Chapter 2.4: Michel Foucault, epistemes 

This is fascinating, thank you. You’re right regarding Foucault, though in many significant ways he always remained very Eurocentric, while also challenging many European doxas. Guess it’s inevitable...

That is very nice and beautiful, but it does miss the very central point about what Descartes was trying to do. Descartes was hellbent on finding real 'truth', and argued that I cannot know that some demon has not put a veil over his eyes and mind and is tricking him into believing he is alive (think of it today as you cannot know if you are in the matrix). Because, according to Descartes, we dream and hallucinate, so clearly our senses cannot be trusted. And so, he spent a considerable amount of time considering how to prove the existence of himself and others. 'Cogito ergo sum' is the start of this. His argument? I cannot know that anything exists, but my mind is thinking thoughts, so clearly on some fundamental level, there must be a mind that thinks, and therefore I exist. Descartes goes on to argue for the existance of God, the duality of the body/mind and a host of other things that don't quite make up for his interesting demolition of reality. But his ideas is still affecting the world. The sentence gets thrown around quite a lot but a lot of people don't really stop to reflect on what he was doing or what is his argument was for. In sum, Descartes may well agree that belonging is a beautiful sentiment and REASON to live, but this sentiment would not help his argument for if the world and existence is real.

@@michaelrandall6957 well, we all acknowledge today that Descartes' argument is poor, given the uncritical way in which he assumes God's existence so as to anticipate a ground-floor of his knowledge; that being the awareness of himself as a thinking thing. What the person above was attempting to display, however, is that before we can categorize ourself as a thinking thing, we must first belong to a whole culture or episteme in which our notion of thinking thing might be included into the accepted discourse. While Descartes' argument is clearly subjective, and even parochial towards an entire paradigm of epistemes, it is harder for us to acknowledge that even the notion of a thinking thing is itself something equally parochial and partial.

He is Lord Jesus? His name is Victor Gijsbers.

He looks like Jesus and sounds like Beelzebub 🎉

the first among you shall be the last

Thanks to both of you!

It's Victor Gijsbers, he's a lecturer at Leiden University! His lectures are also the funniest I've ever attended.

W

hey queen I hope it went well

@@Alina-xt8eh you dote!! It’s still going but going much better than it was before these xx

@@jennyboanca473 Now I need a follow up. How was it?

@@aristoteles4723 I got a first class hon :) thank you for asking!! X

The mere concept of 'episteme' is just hermenutics with different words. Foucault hated Science.

GRT didn't replaced Newtonian calculus, it enhanced and gave it a more precise process, thus, offering the best result in order to understand Physics. Science is based on new ''better'' and deeper understanding of old ''imprecise'' one. Or even proving it WRONG and replacing it with actual facts, checked and rechecked ad nauseaum. That's how Scientific Method works so well and why Philosophy fails in understanding that....

@@veronicagorosito187 Doing calculations is not the same thing as doing science. The mathematics of newtons theory agree well with GR within certain parameters but the concepts and mechanics are completely different. So Newtons theory is not embedded in GR since they aren't compatible on a conceptual or mechanical level. Philosophers don't usually take issue with the Scientific Method. What they question is whether most science is actually done according to the Scientific Method.

interesting perspective

no

Wow jus blew my mind. With that question.

In my opinion, one of Foucault's contributions to the philosophical/historical study of science is that, he manages to prove that the apparent clear-cut line between a "science" and the "knowledge in general", according to the actual history of any science, is actually not that clear and definite...

Science comes from the latin world scientia which means knowledge. Maybe this is why he refers to knowledge as science

@@xxx6555 Science is an act, the act of using the Scientific Method to produce scientific results that are proven real facts. Science is not knowledge, but contributes to it. Science is the act of observation of phenomena in order to understand it. This produces changes in the society exposed to those facts in a way that the actual social knowledge is more precise than before. Knowledge is a broad term and is not related to Science per se, as knowledge can involve non scientific acts as daily labor which doesn't needs detailed, deep, precise empiric observation to prove itself as a fact.

1. resemblance; 2. representation; 3. "man".

Yes

Is this some distinction that figures in Foucault's work? I don't know much, but how we acquire natural language seems kind of controversial between Faucolt and Chomsky, so is this distinction related to this disagreement?

@@truebomba The comment was only meant to clarify the distinction between the meaning of the words 'automatic' and 'unconscious' used in the video.

If you look at the definition of episteme I put on around 6:16, I do define it explicitly in terms of discourse. For Foucault -- at least at this stage of his thinking, perhaps made most explicit in The Archaeology of Knowledge -- discourse is indeed primary. But precisely because it is primary, we can say that the rules governing serious discourse are the underlying assumptions of the particular field of knowledge. I doubt Foucault would disagree with that, as long as we were careful not to interpret these phrases too psychologically. (If you think I'm wrong, I would of course be very much obliged if you could point my either to a relevant passage in Foucault or to a relevant secondary source.)

@@VictorGijsbers If I am to sum up in my own words: By the term Episteme Foucault refers to those underlying codes and rules and assumptions and values (and so on) ingrained in society in a particular epoch which mould/guide that particular society's concept of knowledge, what knowledge is to be pursued, how to pursue that knowledge, and so on. - is that right?

@@VictorGijsbers Will I be wrong in thinking that "conditions of possibility" is a materialistic approach?

Those philosophers seem to have an agenda and it's based on injecting the idea that reality (matter) can be created with language (words), thus, enhancing, validating and being absolutely functional to religion (magical thinking, the Verb, the Word, creating objects with just saying words, etc). Also Kant based all of his work on magical thinking, implying that if I don't see the Moon, so the Moon doesn't exists till I see it. But if I close my eyes, the Moon disappears from existence (!!!!), or that the Moon is ''me saying 'moon' '', thus, making it ''to exist with my words'', etc. That's the most ridiculous conception about Physics. It was the same debate that had Einstein being really pissed at Bohr because he couldn't accept his dear friend maintained a silly and unintelligent assupmtion like that. (Einstein - Bohr's debate).

@Der Gorghast You have to be quite full of yourself to call yourself a "rationalist".

@Der Gorghast Ok, so you're just a troll

@RineGal Give it a rest....please

@jose sanchez .....😂 that's a joke comment, right? You are taking the piss? Or at least unintentionally funny. Excellent!

@jose sanchez ......😂😂 cool. Top trolling ...in an intelligent way.

What's BLM? is this an argument against something specific or are you just typing out the incoherent dialogue inside your head?

@@farizramli8681 Black Lives Matter (BLM). I can't help you understand the science of skin ''color'', as white is not a skin color, but pale, or lack of melanine. And black is the same skin with much higher melanine. There's not white, nor black races. WE are only one, human race with different phenotypes. Anyway I won't discuss with someone who don't have content. Incoherence is in your ignorance first.

​@@veronicagorosito187 Genuinely perplexed by your response. I can't seem to pinpoint what your overarching argument here is, primarily in relation to the video. Are you disagreeing with Foucault's notion of the episteme, or are you making a political point? Mind you, I am not American hence the first question. So, your argument is that skin colour has to do only with gene expression resulting in phenotypes, so its only foundation (or lack thereof) is different levels of melanin. In that sense, races are arbitrary except for that fact; which is a view that racial eliminativism and skepticism commonly holds. Let's say I agree with you. What I still do not understand is how all this ties back together. Are you against racial constructionism? Even if so, what is the relevance to this video and the concept of epistemes? What has Black Lives Matter got to do with it? Which philosophers are you referring to when you say that 'also philosophers: you can create things with words'?

I also think similarly, but Foucault here is not arguing against creativity in science. He is warning about the danger of the episteme. Simply Leaving the idea of Episteme as is, means no free will. Focault would’ve been proven wrong if we simply mentioned all the new discoveries and creations in culture.

@@yakinimoseley6792 Ever see the debate between Foucault and Chomsky? I think episteme of intellectuals and language opens forms of abuse against biology. As intellectuals are using logic found in language to make judgments of biology and it's influence on behaviors to seek a rational to ignore biology's imperatives.

Maybe the presentation is circular and lazy. But Foucault brings up the fact that ideas don't come from a vaccuum, they come from the society they were formed in. In the same way that there was an episteme about how to do science, there were epistemes on *who* was deemed capable of doing science. As an example, a plantation slave may have had the exact same "good and working" ideas as a university academic in the 1800s, but that would not make the ideas valid in the eyes of society. Racial and gender epistemes were only challenged recently, and in some ways may still be around, so I would argue that an idea can be good and working and still not taken seriously because of epistemes surrounding the person who came up with the idea. This does not extend only to race and gender, an example you may prefer extends to class. If (somehow) a farmer with no more than highschool level knowledge asked for a grant from a university research comitee to carry out a study, he would likely be denied even if his idea was sound. They may do so on the grounds that they don't believe the farmer to be capable of carrying out such a study accurately. In some fields, women and people of colour still claim to suffer from these barriers, and I would personally be inclined to believe them, having been in academia myself.

Philosophers are arbitrary & openly marxists that fails to understand what and how Science works lol If there are someone that thinks this statement is wrong: Tell me about a rightwing philosopher and there you have it...