How do we know anything?

Wisdom begins in knowing that you know nothing; relentless questioning exposes false certainty.

True knowledge is of the eternal Forms, grasped by reason; the senses give only shifting opinion.

Responding toSocrates

Knowledge is built up from experience and organized by logic — the syllogism.

Responding toPlato

The skeptic's answer: for every claim there is an equal counter-claim, so suspend judgement — and find peace.

In India, a parallel science of knowledge: only two valid means — perception and inference — sharpened by the Buddhist logicians.

Responding tothe Nyāya realists

Certainty is found within: even in doubt, 'if I am deceived, I exist' — and eternal truths require divine illumination.

Responding tothe skeptics

Systematic doubt strips away every uncertain belief until certainty is refounded — anticipating Descartes by centuries.

Responding tothe philosophers' overreach

I can doubt everything except that I am thinking: 'I think, therefore I am' becomes the foundation of knowledge.

Responding toskepticism

The mind is a blank slate; all ideas come from experience — there are no innate ideas.

Responding toDescartes' innate ideas

Pushes empiricism to its limit: we never observe causation, only habit, and reason cannot justify induction.

Responding toLocke and Berkeley

Both sides are half right: the mind supplies the forms (space, time, cause), experience supplies the content — so knowledge is real, but only of appearances.

Responding toHume, who 'woke me from dogmatic slumber'

Return 'to the things themselves': describe the structures of consciousness and how objects are given, bracketing our assumptions.

Responding tothe impasse of realism and idealism

Meaning and knowledge live in language: our words get their sense from use in shared 'language games', not from private certainty.

Responding tothe Cartesian inner picture

We never prove theories at all; knowledge grows by bold conjecture and rigorous attempts at refutation.

Responding tothe quest for certainty