Transition of the conception of knowledge: from Descartes to Reid

Abstract

In this paper, I discuss the conception of knowledge in modern philosophy. I will not analyze it through the entire course of modern philosophy but instead focus particularly on British empiricists. I will then describe how changes in the conception of knowledge occurred during this period by the introduction of psychological considerations into the epistemology. In modern philosophy Descartes held the strong conception of knowledge which implied certainty. According to this conception, if our beliefs accept the lowest dubiousness, we cannot consider them as knowledge. Descartes tried to develop his whole epistemic system by means of this conception. John Locke, the founder of British empiricism, took over this conception from Descartes. Though Locke, unlike Descartes, seems not to have taken uncertainty of our beliefs seriously, he distinguished knowledge from opinion, which was the belief which did not have certainty. I argue that this conception of knowledge changed gradually after Locke. His follower, Berkeley, explicated our perceptual process of vision and introduced it into his epistemology. I think his argument is a sign of the change of epistemology. Many thinkers and scientists came to pay attention to our physiological system of knowledge-generation. In the other words, their concern about what was knowledge shifted to how our knowledge was generated. My main point is that the conception of knowledge was softened with that change. And then, I point out that this change was the naturalization of epistemology in modern period.