you are ultimately left with... everything and nothing at the same time, pretty much the core of most philosophical debates.
Things I liked:
- Transformative experience(s) decision point (Y/N)
-- This is presented with the classic question of: "Should I have kids or not?" Essentially, weighing the pros and cons of raising children versus being single and free to focus inwardly
- Factual knowledge versus belief/experience based bias
- What actually happened versus human memory (aka false memories appearing real)
- "Blindness", meaning being set in your ways either intentionally or subconsciously and therefore lack of change takes place.
Overall I enjoyed this and would recommend this Great Course. I am just a bit psychology/philosophy fatigued, as my wife majors in this and I hear all about it on a nearly daily basis. For folks with less exposure, I think this would probably fall more in line with a 4/5.
October 24, 2021
Theories of Knowledge: How to Think about What You Know by Joseph Shieber is a course that sits in the middle ground between wanting to be practical, and wanting to lay the foundation for theoretical foundation, but doesn't quite stick the landing for either. By now means is this a bad course if you're a geeky, nerdy aspiring epistemologist, but if you just want to know about how people know things this book doesn't quite stick the landing. As with all trades, epistemology has its own language, so the later lectures in particular will be unforgiven for the passive consumers of this course. Shieber also inserts himself into a couple of debates in modern epistemology. Sometimes for the good, sometimes not so much. I already had a head start on a lot of this course, and I picked it up thinking it would be a good refresher, but I came away thinking it was a little lackluster. There are parts of this course that are particularly good, some that are frustrating, and a lot of lectures that are just sort of in the middle.
78/100
78/100
July 31, 2022
It's been a little while since I listened to this series of lectures; I should have written my reactions down at the time. I will say that I recall liking the opinionatedness of the presenter. The series wasn't simply a history of epistemological theories (presented in an "objective" manner), but rather Shieber has his pet theory and the entire historical overview is there to present and knock down past theories as a means of leading up to his theory of social externalism.
Even when I don't agree with someone, I find extensive arguments to be interesting and I thought he did a good job at pulling me along through the course. That said, sometimes his defeaters of past theories, left me scratching my head. I imagine that proponents of the views he so easily rejects could respond sufficiently, or at least suggest that despite some issues, there are important truths in their theory.
Now, if past theories of knowledge are so easily put down, then what of the social externalist understanding of testimony that Shieber supports? I would have hoped that social externalism would come across as a brick house built on a firm foundation, especially after his claiming every other theory is made of cards and knocking them down; sadly, his final solution seemed to me very anticlimactic and a let down. Social Externalism seemed to me like most of the other views he presented, containing truths but by no means a complete or sufficient theory of knowledge.
The main issue I had with his view, is that in support of Social Externalism, Shieber almost sounded like he is against individual critical thinking (suggesting it is worthless), but is rather in favor of the virtues of groupthink; one just has to be lucky enough to belong to a social network that has true knowledge; if one is part of such a group, one's job is just to simply believe what science and the mainstream media says and not to question, and to be confident one, therefore, has knowledge.
I suppose I am inclined to an eclectic approach. It would be a good exercise for me to consider the good elements I find in the different theories of knowledge
Even when I don't agree with someone, I find extensive arguments to be interesting and I thought he did a good job at pulling me along through the course. That said, sometimes his defeaters of past theories, left me scratching my head. I imagine that proponents of the views he so easily rejects could respond sufficiently, or at least suggest that despite some issues, there are important truths in their theory.
Now, if past theories of knowledge are so easily put down, then what of the social externalist understanding of testimony that Shieber supports? I would have hoped that social externalism would come across as a brick house built on a firm foundation, especially after his claiming every other theory is made of cards and knocking them down; sadly, his final solution seemed to me very anticlimactic and a let down. Social Externalism seemed to me like most of the other views he presented, containing truths but by no means a complete or sufficient theory of knowledge.
The main issue I had with his view, is that in support of Social Externalism, Shieber almost sounded like he is against individual critical thinking (suggesting it is worthless), but is rather in favor of the virtues of groupthink; one just has to be lucky enough to belong to a social network that has true knowledge; if one is part of such a group, one's job is just to simply believe what science and the mainstream media says and not to question, and to be confident one, therefore, has knowledge.
I suppose I am inclined to an eclectic approach. It would be a good exercise for me to consider the good elements I find in the different theories of knowledge
March 20, 2024
Although I love listening to college courses and I love studying philosophy, I'm not sure that they work well together for me. This course made my brain hurt. I found myself regularly pausing and relistening to large parts of explainations. I don't claim to understand it all and I definitely haven't devoted a ton of concerted effort to a epistemology, but survey courses like this one always leave me a little deflated. As with so much in philosophical survey, the material is set up and explained and then holes are shot into it. While it's still fascinating and helpful to take a broad look at what ideas have been expressed about how we can define and solidify knowledge, its a bit deflating to end up with a lot of ideas and nothing that can seemingly be relied on. Not even skepticism is safe.
The most obvious conclusion is that whether we are coming to deductive of inductive conclusions, whether we are trusting our senses or our sense of logic or outside testimonials of social cues, humans regularly trust themselves to conclusions which are completely erroneous.
If any one of us were challenges at random to "show our work" when coming to average decisions or big life changing ones, we would be far more likely to be proven faulty in multiple stages of our process.
The most obvious conclusion is that whether we are coming to deductive of inductive conclusions, whether we are trusting our senses or our sense of logic or outside testimonials of social cues, humans regularly trust themselves to conclusions which are completely erroneous.
If any one of us were challenges at random to "show our work" when coming to average decisions or big life changing ones, we would be far more likely to be proven faulty in multiple stages of our process.
January 16, 2020
I picked this course as I am keenly interested in psychology, education, and human behaviour. I was starting to feel I had reached some sort of saturation point at the armchair researcher level in a number of areas as many themes were starting to repeat themselves, but now I've found a new fascination, epistemology. The content is well written and narrated, although I found the very cleverly laid out cases and logic to be tough going for a lay person, but not so much that I honestly think I'll give it another round just to see how far I can get my head around the methods used in presenting the concepts and debating them.
January 29, 2020
(NOTE: I'm stingy with stars. For me 2 stars means a good book or a B. 3 stars means a very good book or a B+. 4 stars means an outstanding book or an A {only about 5% of the books I read merit 4 stars}. 5 stars means an all time favorite or an A+ {Only one of 400 or 500 books rates this!).
I have a friend who is a research scientist who says that science is the process of eliminating possibilities. So is philosophy. The whole history of philosophy is the undoing what was the previous orthodoxy. Shieber does a good job of critiquing the various historical proposals for epistemology and then has his own proposal. But I'm not sure he solves any more than the rest of them.
I have a friend who is a research scientist who says that science is the process of eliminating possibilities. So is philosophy. The whole history of philosophy is the undoing what was the previous orthodoxy. Shieber does a good job of critiquing the various historical proposals for epistemology and then has his own proposal. But I'm not sure he solves any more than the rest of them.
February 23, 2021
It certainly isnt an easy listen/read. Although interesting and quite substantial in content, you might want to be siting down somewhere and direct most of your energy into understanding how understanding works.
October 6, 2025
I guess a pretty good overview of (for lack of a better term) "mainstream" epistemology. The lecturer uses the word "explanation" a few times but the role of explanation isn't really explored. There's much ado about justification and belief:/
June 11, 2021
Not as interesting as I hoped it would be.
June 29, 2022
Eyes are too tired to write a review tonight. I will check my notes and post them tomorrow. . Another great course.
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June 22, 2023Good overview of some themes in epistemology. I would have preferred more consideration of uncertainty, but there was good discussion and a coherent explanation of many different arguments.
February 18, 2024
A very good introduction to epistemology
October 23, 2024
A bit too academic for my taste. I did not really learn anything about theories of knowledge.
July 28, 2019
Prof. Shieber murders logic...
Let me give you specific example here. In chapter 3 about Descartes the lecturer starts by discounting some argument as non-sequitur and even explains what it is for much richer sense of irony to be had later.
Then describes Descartes internalist philosophy by saying he cannot trust to his senses, but his doubt of those senses is an internal state, which he can build on: “Dubito Ergo Sum”, although he puts it in the more known version of “I think therefore I am.”
Then he proceeds to attempt to invalidate internalism by constructing an argument, where he adds to internal states other states that simply fit his understanding of the word internal, but have nothing to do with Descartes, later he carefully selects out of those one to disprove, which he further limits and limits until he gets to claim that the internal state is produced by vision and if we doubt ability to see what is there, then we have to doubt our internal senses. Adds the traditional Gorilla experiment and voila ... Descartes and Internalism disproved through a complete non-sequitur.
The irony is so big that just like the Gorilla it is completely ignored by all who look at it.
Let me give you specific example here. In chapter 3 about Descartes the lecturer starts by discounting some argument as non-sequitur and even explains what it is for much richer sense of irony to be had later.
Then describes Descartes internalist philosophy by saying he cannot trust to his senses, but his doubt of those senses is an internal state, which he can build on: “Dubito Ergo Sum”, although he puts it in the more known version of “I think therefore I am.”
Then he proceeds to attempt to invalidate internalism by constructing an argument, where he adds to internal states other states that simply fit his understanding of the word internal, but have nothing to do with Descartes, later he carefully selects out of those one to disprove, which he further limits and limits until he gets to claim that the internal state is produced by vision and if we doubt ability to see what is there, then we have to doubt our internal senses. Adds the traditional Gorilla experiment and voila ... Descartes and Internalism disproved through a complete non-sequitur.
The irony is so big that just like the Gorilla it is completely ignored by all who look at it.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews