Epistemology and Ontology.

Clarity and confusions over knowing and being.


Knowing and being.

Two words that have dominated philosophy for several thousand years.

Epistemology - Knowing.      Ontology - Being.

First we must distinguish between knowing, being, and Truth.
There are fundamental aspects of knowing and being that should not be considered in relation to whether they are true or not. (If for no other reason than "truth" being riddled with ambiguity).

What does it mean to "know"?

There is silent knowledge and spoken knowledge. Silent knowledge concerns being, spoken knowledge concerns memory.
Spoken knowledge is the prime concern of classical epistemology. First we should consider Silent Knowledge and its relation to Being.

Silent Knowledge

What is it that confirms your feeling that you exist? That you are present, awake and alive?

Prior to any thoughts randomly emerging 'from who knows where?' to create distraction, and that's what thoughts are, distractions, prior to any interference with the silence, that is just what there is - Silence. And that silent presence is a sense of being that gives knowledge of existence.
In silence it cannot be questioned, it just is. To question it breaks the silence, but the consequence of its existence, the sense of being continues. Even as the mind chatters away with all manner of mumbo-jumbo the underlying silence of being continues as a known thing.

There may or may not be further structure to the simple Silence that without the interference of thought gives knowledge of existence, but initially just acknowledge its presence. Do not allow the thought processes to jump in and insist you know more or demand answers to further questions. We can go deeper later.

Spoken Knowledge

Epistemology is in essence argument. Linguistic conflict.
If I say something you agree with we have no dispute, we both know.(but what we know need not be true).

If we disagree we have differing opinions, our assumed knowledge is not shared knowledge. We have conflict. Our understanding is that we cannot both be correct.

We may have conflicting opinions about how to spell the word 'skepticism', or 'scepticism', but have a shared understanding that the word relates to questioning knowledge, belief, dogma and truth(s), no matter how we spell it.
It is important to treat the terms Epistemology and Ontology with great simplicity, as the academics have made an enormously confusing mish-mash of the topic.

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