Could Descriptive Epistemology Save Gorgias from Philosophical Inconsistency?

Abstract

The article offers a meaningful analysis of the terms normative and descriptive epistemology, interpretations of their content in contemporary analytic philosophy (W.V.O. Quine, R. Rorty) in the context of their application to describe the ancient sophistic epistemology. The author substantiates the application of descriptive epistemology to the realities of ancient philosophy, namely, to the sophistry of Gorgias in the framework of the appropriationist history of philosophy. As examples we consider the Sophistic inquiry, which, depending on the speaker’s ultimate goals, could be presented as nomadic or as logos-navigation, as well as the problem of the correct understanding of physical and mental phenomena and the ways of correctly pointing them out in Rorty and Gorgias. These examples show that the application of descriptive epistemology to ancient philosophy can change the interpretation paradigm of sophistry and significantly adjust the view of ancient epistemology.