I'm taking this from a book written by one of my professors from the Universtiy of Southern California, William F. O'Neill:
At basis, most philosophers recognize four possible sources of metaphysical knowledge (abstract philosophical truth).
1) Knowledge for underlying reality many be communicated directly and actively from a metaphysical source in the form of personal revelation.
2) Ultimate knowledge may be derived from experience though the process of abstraction (as it is in Aristotle's philosophy). Such knowledge is only indirectly essential (absolute), because it is necessarily contingent upon the abstractive process itself which is, in turn, a secondary manifestation of prior sense-perceptual experience. Such knowledge is, then, necessarily mediated by personal awareness.
3)Such knowledge may not be acquired at all but may preexist within the organism itself as inherent truth which is only subsequently recognized as corresponding to (or matching) the underlying nature of encountered reality.
4)Such Knowledge may be derived pre-rationally on the basis of the earliest sort of motor-emotional behavior during the first months and years of childhood and may therefore only subsequently (if ever) be \"rationalized\" as explicit knowledge.
Okay, do you agree that O'Neill is accurately describing the paths to knowledge that have been described by philosophers, and which path do you find most compelling?
Can you match up the different paths to different philosophers or schools? Which one is supernaturalist? Which one is intuitionalist or instrumentalist? Which one did Plato use? Which one does Rand use? bis bald, Nick
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