Epistemology

Beginning next Monday, I'll be teaching a class at Kilns College on Critical Thinking.

I intend to spend some time in the first class on epistemology--truth and knowledge. In particular, I will discuss--and demonstrate the absurdity of--two very flawed epistemological views that are rampant in our culture. That is, most of your neighbors, relatives, and friends subscribe to one or the other--or more illogically still, both--of these ideas. I mean, of course, scientism and postmodernism.

I want to blog on scientism in the next post. And I have blogged on postmodernism in the past, and will again in the future. For now, I just want to point out one of the many absurdities of it.

Postmodernism, which is taught in the humanities departments of our colleges and universities, holds that truth--if it exists at all--is unknowable. But if this is true, er, I mean, well, let's just say if this is so, it makes the ideas of learning and education nonsensical. What person in their right mind would pay good money (and at most universities nowadays, heaps of it) to listen to the mere opinions of stuffy old--or flashy young--professors?

The reason we go to institutions of higher learning, and encourage our children to do the same, is that--no matter what we say--we all know that truth exists, that one can grow in knowledge and conform their ideas more and more to truth, especially by sitting under learned men and women, those who have the greatest knowledge about their respective fields. If parents really believed the postmodern epistemology, be certain that they wouldn't be helping their children to take four years out of their life just to party and play games.

Come to think of it, since the epistemology of postmodernism so clearly undercuts the ideas of knowledge and learning upon which the university system is based, why do college presidents and deans allow their humanities departments to teach it?