My posts are different (at least so far) than Jordan's. I don't know if this will always be the case (well, we're different people, so it probably will), but maybe not always thematically.
At any rate, I'm currently studying a book called
Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, by J.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig. The title fits the book perfectly, so I won't go into a detailed description. Instead, over the course of the next several months, I plan to slowly post my notes and thoughts about what I'm reading.
I'm currently mired in the study of epistemology, which the book breaks into five chapters:
- Knowledge and Rationality
- The Problem of Skepticism
- The Structure of Justification
- Theories of Truth and Postmodernism
- Religious Epistemology
I think I'm going to find all of this pretty fascinating. I am in the early stages of the "Knowledge" part of the chapter on knowledge and rationality, and would like to impart some of what I'm learning to the blogosphere. So here we go.
There are (approximately) three types of knowledge:
- Knowledge by acquaintance (e.g., "I know the ball in front of me.")
- Know-how (e.g., "I know how to play golf.")
- Propositional knowledge, where someone knows that P, where P is a proposition (e.g., "I know that Ronald Reagan was a Republican president.")
Of the most interest to philosophers (at least in the study of epistemology) is the third. Since the time of the ancient Greek philosophers, people in and outside philosophy have offered definitions for propositional knowledge. Plato offered (though he did not completely endorse) what has come to be known as the
standard definition of (propositional) knowledge: knowledge is justified true belief (or JTB), sometimes called the
tripartite definition. This makes sense, by and large. To know something, one must believe it to be true, it must be true, and you must be justified in that belief (i.e., have a good reason for believing it). While these are fairly obviously necessary conditions, Edmund Gettier showed in 1963 and they are not sufficient. He constructed what are now called Gettier-type counterexamples to the JTB definition. Unfortunately, it's late, so I am going to leave you hanging without an example, but they are on the Interweb.
More later.
Just don't forget to keep Christ central, otherwise you are taking your authority from philosophy and on its own philosophy is dead.
ReplyDelete"To know something, one must believe it to be true, it must be true, and you must be justified in that belief (i.e., have a good reason for believing it)."
ReplyDeleteThis is something utterly important to anyone searching for answers about eternity. And for anyone claiming to be a Christian this is fundamental.
Mark Cahill said in his book 'One Heartbeat Away': "Be sure that you search for what is true, not just for something that you already believe. Make sure you have evidence to prove you're taking a calculated leap of faith."
I didn't lightly make the decision to follow Christ, I did research to KNOW I was putting my faith into something that was true.
I've heard of Moreland and Craig but haven't read this book, let me know how it goes.
Scripture to back up what Jordan said:
ReplyDelete"See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition AND THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF THIS WORLD rather than on Christ."
Colossians 2:8 (emphasis added)
Moreland and Craig are solid. W.L. Craig is an intellectual giant and is a great apolgist in Christian Philosophy circles.
ReplyDeleteIf you are looking for solid evidence for creation, life after death, and other issues that non-believers question, these two guys are money.