10.1. How do we acquire knowledge?

Epistemology is the study of the nature and scope of knowledge and justified
belief. It analyzes the nature of knowledge and how it relates to similar notions such
as truth, belief and justification. It also deals with the means of production of
knowledge, as well as skepticism about different knowledge claims. It is essentially
about issues having to do with the creation and dissemination of knowledge in
particular areas of inquiry.
Epistemology asks questions like: "What is knowledge?", "How is knowledge
acquired?", "What do people know?", "What are the necessary and sufficient
conditions of knowledge?", "What is its structure, and what are its limits?", "What
makes justified beliefs justified?", "How we are to understand the concept of
justification?", "Is justification internal or external to one's own mind?"

10.2 Mentalism vs. Materialism

In the world of philosophy, there are two sides who theorize of what we call
reality. There are the Mentalists who view the world through an Idealist point of view. They
view everything as a subjective experience, in other words, to be is to be
percieved. According to mentalists, nothing is concrete, the things we touch, see, smell,
taste, and hear are nothing more than sensations. Since they are nothing more than percieved
sensations, it is impossible to conclude that something truly exists. Mentalists also view the
mind as its own entity, operating in ways that are impossible for humans to understand.
Then there are the Materialists, who view everything that can be sensed is
reality. Materialists don't believe in supernatural forces or mysterious entities. They view
the mind as an organ that functions as a product of the enviroment. They believe that reality
is constant and does not change according to people's perceptions. So when it comes down to
it, both sides have good cases.
1. Mentalism: Interactionism and Idealism
Interactionism was propounded by the French rationalist philosopher René
Descartes (1596–1650), and continues to be associated with him. Descartes posited
that the body, being physical matter, was characterized by spatial extension but not by
thought and feeling, while the mind, being a separate substance, had no spatial
extension but could think and feel. Nevertheless, he maintained that the two
interacted with one another, suggesting that this interaction occurred in the pineal
gland of the brain.
In the 20th century, its most significant defenders have been the noted
philosopher of science Karl Popper and the neurophysiologist John Carew Eccles.
Popper in fact divided reality into three "worlds"—the physical, the mental, and
objective knowledge (outside the mind)—all of which interact, and Eccles adopted
this same "trialist" form of interactionism. Other notable recent philosophers to take
an interactionist stance have been Richard Swinburne, John Foster, David Hodgson,
and Wilfrid Sellars, in addition to the physicist Henry Stapp.
One objection often posed to interactionism is the problem of causal interaction
– how the two different substances the theory posits, the mental and the physical, can
exert an impact on one another. Descartes' theory that interaction between the mind
and the physical world occurred in the pineal gland was seen as inadequate by a
number of philosophers in his era, who offered alternate views: Nicholas
Malebranche suggested occasionalism, according to which mind and body appear to
interact but are in fact moved separately by God, while Gottfried Leibniz argued in
The Monadology that mind and body are in a pre-established harmony. On the other
hand, Baruch Spinoza rejected Descartes' dualism and proposed that mind and matter
were in fact properties of a single substance, thereby prefiguring the modern
perspective of neutral monism.
Today the problem of causal interaction is frequently viewed as a conclusive
argument against interactionism. On the other hand, it has been suggested that given
many disciplines deal with things they do not entirely understand, dualists not
entirely understanding the mechanism of mind-body interaction need not be seen as
definitive refutation. The idea that causation necessarily depends on push-pull
mechanisms (which would not be possible for a substance that did not occupy space)
is also arguably based on obsolete conceptions of physics.
 In philosophy, Idealism is the group of metaphysical philosophies that assert
that reality, or reality as humans can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally
constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, Idealism manifests as a
skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing. In contrast
to Materialism, Idealism asserts the primacy of consciousness as the origin and
prerequisite of material phenomena. According to this view, consciousness exists
before and is the pre-condition of material existence. Consciousness creates and
determines the material and not vice versa. Idealism believes consciousness and mind
to be the origin of the material world and aims to explain the existing world
according to these principles.
Idealism theories are mainly divided into two groups. Subjective idealism takes
as its starting point the given fact of human consciousness seeing the existing world
as a combination of sensation. Objective idealism posits the existence of an objective
consciousness which exists before and, in some sense, independently of human ones.
In a sociological sense, idealism emphasizes how human ideas—especially beliefs
and values—shape society. As an ontological doctrine, idealism goes further,
asserting that all entities are composed of mind or spirit. Idealism thus rejects those
physicalist and dualist theories that fail to ascribe priority to the mind.
The earliest extant arguments that the world of experience is grounded in the
mental derive from India and Greece. The Hindu idealists in India and the Greek
Neoplatonists gave panentheistic arguments for an all-pervading consciousness as the
ground or true nature of reality. In contrast, the Yogācāra school, which arose within
Mahayana Buddhism in India in the 4th century CE, based its "mind-only" idealism
to a greater extent on phenomenological analyses of personal experience. This turn
toward the subjective anticipated empiricists such as George Berkeley, who revived
idealism in 18th-century Europe by employing skeptical arguments against
materialism. Beginning with Immanuel Kant, German idealists such as Georg
Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph
Schelling, and Arthur Schopenhauer dominated 19th-century philosophy. This
tradition, which emphasized the mental or "ideal" character of all phenomena, gave
birth to idealistic and subjectivist schools ranging from British idealism to
phenomenalism to existentialism.
Idealism as a philosophy came under heavy attack in the West at the turn of the
20th century. The most influential critics of both epistemological and ontological
idealism were G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell, but its critics also included the New
Realists. According to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the attacks by Moore
and Russell were so influential that even more than 100 years later "any
acknowledgment of idealistic tendencies is viewed in the English-speaking world
with reservation". However, many aspects and paradigms of idealism did still have a
large influence on subsequent philosophy.

2. Materialism
Materialism holds that the only thing that can be truly proven to exist is matter.
Thus, according to Materialism, all things are composed of material and all
phenomena are the result of material interactions, with no accounting of spirit or
consciousness. As well as a general concept in Metaphysics, it is more specifically
applied to the mind-body problem in Philosophy of Mind.
In common use, the word "materialist" refers to a person for whom collecting
material goods is an important priority, or who primarily pursues wealth and luxury
or otherwise displays conspicuous consumption. This can be more accurately termed
Economic Materialism.

3. Why the Mentalist–Materialist controversy?

Crane (1995), is this:
 If we believe that the mental is qualitatively different from the physical, then
how can the two interact? Here the Mentalist is stuck for an answer.
 If the mental is not qualitatively different from the physical, then how can we
make sense of the phenomenon of consciousness? Here the Materialist is hard
put for an answer.