Neurological Embodiments of Belief and the Gaps in the Fit of Phenomena to Noumena

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The traditional terms ‘epistemology’ and ‘philosophy of science’ are not quite right for many of the exciting current developments that go by these names. Whereas classical epistemology tried to answer the problem of knowledge without assuming any knowledge in the process, naturalistic epistemologists (Quine, 1969), Copernican epistemologists (Shimony, 1970), and evolutionary epistemologists (Campbell, 1959, 1974a) deliberately beg the question, and undertake epistemological inquiries assuming that present-day physics and astronomy give us approximately valid knowledge of the world to be known, and that evolutionary biology, psychology, and sociology tell us something about man the knower. Such epistemological efforts can be conducted in loyal compatibility to traditional epistemology, as in accepting the negative results of the skeptical tradition: our shared epistemological predicament with Plato’s prisoner in the cave, the scandal of induction, the argument from illusion, and the irrefutability of solipsism. To the traditional epistemological question, ‘Is knowledge possible?’ the logical answer is ‘no’. We cannot be sure that we know, or when we know.