This is a very interesting post. Based on the nature of knowledge, would you say that it tends towards dogmatism? In other words, by the very nature of cognizing subject-object relationships, is one more likely to fall into the trap of dogmatism due to the nature of "knowing?" If I claim to "know," then I have no choice but to believe that knowledge to be the truth, otherwise, it is not "known." Therefore, does all knowing tend towards dogmatism, or is there an exception to this?
You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
I wouldn't say knowledge itself tends to dogmatism but humans do.
The nature of knowledge itself is a relation between a subject-knower and an object-known. Whenever a subject-knower claims they know an object of knowledge then they might be recognizing said connection (in which case they might encounter other types of problems on the way). On the contrary, when someone claims that objects of knowledge have some sort of supremacy over the subject-knower (meaning that the act of knowledge happens independently of the subject) then they fall into Dogmatism... which means they aren't even recognizing there is a problem of knowledge.
Now, when we claim we "know" something we might believe that knowledge to be true, however, knowing something and believing we know something are quite different things. We can in fact believe we know something to be "true" but that does not necessarily mean it is. It also doesn't necessarily means that something is not known... you know? haha. I suppose a clear way to see it would be to remember Socrates philosophy of self-knowledge and the phrase "I only know that I know nothing": to truly know one must take on everything we know and everything we don't know (I would include: and everything we think we know)
About your last question, due to the problem of the possibility of knowledge and the possible answers or approaches that one might take to tackle/explore this problem, Dogmatism is actually not the only epistemological position that exists. When it comes to the problem of the possibility of knowledge we can encounter Skepticism (which is considered the contrary of Dogmatism), Pragmatism, Subjectivism and Relativism. I plan to develop on each of those later on, on another chapters.
Thank you so much for your comment and your questions!