What Our Research Project at the University of Tartu is About
Over the centuries philosophers have discovered apparently intractable problems with our most fundamental concepts, such as these:
time, space, parthood, meaning, truth, goodness, color, knowledge
These problems are so intractable and fundamental as to throw the legitimacy of those concepts into doubt. Recent advances in logic and science have done little or nothing to erase the disputes. Given these centuries-old controversies, it is doubtful that we can have knowledge concerning these disputed concepts since even the best informed. least biased, and most open-minded experts are locked in sustained disagreement.
Take this for an example: many philosophers and color scientists hold that commonsensical beliefs about color are false. They think that scientific facts about color—such as facts about how our experiences of color are strongly effected by the composition of air, the relevant lighting, and details about our eyes, brains, and even emotions—show that ordinary objects such as tomatoes, scarves, and pumpkins are not colored at all, and hence many of our ordinary beliefs about colors are false.
A second example: some philosophers who specialize in metaphysics and the philosophy of physics think that the physical universe is just a swarm of elementary particles and fields, and commonsensical beliefs about macroscopic objects, such as the belief that there are many trees in North America, are all false even though they are good enough to rely on for practical and even scientific purposes.
Finally, some philosophers of logic and logicians think that the fact that after two millennia of intensive investigation into the paradoxes of truth, there is nothing even approaching consensus of solution, shows that truth is an inconsistent notion, almost like the notion of a naked person with jeans on, and hence there are no truths at all.
It's fascinating that philosophical disagreement often crosses from the abstract to commonsensical ideas, such as these:
Twice two is four
Some tomatoes are at least partially red
There are trees in the backyard
Many truths about the eye are unknown
That's the car I bought three years ago
Influenced by the fundamental paradoxes of philosophy, some philosophers think that those claims are actually false even though they are useful to rely on in virtually all contexts.
On the other hand, there seems to be great progress in philosophy over the last century, especially with the philosophical use of logic, physics, computing theory, linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, decision theory, biology, and other successful fields. But how can there be all this progress if the intractable expert disagreement robs us of even the most commonsensical knowledge?
The Department of Philosophy in the Institute of Philosophy & Semiotics at the University of Tartu serves as the host of our project into these issues regarding expert disagreement, controversy, and progress. The primary goal is to understand the epistemology of these notions, in philosophy and science.