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PHIL240A Final Paper
Section I: Trusting Institutions Is it ever responsible to trust an institution about something that outstrips your individual ability to verify?...
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Idealism
Everything is in the mind. The intrinsic nature of ultimate reality is the mind....
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Religious authority
As it pertains to epistemic authority Debates from Classical South Asia Right and wrong aren’t directly perceptible to humans But some traditions in CSA say yes: revelation/sacred texts The source must be āpta with regard to what’s right and wrong; must have: perfect knowledge of right and wrong the ability to communicate this knowledge at least lack the intention to lie, if not have the intention to communicate honestly Vedas are author-less so can have no faults or biases – uniquely trustworthy Dharmakīrti against authority of the Vedas Even if there was a flawless revealed source, it wouldn’t help as the the revealed source still has to be interpreted and this necessarily happens through human interactions mediated by language Partiality makes communication possible, words are meaning-laden (see: terminology) because of conventions and usage No one, then, can know the meaning of an ‘authorless’ word: “it is not possible in the case of words that lack an [original] expounder” Common usage is partial and not an independent source of knowledge “Since the meaning of authorless words [can] be known neither from tradition, nor from reason, nor from the [ordinary] world, it is [only] proper [to say] that there is no cognition [of the meaning] in this case” See also: derived intentionality Cannot trust other humans who are also flawed “Indeed, a blind [person] does not find the way when led by [another] blind [person]!...
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Epistemic Authority
On when to trust epistemic claims Trusting the word of others is necessary to expand knowledge beyond perception, e....
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Nyāya
“Perception is a cognition that has arisen from the contact of sense faculty and object and is inexpressible, not erroneous, and determinate in nature....
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Root Verses on the Middle Way or the MMK
by Nāgārjuna A key text in Buddhist religious texts. Use of reductio ad absurdum (proof by contradiction) to show how all phenomena exhibit emptiness....
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Testimony
Forming a belief based on the trust of another’s written or spoken word....
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Double-consciousness
Term from DuBois, 1989 Related: hermeneutical injustice, epistemic injustice In the context of marginalized knowers needing to model how their actions are perceived by dominantly situated kn owers....
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Epistemic injustice
from Epistemic Injustice by Miranda Fricker Related to social power...
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Self-knowledge
Reflexivity vs Reflectivity1 Self-illumination/reflexivity Every conscious experience is directly revealed to itself....