The Possibility of Knowledge
Quassim Cassam
Language: English
Pages: 256
ISBN: 0199562393
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
How is knowledge of the external world possible? How is knowledge of other minds possible? How is a priori knowledge possible? These are all examples of how-possible questions in epistemology. Quassim Cassam explains how such questions arise and how they should be answered.
In general, we ask how knowledge, or knowledge of some specific kind, is possible when we encounter obstacles to its existence or acquisition. So the question is: how is knowledge possible given the various factors that make it look impossible? A satisfactory answer to such a question will therefore need to do several different things. In essence, explaining how a particular kind of knowledge is possible is a matter of identifying ways of acquiring it, overcoming or dissipating obstacles to its acquisition, and figuring out what makes it possible to acquire it.
To respond to a how-possible question in this way is to go in for what might be called a "multi-levels" approach. The aim of this book is to develop and defend this approach. The first two chapters bring out its advantages and explain why it works better than more familiar "transcendental" approaches to explaining how knowledge is possible. The remaining chapters use the multi-levels framework to explain how perceptual knowledge is possible, how it is possible to know of the existence of minds other than one's own and how a priori knowledge is possible.
the distinction between Level 2 and Level 3. For surely Kant only thinks that the ideality of space is a necessary condition for the acquisition of geometrical knowledge by means of construction in intuition because he takes it that the mind-independence of space would constitute a kind of obstacle to our acquiring knowledge of its geometrical properties by these means. But this looks like a reason for locating his argument for the ideality of space at Level 2 rather than at Level 3. More
rather than certainty, and the question is whether our commitment to thinking that we have some basic perceptual knowledge is, as I have been arguing, stronger than our commitment to (D2). The sceptic’s worry is, of course, that our commitments to particular verdicts might be irrational or unfounded, and that we might therefore be wrong to regard our possession of basic perceptual knowledge as non-negotiable. Since there is no general guarantee that our epistemological commitments are well
can be established without any empirical investigation are weakly a priori conditions.² It seems, therefore, that what is at issue between minimalism and anti-minimalism is whether there are any weakly a priori enabling conditions for knowing that the cup is chipped by seeing that it is chipped, or for knowing that a proposition about the external world is true by perceiving that it is true. What would be examples of such conditions? It might seem that I have already given one: presumably, it
relation to myself or to other objects in its immediate environment. Even though I might misperceive some of the object’s spatial properties there is no such thing as seeing an object without seeing any of its spatial properties. In addition, seeing an object usually involves seeing the empty space around it, as well as the region of space it occupies. In contrast, the objection to the direct argument is that there is such a thing as hearing an object without hearing any of its spatial properties
concepts. This concludes the defence of CTR. If the arguments from object perception and from epistemic perception are successful they provide a positive answer to the question of necessity. They show that categorial thinking is a genuinely necessary background condition for epistemic perceiving. In fact, the two arguments for CTR aren’t all that different from each other. To describe object perception as cognitively loaded, as involving an element of recognition or categorization, is effectively