On the Road to Formal Epistemology

Abstract

Logic as a philosophical discipline was established in Ancient Greece by Aristotle from Stageira and Chrysippos from Soloi, and it took more than two thousand years until in the works of Boole, Frege, and Peano logic was turned into a formal discipline. The approaches of Boole, Frege, and Peano towards formalization of logic were rather different and the final synthesis created by Whitehead and Russell brought a remarkable combination of the ideas of the three pioneers of formalization of logic. We are convinced that epistemology is just before a similar formalization than that, which occurred in logic. Epistemology as a philosophical discipline was established in the works of Descartes, Locke, and Kant. It seems that sufficient time has passed since the age of the founding fathers of epistemology so that we can embark on the project of turning epistemology into a formal discipline. The aim of the present paper is to delineate one possible road that could lead to this goal.

(Non-peer-reviewed essay on the occasion of Ladislav Tondl's 90th birthday.)