Introduction
Edmund Husserl is a 20th-century philosopher and founder of phenomenology. According to intentionality is a phenomenon where the mind is directed by interests towards objects which intend to fulfill and are provided by intuitions. In this, he saw a psychological tie between the perception of the object in question is given and the sign itself. Phenomenology is a radical practice of the philosophy that emphasis more the attempt to describe phenomenon the way it is presented on the consciousness of the person experiencing it rather than on past knowledge or experience. Husserl explains natural attitude as phenomena where human beings find themselves placed in the dual temporal spheres of the past and the future in which the world of their understanding is one. In this, time is always in motion and ‘being there from one horizon to the next. Human experience happens in time placed within these horizons which eternally are beyond their reach but always perceptible in the smallest array of their conscious sight. This is the view of the world influenced by filters such as biological, cultural, psychological, etc (Sebastian, 1998).
The phenomenological attitude is where time operates within the confines of our consciousness and cannot be measured by any physical means. The steps involved in phenomenological attitude are: first, one takes up a stream of consciousness brought about by mental processes of intending, perceiving, understanding, and other activities. Then these streams come together and combine to unified glances of the unclear horizon which nevertheless perceives and brings about specific independence and individual freedom. The last step happens when one moves beyond the natural attitude to a deep consciousness where one can understand what makes up events and essences that are in the natural world. At this stage, one has reached the phenomenological attitude ((Sebastian, 1998).
The ‘question of Being’
To understand the existence of human beings, Heidegger posed the ‘question of being’. He says that human beings exist yet our being is subject to systematic and radical uncertainty since we will die and death is important to live. To being there, self-awareness will lead to the creation of being out of nothing where time is a crucial part as we evolve historically, and then the question of why there is something instead of nothing is answered (Philipse, 1998).
There are several modes of being entities, the Vorhanden, ‘present-at-hand, where the character of resting in the fact that something is, and in reality is and has a temporal structure since awareness is an incident which is linked to time though not eternal and used in regard for natural entities rather than artifacts. Another mode is the Zuhanden, ‘ready-to-hand as put forward by Heidegger. These entities become reachable when our concern is in them in a way or we mind about them. This way an object interests us and we look at it carefully and it becomes equipment that can be used for something. Another mode is Heidegger’s Vorhandensein, ‘presence-at-hand’ mode which means the object is at hand and available for use. This, he mostly used regarding views of others. Heidegger’s phenomenology differs from that of Husserl’s in that the latter focuses on the human mind in time and not on specific objects as regards the former. The significance of the difference is that Heidegger looks at objects about a human being more comprehensively than Husserl (Inwood, 1999).
Sartre on freedom and anguish
According to Sartre anguish is the emotional apprehension of oneself, what one may perform or may not perform. This comes about when one chooses external values which are determined by facts of which one’s will is not in control. Freedom, on the other hand, is when one’s values are from within as such they make the foundation of behavior which can be altered at any time and therefore possible not to have any values at all. The connection between freedom and anguish, therefore, is the choice of values either external which results in anguish, or from within which can be changed at any time. Bad faith in this case is when something outside of us either derived from human nature or God, influences our choice of values (Mumford, 2007).
Conditions necessary for knowledge
Knowledge is the rational grasp of the particular aspects of reality that must be justified as true belief derived from valid evidence and arguments. Belief is a state of mind in the course of maximizing its understanding that creates pillars to which a general understanding of the specific facts arises. This application of a general rule to specific situations has been challenged as not providing a complete picture of knowledge. Truth and belief as necessary conditions for knowledge are related in the following casual relationship: p is truth, S believes that p. Each condition is essential for knowledge therefore, any illustration that fails to satisfy this relationship is not a case of knowledge. These two conditions must together be adequate for knowledge, therefore, any instance that satisfies. These two conditions are not sufficient for knowledge in difficult cases in that specifying the type of connection is hard and that it presents a hard environment for ethical and mathematical knowledge (Sosa & Jaegwon, 2000)
Hume’s Problem of Induction
Hume, in describing this problem meant that humans reason by making inferences concerning casual relations ‘which can lead us beyond the immediate impressions of our memory and senses’ (Moser, 1989). He says that humans use the experience to position beliefs we have about things we have not observed as a matter of fact and form beliefs based on what we have not seen. We use the relation of ideas when its denial is impossible, inconceivable, or self-contradictory and concern ourselves with knowledge of unobserved matters of fact when denial is fully possible, imaginable, and not disagreeable. This leads to the question of how human beings reach their opinions concerning unobserved matters of fact. The solution to concerns about unobserved matters of fact is an experience that informs our predictions about the matter. The other solution is regarded to the normative problem on whether the conclusions we make about something as a result of our experience are justified. He argues that since we take data to theory, there must be a connection between the two. This principle connecting the two is taken for granted but it matters in deducing the reasoning we come up with. Hume takes the premise as the regularities that have emerged in my experience and that this experience is representative of nature. This is called the representativeness principle. Hume, therefore, comes up with an inference that Data + Uniformity of Nature to Theory are valid. This means that when faced with a natural belief we are justified in accepting it as it is.
Contextualist account of knowledge
This refers to many views on the knowledge found in philosophy. These emphasize the circumstance in which an action, a conversation, or even an utterance was made and the argument is that such an action, utterance, or conversation can only be understood within that situation. Philosophists following this believe that meaning p, knowing that p, having reason to A, and possibly right making sense about a particular context. In these philosophers enquiring about knowledge should only consider meanings of words in the situation of an intention and that finding meanings of such words in isolation is futile. Ambiguity in the meanings of expressions can lead to different interpretations of the expressions. This is called moderate contextualism. In this context is described by a method and its related assumptions. One makes a hypothesis that the method used is enough or reliable and that it is done in correct working circumstances to derive knowledge by using the method (Sebastian, 1998).
Another approach to the context of knowledge is the conception of privileged self-knowledge of what we think and what we mean. This can be looked at in the view of Lewis Stripes’ ‘elusive knowledge’. In this he says that one does not know with certainty if the evidence one has does not eliminate the possibilities of doubts about the knowledge but if the doubts can be ignored properly this can be accepted as certain. However, Lewis has put a set of rules: the rule of actuality, one cannot properly ignore the likelihood that finds; rule of belief; rule of resemblance; rule of reliability of knowledge processes and standard methods of non-deductive inference (rule of methods); and rule of attention to the skeptical possibility. In these rules, Lewis draws attention to two important cases that knowledge of something may be good or poor and as a result of this account of understanding is that limitation of knowledge knows by ignoring (Sebastian, 1998).
Reliabilists
This position is grounded on the perception that for a belief to be justified it must be generated reliably. David Armstrong is the main proponent of the analogy that ‘knowers track the truth just as thermometers reliably track the temperature’. He makes a comparison of the reliability of thought-forming processes to that of a thermometer tracking temperature with the belief that the same manner of law-like connection between beliefs and truths. Thus the process reliability theory states that a belief is justified if and only if it is produced by a process that reliably leads to true beliefs’ (Soso & Jaegwon, 2000). This theory has been criticized in that it cannot adequately elucidate why knowledge and validated belief are more important than simple true belief.
Reference list
Bac, M. (2005). The Myth of Non-Epistemic Truth as a Necessary Condition of Knowledge, Bogazici University press.
Inwood, M. (1999). A Heidegger dictionary: Modes of being. Blackwell Publishing.
Moser, P. K. (1989). Reliabilism and Relevant Worlds. Philosophia, vol 19, issue 2-3. Pg 155-164.
Mumford, S. (2007). David Armstrong:Philosophy now. Philosophy Now (McGill-Queen’s) Series. Queen’s University Press, 2007
Philipse, H. (1998). Heidegger’s question of being. Princeton University Press.
Sebastian, L. (1998). Husserl’s Phenomenological Discovery of the Natural Attitude. Continental Philosophy Review. Vol 31, issue 2. pg 153-170
Sosa, E. & Jaegwon, K. (2000). Epistemology: An Anthology. Blackwell Publishing