« Ethics Powerpoint | Main | NCLB: Local vs. Federal Control »

October 17, 2007

Muddy Point: Metaphysics and Epistemology

Categories: EDUC 110

A number of your muddy point cards indicated some confusion about the difference between metaphysics and epistemology. Well, you are in good company, because philosophers have been trying to figure that out for 3000 years! But for our purposes here, there are some ways to make the distinction clearer.

Metaphysics deals with the nature of reality. It asks questions like: is there one thing that everything (or everything that looks alike) common? Or do human beings(or other things) have something that stays constant despite the fact that we seem to be changing all the time? Is the "me" that teaches your class the same "me" that took philosophy classes 12 years ago or the same "me" that won an award in second grade for reading more books than anyone else? Metaphysics looks for essences -- the stuff that lies at the core of what something is. Many religious questions are metaphysical ones as well -- is there a god, if there is, what is god like, etc.

Epistemology deals with knowledge and truth. The principle question of epistemology is "How do I know something?" We may think that answer is obvious -- 'I know something because I can see it or because some one told it too me. But our senses are very unreliable. Other people are even more unreliable. Then, there are some stuff we say we know that don't depend on any sorts of sense whatsoever. Does seeing tell you that 2+2=4? Knowledge seems to depend on truth -- you can't know something that isn't true (you can believe it, but that's different), so epistemology asks questions about truth. What makes 7-2=5 true? Are there features of the world that make it true, in the same way that there are features of the world that make the sentence "The sky is blue" true? Or is it all just a matter of convention? Are things true just because we think they are?

Epistemology and metaphysics are related. There may be underling features of the world (we find out what they are by metaphysics) that make 7-5=2 true. So answering an epistemological question may require a metaphysical answer. And metaphysics may be impossible without epistemology. If there is an underling structure to the world, then how would we know it?

Both are important to education. We presumably want our students to be able to tell truth from falsity and hold beliefs for good reasons. Those are epistemological goals. And if there is an underlying structure to reality (be it spiritual, mathmatical, or whatever) then shouldn't schools be teaching students about that stuff instead of all the stuff that seems to be real and important?

Remember Plato's cave? He wants us to get out of the cave and into the sun. Education helps us figure out what is true and real. Those are epistemological and metaphysical goals.

Posted by Nakia at October 17, 2007 03:41 PM