While writing “What’s on their mind? Biological and Artificial Intelligence,” I came across many interesting philosophical works that gave me a better comprehension of epistemology, that is, the theory of knowledge (learn more about this here). The following five books were the ones that prove to be the most useful for me to understand the issues around the concepts of knowledge and learning in the era of the internet.
This is one of the most influential books ever written. Kant’s middle way between Rationalism and Empiricism, depicted for the first time in history, an interactive mind, a view that current cognitive theories can still relate to. Indeed, both knowledge and the sensory inputs coming from reality are gathered through a construction, rather than through recording or processing. However, this is not an easy book to read for neophytes, and you may need the support of additional philosophical works to understand Kant’s evolving thoughts better. I especially liked, C. D. Austin’s these “Toward a Unified Theory of Cognition: A Kantian Analysis,” (Theses and Dissertations, UNF 2003) and Alain Renaut’s French presentation and translation of Kant’s book.
Daniel Dennett relies on recent discoveries from biology and computer science to show how natural selection crafted the mind. He explains that a crucial evolutionary shift occurred when humans stopped doing things based on their genetic instinct and instead developed the ability to share memes, primarily through language. The same natural selection happened between memes, producing thinking tools and enabling us to perceive, react to, and understand, as well as design our own memes. There are also several videos on Youtube featuring Daniel Dennett worth looking at, such as this one.
How do we know a cat is a cat or what is freedom? How much of our perception of objects and concepts rely on our cognitive ability, and how much on linguistic? The semiologist Umberto Eco gives us clues to these questions by exploring, in six remarkable essays, issues of reality, perception, and experience. Eco shares his wealth of literary, philosophical, and historical knowledge, to tackle day-to-day problems in an inspiring and entertaining fashion.
Gettier presented in this small essay two cases in which a true belief is inferred from a justified false belief. As such, he shows that such beliefs cannot be knowledge but merely lucky guesses. These “Gettier cases” have changed epistemology and the way we assess what knowledge is.
This paper reinforces constructivist ideas about the nature of cognition and knowledge. It describes how knowledge generation among agents proceeds through interactions with the environment. It supports the constructivist view that knowledge is actively constructed by cognizing agents and shared in the process of social cognition. It additionally argues that info-computational can be modeled as info-computation.
For those who can read French, I additionally highly recommend the collaborative work called “Philosophies de la connaissance (Philosophy of knowledge)” published by the University of Montreal Press (Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2016). Several epistemology specialists present the views of the most influential Western thinkers and how they influence our understanding of what knowledge is.
These were the books that I found the most helpful while writing on knowledge. What about you? What philosophical books are your favorites? Share them in the comments below and be sure to enjoy the reading, wherever you are this summer.
