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Epicurean Epistemology
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This chapter presents Epicurus’s theory of knowledge as a response to the epistemological pessimism of Democritus. The first section discusses the three ‘criteria of truth’—sense-impressions, preconceptions, and the feelings of pleasure and pain; and also Epicurus’s account of perceptual error, by which he tried to show that the senses do after all offer true and consistent, if sometimes fragmentary, information. The second section deals with Epicurus’s scientific method, that is, the confirmation and refutation of beliefs or theoretical hypotheses. In a final section, I briefly discuss the role of the feelings as criteria in ethics, and the kind of reasoning Epicurus used to call ἐπιλογισμός.
Title: Epicurean Epistemology
Description:
This chapter presents Epicurus’s theory of knowledge as a response to the epistemological pessimism of Democritus.
The first section discusses the three ‘criteria of truth’—sense-impressions, preconceptions, and the feelings of pleasure and pain; and also Epicurus’s account of perceptual error, by which he tried to show that the senses do after all offer true and consistent, if sometimes fragmentary, information.
The second section deals with Epicurus’s scientific method, that is, the confirmation and refutation of beliefs or theoretical hypotheses.
In a final section, I briefly discuss the role of the feelings as criteria in ethics, and the kind of reasoning Epicurus used to call ἐπιλογισμός.
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