We all need a means to validate what we claim as our knowledge. We need to know how to know things, how to achieve certainty that the ideas we hold and act on, are valid and true. We don’t have automatic knowledge, but we require knowledge in order to act successfully. Hence our need for a means of validating any and all information we hear, and the ideas we generate ourselves, so we can proceed to do things with confidence of success.

An epistemology is a fundamental set of ideas that form the basis of your thinking, your method of knowledge validation. The method you use to discern what is real and what is not, must be grounded in the correct epistemology. Otherwise, in the long run, only failure and suffering can result.

Explicit versus implicit

The first point to note is that we all use an epistemology, even if we haven’t heard of the word. But our epistemology remains implicit, unless it is specifically stated in terms of the fundamentals of one’s thinking — which of course, it isn’t.

Implicit, in this context, means that it is necessarily a part of the mental process, even if it is not consciously recognised, or verbalised.

Two Epistemologies

In the broadest sense, and for all practical purposes in validating information, there are only two epistemologies: one that is correct, based on reason and logic, and another that is incorrect and based on faith and emotions. I use the term ‘correct’ here, assuming that successful action, staying in touch with reality, and the achievement of one’s goals is always the desired outcome. The correct epistemology is rooted in the acceptance of an objective reality that is knowable, the incorrect one is not.

[I must add here, that Epistemology is a very wide and comprehensive subject. In this context I am not talking about concept formation, the structure of reasoning, or other sub topics within epistemology. I am referring only to the essential principles (or lack of them) at the base of the concept of knowledge that distinguishes the essence of the only two basic approaches.]

For the purpose of illustration here, I shall refer to the correct one as the epistemology of reason, and the incorrect one as, the epistemology of faith, and I will show you why one is correct, and the other is not.

Philosophical Bedrock

To begin with, these two opposing epistemologies come directly from two corresponding opposing views of the nature of reality. Now we’re getting into metaphysics – the most fundamental branch of philosophy. And the basic issue is this: Either reality is real and exists independently of any consciousness, or it isn’t, and it doesn’t.

The important point to note is that if one adopts, and holds as true, certain ideas, such as consciousness creates reality; the hermetic principle that “all is mind”, one is, to that extent, implicitly using the wrong epistemology. (as I shall demonstrate)

Lets look at these two views of the nature of reality, and see how they lead to opposing views of the nature of knowledge and the ability of the human mind to know reality.

The first, I shall refer to as the primacy of existence. According to this view:

That which exists, the world, reality, existence, is what it is independent of the content of any consciousness. Facts, existence, have metaphysical primacy, they come first, they set the terms, they are there, they are real, they are independent of any mind or consciousness. Reality is an objective absolute, and consciousness (according to this view) is merely the faculty of grasping what is out there, what antecedently and independently exists. Consciousness is simply the faculty of perceiving, grasping, identifying, coming to discover what is out there.

The alternative view, I shall refer to as the primacy of consciousness. According to this:

Existence is a by-product, a creation, a derivative of consciousness.