Spinoza's Theory Of Epistemology

For my first Get Out paper, I have chosen to write about Epistemology. Epistemology is known to be the study of human knowledge. It simply explains how we get it, what it is, whether we have it, or why we don 't. Each philosopher had a different theory about knowledge and how we come about it. Descartes believed that if we wanted to believe in something with a certainty, that we had to first doubt everything that we already know. In other words, we had to simply pretend that everything was questionable. Descartes believed that the power to think was not a mistake and by thinking, we prove that we have minds. Descartes believed that we could have knowledge by believing that an all-good, all-powerful God would not permit us to be deceived when …show more content…
Impressions are direct, vivid, and forceful products of immediate experience. Ideas are merely feeble copies of these original impressions. The next philosopher, Leibniz suggested that we are born with certain innate ideas. The simple concept of adding two plus two to equal four is evident to us without empirical evidence. This was believed to be a necessary truth. The last philosopher, Spinoza claimed to know all the way one can know something and also claimed to know what everything is. Spinoza 's method of epistemology consisted of two aspects. One was formal and another was more concerned with the concrete perspectives that defines the different ways it can have knowledge. We see that The Geometric Method addressed the human mind and the different ways it can have knowledge. Spinoza believed that by starting with God, the one substance that is everything, that we will see that some things cannot be denied. The way to know something is to know the different ways that knowledge can be known and the different ways knowledge knows things. Through perspectivism, we are able to have the perspective of having knowledge. Each philosopher worked hard to prove his theory as being the right …show more content…
Personally, I lean more towards what Locke says about us being a blank slate. We do not have knowledge when we are first born. We do not know how to talk or tie our shoes. We do not know how to count or ride a bike. This information is not stored inside of us for us to automatically know how to do. Locke states, "No proposition can be said to be in the mind which it never yet knew, which it was never conscious of" (199). We must be taught how to do it. We attain the knowledge, as we are taught and as we learn more about it. A child learns how to speak from copying people around him. He learns how to pronounce the words and his speech builds up as he goes on through life. It is by physically doing these things, that we gain the knowledge of them. This is something that I truly