Knowledge
This theme runs through several big questions. Here are the ones where it plays out.
The questions that illuminate it
Can we reach definitive certainties?
If nothing is ever certain, no knowledge holds firm and action loses its footing; yet to believe oneself certain is to risk shutting one's eyes and learning nothing more. To take a position is to say whether doubt is a form of honesty or a dead end.
Where does our knowledge come from: sensory experience or reason?
Does everything come from the senses, which nonetheless deceive us at times, or does the mind hold truths no experience could supply? Resting knowledge on experience alone deprives it of certainty; on reason alone, it cuts it off from the real world. To take a position is to say what to rely on, in the last resort, in order to know.
Can we legitimately believe without sufficient evidence?
To believe commits us: the shipowner who talked himself into trusting, without proof, that his vessel would hold answers for the wreck, for he had no right to believe it. Must we then proportion every belief to the evidence, or are there cases, friendship, commitment, faith, where refusing to believe for want of a guarantee would itself be a fault? To take a position is to say what we owe to evidence when we form our beliefs, and what we are accountable for in holding them.
What makes a belief justified?
From pseudo-sciences to rumours, countless beliefs present themselves as justified: what remains is to know what that warrant rests on, first certainties, the agreement of the whole, or methods that have proven themselves. Depending on the answer, we draw the line between knowledge and what merely looks like it in a different place.
Does science describe the world as it is, or does it construct its own objects?
Do scientific theories unveil the real as it is, or are they useful constructions, marked by our concepts and our history? If they state the truth, science settles matters above mere opinion; if they construct, its authority is only one point of view among others. To take a position is to say what we can truly expect of scientific knowledge.