One approach to philosophy is to make an assessment the limits of human knowledge by determining the means by which we can have knowledge. Thus, an empiricist will claim that all our knowledge results from sense-perception and a rationalist will claim that we can use reason to access knowledge independently of specific sense-perceptions and so on. Once the contours of our cognitive faculties are determined, we can use these to guide the rest of our philosophical inquiry. This seems to have been the approach of most modern philosophers. Descartes’ use of the cogito as the foundation of all philosophy is certainly such an approach. Locke and Hume both stated at the outset the limitations of human knowledge. Kant’s first Critique works through the problem more rigorously than prior modern philosophers, but it is unquestionably his approach.
Using epistemological principles as the foundation of all philosophy makes some sense, but there are also some problems with it. It makes sense because knowing that such-and-such a question is beyond our ability to answer is important if we want our philosophy to lead us to wisdom rather than mislead us into error. But the problem I see in thinking of epistemology as foundational is that it might be possible to know something without knowing how we know it, and epistemology certainly uses the explanation of how we know as a measure of what we know. Beyond this, if epistemology really stands beneath other modes of inquiry, then we cannot appeal to ontology as any kind of guide for what possible explanations of our knowledge there could be. Descartes, for instance, could not appeal to God as a source of knowledge about the external world until he established a criterion of clear and distinct ideas to prove to himself that God exists. This method of justifying belief in God necessarily effects the content of the concept of God, because it locates Him within forms preestablished by the intellect (and in Descartes’ case, the skeptical intellect). Yet if this step were even a minor distortion of God’s nature, every subsequent step would magnify this error.
I know there are alternatives to such a starting point and that a number of philosophers have used ontology as more foundational than epistemology, but I have not read enough to be able to describe how this plays out. I might guess that there are approaches that use neither epistemology nor ontology as the foundation (pragmatism?).
This thread is for discussing the various possibilities of what could stand as the foundation, what the strengths and weaknesses are of these possibilities, and which approach is right. |
