Topic Three:  Epistemology

 

Text book Readings

(Don’t forget to click “Next” to the end of the assigned chapter)

Epistemology and Metaphysics

 

"Positive Philosophy" by August Comte

Brief overviews

Epistemology and How I Know What I Think I Know (maybe....)

Idealism and How to Be is to Think 

Naturalism and the Way Things Just Are 

Pragmatism and the "Cash Value" of Knowledge

Madhyamaka:  Indian Mahayana Buddhism's "Zero" Approach

Primary Sources

Birth: 12 March 1685 Death: 14 January 1753

Idealism:  Bishop Berkeley:  Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous - First Dialogue, first Section

    Here the skeptic, atheist and/or materialist will be challenged by Berkeley's imagined dialogue between Hylas ("materialist") and Philonous ("Mind-lover").  This is the first section of the first dialogue. (source:  Project Gutenberg)

Skepticism:  David Hume:  An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding -section four:  Skeptical Doubts Concerning the Operation of Human Understanding (source:  Project Gutenberg)

    Here, a famous response by David Hume, who doubts that we can even know for certain the sun will rise tomorrow.

Birth: April 26, 1711 (Edinburgh, Scotland) Death: August 25, 1776 (Edinburgh, Scotland)

 

William James:  Pragmatism-A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (excerpted from source:  project Gutenberg)

    Here you will find out that knowledge depends upon its "cash value" - a very American idea!

Birth: January 11, 1842 Death: August 26, 1910

Nagarjuna:  On Knowing Nothing

Two Divergent Views from India:

Nagarjuna (ca. 150 CE)  An Analysis of the "Grasper" and "Grasped" and "Fire and Fuel"

Nothing exists alone and apart, thus nothing is an individual thing.  Space and nothingness are the basis for knowledge.

Born in South India (Karnataka)

Asanga (ca. 350 CE) Reality is Consciousness Alone

All we can know comes through consciousness, but consciousness is involved with the "other" "external" world.  The co-evolution of "mind" and "matter" means neither essentially exists, yet the process is real!

Born in Kashmir (NW India)

http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/buddhistworld/maha2.htm 

PowellPoint:  Epistemology

Videographies

The Bishop Berkeley: All the World is Made of Thoughts in the Mind of God versus the Skepticism of David Hume    - 2004 by Anonymous

         outline     paper

Three Theories on Knowledge, Notably the Cartesian View   - 2003 by Tyler Stoltenberg

         outline     paper

 The American-style Pragmatism of William James, the Positivism of Russell and the "Strong and Weak" Sources of Knowledge for Hospers   - 2003 by Anonymous

        outline     paper

Nagarjuna: Founder of Mahayana Buddhism

by Paul Kacynski through Professor  Rev. Dr. James Kenneth Powell II, opensourcebuddhism.org Perhaps the title overstates the case, but this has been said of the great Madhyamaka scholar who, we are told, brought back the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras from Nagas, hence his name. No more influential thinker exists in Buddhism, apart from the Buddha Siddhartha himself. As he says in his introductory work, the Stanzas on the Root of the Middle Way, he is he claims, merely a commentator on the Buddha's doctrine of "no self". He extends this idea to include all phenomena and as the brilliant expositor of Mahayana tradition, is revered as an ancestor of all the Mahayana schools, from Tibet to Japan. Very nice job, offered in the first person.

Asanga: Founder of Mahayana Yogacara Buddhism

by Cale Bakken with instructor Rev. Dr. James Kenneth Powell II., opensourcebuddhism.org
This very nice project examines the life and thought of Asanga, 3rd-4th century Indian founder of the Yogacara or "Yoga-praxis" school. We get a nice picture of the eight levels of consciousness, the mechanism of reincarnation and the nature of habitual thought patterns that bind one to the "convolution" or sansara.

 

Lectures

Class Lecture (Fall '07):  Berkeley and Friends on Idealism, Hume and Friends on Realism