Democritus' Epistemology

Democritus is a materialist: he believes that physical matter is the only reality and that psychological states can be explained as physical functions.

So he starts thinking about what someone can know, and he comes up with two things
      First, he believes that only things that can be perceived are real or true.
     Secondly, he thinks that the truth of something is in its appearance.

But, given his atomic theories, he realizes that there are opposite and infinite appearances of one thing due to the shape, arrangement, and position of its atoms…and all of these appearances can’t be true!

So….What can we know?

Well, he says that thought and sensation are caused by atoms impinging on the body from the outside, but this leads us to a huge epistemological problem: If what we know about the world is derived from our sense experiences, but the senses themselves are not in direct contact with the nature of things, just these atoms, then we can’t really know anything. And, he’s not a skeptic, so he wants a better answer than that.

He wonders if the mind could overthrow the senses, but this wouldn't work because he still thinks that the senses are the mind’s only route to truth. They’re all we’ve got to go on, but they just aren’t substantial enough. For example, you can’t perceive atoms with your mind, you have to sense them. Our knowledge of the properties of atoms is always based on the senses. But then you have this conflict because the senses report properties that the atoms don’t really possess in their nature, like colors and tastes. This means that there’s this huge potential for doubt – there’s a large gap between what we can perceive, and what actually exists.

So basically, here’s where we’re at. Democritus says that the knowledge of truth is difficult, because perception through the senses is subjective. The same senses prescribe different impressions for each individual, meaning that we can’t perceive the Truth through our senses. We can only interpret the sense data through the intellect and try to grasp the truth.

 So, he comes up with the fact that there are two kinds of knowledge.

        The first is bastard knowledge, which is Concerned with the perception through the senses. He says this is insufficient for knowing truth, because it is subjective according to the individual. It’s subjective because sense-perception is due to the effluences of the atoms from the objects to the senses. When these different shapes of atoms come to us, they stimulate our senses according to their shape, and our sense-impressions arise from those stimulations.

          The second is legitimate knowledge. It’s achieved through the intellect, and you must evaluate “Bastard” knowledge/sensory perceptions through inductive reasoning.  After you take into account subjective sense impressions, you can:

1)      Examine the causes of the appearances
2)      Draw conclusions about the laws that govern the appearances
3)      Discovery the causality by which they are related.

Once you have these three things figured out, you can be pretty sure of your knowledge!