I reverse the process which has been common in philosophy since Kant. It has been common among philosophers to begin with how we know and proceed afterwards to what we know. I think this a mistake, because knowing how we know is one small department of knowing what we know.
Source: Bertrand Russell: My Philosophical Development, 1959, chapter 2,n.1
More info.: https://russell-j.com/beginner/BR_MPD_02-010.HTM
* a brief comment:
In the "Russell's Words for Today" (see attached image), Russell claims that "knowing how we know is only a small department--a subset--within the larger set of what we know." To me this seems perfectly obvious.
Yet it appears that quite a few people --what one might call the "over-earnest" crowd-- fall into unproductive speculation because they feel they must first tackle how we know before they can know anything at all. Am I mistaken in thinking so?
In our time, the various sciences are advancing at a rapid pace, and every day vast amounts of scientific knowledge worth learning are being generated. To avoid getting lost in a speculative maze, I believe that philosophers, especially those concerned with methodology, need a broad base of scientific literacy --quantum information, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, probability theory, AI, and so on. What do you think?
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