As we grow up in life we come to certain conclusions as to what we can know and how we go about knowing it. What exists in the world and how it exists is what metaphysics is all about and how we know what exists in the world and what this knowledge is makes up epistemology.

All our judgments about the world presuppose these two frameworks. In fact, any judgment is impossible without them. The better your metaphysics and epistemology the better the quality of your judgments.

Remember what we said earlier? That people don’t upgrade because they can do just fine with earlier versions of their conceptual software?

Well this is what has happened throughout our evolutionary history. We as humans had to satisfy very basic needs for thousands of years. Thus our conceptual software has been developed to solve the everyday issues of our own survival. The more complex our methods for surviving became, the more our conceptual framework evolved to accommodate the increasing complexity.

Thus our epistemology and metaphysics might be good at helping us survive and reproduce, but when we try to use the same epistemology and metaphysics to do something else, they falter. It is like trying to use a hammer to measure the temperature. It’s not made for it. But just because you can’t measure the temperature with a hammer that doesn’t mean that temperature does not exist or that it cannot be known.

Yet funny as this example may be, this is exactly the situation that many of us find themselves today.

(part 2 of 4) Previous - Next