HEURISTIC EPISTEMOLOGY TO LIMIT DIVISIVENESS
Keywords:
EPISTEMOLOGYAbstract
When contrary truths collide, adherence can potentially lead to divisiveness and sometimes violence. If truth is the goal of enquiry, how is truth to be pursued or adhered to without causing conflict or, worse, violence? To address these concerns, a distinct approach to epistemology is being proffered in the hope that the process of enquiry, deliberation, assent/dissent, and adherence are practised with authenticity. The name given to this new understanding of the role of epistemology is Heuristic Epistemology (HE). This approach comprises of three symbiotic and heuristic modalities, namely, the Triad of Apperception, Appraisal, and Appropriation, undergirded by the understanding that the notion of truth is a type of virtue
References
Cited in Lynette Evans, Wisdom/or Life, New York: Book Blocks, 2003, 34; emphasis added.
Aristotle, Nicornachean Ethics, trans. W. D. Ross, in Robert Maynard Hutchins, ed., Great Books of the Western World, vol. 9, Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952, 1114 32.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann, New York: Vintage Books, 1974, §4.
Miguel de Unamuno, The Tragic Sense of Life, trans. J. E. Crawford Flitch, New York: Dover Publications, 1954, 22.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, in Robert Maynard Hutchins, ed., Great Books of the Western World, vol. 19, Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952, I-II, 3, 5.
Devitt, "The Metaphysics of Truth." He argues, rightly or wrongly, that, "Any semantic doctrine needs to be disentangled from Realism. In particular, the correspondence theory of truth needs to be disentangled: it is in no way constitutive of Realism nor of any similarly metaphysical doctrine." Michael Devitt, "The Metaphysics of Truth," in Steven Hales, ed., Metaphysics: Contemporary Readings, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1999,94.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Helen Zimmern, Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2004, 2 (Preface);
Robert G. Ingersoll, The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, vol. 1, ed. C. P. Farrell, vol. 1, Lectures (New York: Dresden Publishing, 1901), lecture titled "Individuality";
