Rocco D’Ambrosca: 04/21/2010
Thesis: Knowledge is gained through meditative reflection upon experience gained through sensory perception.
No man can reasonably call himself a Rationalist, as a priori knowledge simply doesn’t exist and is only an artificially contrived concept. Man also does not acquire knowledge exclusively as an Empiricist. I suggest an alternative to this dilemma, and offer the Meditivist. A Meditivist subscribes to the theory that knowledge is acquired through a combined mechanic of data collection, stored as memory through experiential sensory perception, which is intuitively analyzed and reflected upon, through mentally focused meditative thought, which processes and synthesizes this array of data into specialty memories called knowledge.
I will argue against the existence of a priori knowledge and Rationalism as a theory for knowledge, while developing Empiricism into a more complete and full account of knowledge acquisition, resulting in a new conception of knowledge called Meditivism.
Readings of focus:
Albert Casullo, “Revisability, Reliability, and the A Priori”
John D. Norton, “Why Thought Experiments Do Not Transcend Empiricism”
Bruce Aune, “An Empiricist Theory of Knowledge”
Stathis Psillos, “How to be a Scientific Realist: A Proposal to Empiricists”
Adrian Bardon, “Empiricism, Time-Awareness, and Hume’s Manners of Disposition”
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