re: "If you believe something, you must think it’s true. Otherwise you wouldn’t believe it. Likewise, if you disagree with someone, you must think they’re wrong—that their perspective on reality is false or inaccurate in some way. Otherwise, you wouldn’t disagree with them."
I think you just need practice in believing untrue things.
"I can't believe that!" said Alice.
"Can't you?" the Queen said in a pitying tone. "Try again: draw a long breath, and shut
your eyes."
Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said: "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I
always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six
impossible things before breakfast."
(Lewis Carroll -- Through the Looking Glass, and what Alice Found There)
<grrr, no matter what I do substack won't preserve my formatting>
Easy to take this as a tongue-in-cheek comment, but it's a great point. Beliefs don't just appear out of thin air fully formed; there is usually a transitional process of coming to believe, or allowing yourself to believe, or even choosing to believe (William James). I think the technical term is "as-if" thinking.
Indeed. Also there are a good many people who are committed to believe things, because their faith or ideology demands this of them. Catholics who believe in the Transubstantiation aren't going to abandon this belief if you run a chemical analysis of the Eucharist and report that you didn't find any haemoglobin in it. Marxists of a certain stripe assert that Dialectical Materialism demands that logical contradictions in thought be resolved, politically, by changing the world, rather than by concluding that at least one of the contradictory things is simply wrong. I think many people aren't much worried about whether their beliefs are true but more whether they are fashionable. It's tempting to argue that 'those cannot be real beliefs', but if it walks like a belief and quacks like a belief then our 'real'/'unreal' division begins to look like personal preference.
He does have the Dewey/Lippmann debate. But discussion of the 3rd person effect in the misinfo/polarization debate often reminds of this essay by James: https://monadnock.net/james/blindness.html
Very interesting and thanks for sharing your syllabus more widely. I wish more professors would do that.
This comment goes beyond what should be covered in a philosophy course, but I think that it is important to understand the distinction between a philosophy and an ideology. A philosophy seeks to understand the world, while an ideology seeks to change the world (or at least one society) to a desired state.
While it is true that it is difficult to assess how well a philosophy understands the world, it is not very difficult to test whether an ideology once implemented can change a society via the power of government to a state that the upholders of the ideology desire.
Many ideologies have by those terms failed because either:
1) They failed to convince enough supporters to get their policies implemented, or
2) The policies were implemented, but they failed to achieve the desired results.
3) Or in implementing the policies, they produced such catastrophic results that very few people want to follow them anymore.
More specifically, it is also possible to test the actual results of a specific policy in the real world. The most effective means to do so are Randomized Controlled Trials. RCTs do not test the validity of the ideology directly, but they do test the results of the actual policies advocated by the supporters of the ideology.
I am not claiming that the results of RCTs will convince true believers of an ideology, but they can play an important role in convincing those who are not.
Respectfully I disagree with your distinction between a philosophy and an ideology.
Am ideology does not 'seek to change the world to a desired state. ' At least, this was never implicit in the work of early thinkers about ideology eg Lukacs, Mannheim ..
Considering the work of such early thinkers who used the term an ideology was seen as the reason that a social class did not see and act in accordance with its class interests. An ideology was not a guide to action but rather served as a veil, a veil that confused and befuddled those in its grasp. It was why traditional economic class radicalization as outlined by Marx did not appear to be working.
Lukacs was indeed a Marxist and yes he wanted to change the world. Bear in mind that Marx felt it was inevitable that the proletariat would recognize their shared immiseration, develop class consciousness and move to political action. The mystery to him and other Narcissist was why this wasn't happening. It was too address this problem that he proposed the idea of ideology. People were so bamboozled by the ideology of the day that they hadn't been following the previously confidently predicted oath to class consciousness.
I repeat - ideology wasn't seen as a means to change the world it was rather seem as an explanation of if why the world wasn't changing in accordance with the predicted alignment with class consciousness.
If you like, it was an attempt to explain the failures of the Marxist model if social change.
That is the Marxist doctrine of "false consciousness" and the Marxist definition of "ideology." That does not make it the actual definition of "ideology." And no philosopher should confine themselves to Marxist definitions.
Marx and Marxists have the fantasy that their ideology is "scientific" and all other world views are incorrect "ideologies" or "false consciousness."
If you define words only by what Karl Marx believed, then you are headed for trouble, confusion, and bad results.
I never made any claim about what Marx believed. I only made a claim of the term "ideology." Marx was wrong, and so was Lukacs.
I am pretty confident that Dan Williams is not trying to teach of course on Marxist terminology, so all your points are not relevant.
The Marxist use of the term did not exhaust it's usage.
Let's look at other uses
I'm so such cases I can think of a distinction can useful be drawn between the descriptive and the normative.
In the case of ideology - any ideology - there is a descriptive dimension a model of the world frequently but not always this may include an axis of oppression. So far this is descriptive. However, once believers in this model start promoting actions to remedy such percieved oppression we have entered the normative realm. And this is I imagine what you have in mind when you say that ideologies serve to change human affairs.
The problem is that at this level of generality practical any action is information by what in this sense would constitute an ideology.
What we tend to find is something rather different. My beliefs aren't an ideology but yours are.
I think the confusion arise from two years of the term ideology.
The original use which was influential in philosophy and social theory is the one I described. This usage is consistent with you having contrasted philosophy and ideology.
A more recent usage is a slur on any belief system that one doesn't agree with. This appears to be what you actually have in mind.
I'm social science there are many believe systems you could find an ideology that didn't sell to chance society - anarchism is not one of them.
Lukacs and Managing are important if you care about the history of the word/idea. I suggest that is important because if you don't have a clue what it originally meant you don't really understand how the idea has enjoyed.
I don't see a clean distinction between "philosophy" and "ideology." A philosophy seeks to understand the world, but then goes on to prescribe how things should be based on that understanding; whereas an ideology has an understanding of the world that it uses to justify its prescriptions for how things should be.
Is Plato a philosopher? What about the "Republic"?
I think in the pre-modern era (let's say before 1830) there was a clear blurring of the two, but that was not restricted to ideology.
Philosophy meant a love of learning. In the modern era, knowledge has become so complex and large that philosophy has been broken down into separate disciplines that are now called social sciences and hard sciences. Modern ideology is one more of those divisions.
Knowledge is far more specialized than in the pre-modern world.
But I still think that there is a fundamental difference between that an using the power of government to change society towards a desired state.
This is a great syllabus, with great recommendations. I already enjoyed Heath article and I'm planning to read more. Any chances that the course will be recorded and available online?
Too bad I'm always a day late to catch up with these. Looks like a great syllabus. I just wanted to mention a new article that looks sort of interesting - it suggests the recent movement in "political epistemology" is caught between a rock and a hard place, in that those coming from analytic philosophy have been overdoing the epistemology while leaving out most politics, history and culture; whereas those from political and critical theory bring theoretical and normative agendas that turn epistemic questions into more politics. You definitely lean to the epistemic side, but I think your empirical and psychological bent helps to bridge some of that gap (or at least, counter some of the excesses). Curious what you'd think: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ejop.13028
Great course. Sorry you didn’t have room to include “Rationalism and Politics “ by Michael Oakeshott, which presents an unfashionable view of the kind of knowledge that is wanted in practical endeavors, including politics.
What about Hayek on knowledge (nobel prize lecture, I think) and Sowell's further development in Knowledge and Decisions against Lippmann's view of political knowledge.? Also Kenneth Minogue Alien Powers: the pure theory of ideology.
Hayek and Sowell are both great - and included in the recommended readings. I'm not familiar with Minogue - I'll check it out (or at least add it to the list)
"it’s intended for philosophy students, so it mostly ignores relevant empirical research in political psychology and social science"
I'm not persuaded that the fact the course is for 'philosophy students' is good to ignore such material. In fact I diubt you find this persuasive.
Would Dennett have written in the mind whilst ignoring neuroscience? I think not.
There is of course excellent reason to not delve into the corpus of material you note - it's just too much to cover in seven weeks. Fair enough. It does however have its dangers. But this danger is of course present for many areas of philosophy which does not exist in a vacuum.
I am wrapping up a direct, apolitical response to one of your post-election pieces (regarding Darwinian Cynicism and Economics), and leading into a response piece to David Pinsof's presentation of Darwinian Cynicism. On his recommendation, I separated the question of the veracity of Darwinian Cynicism from the question of whether it is prescribable or even constitutes a functional ESS.
As the common thread will be the concept of "productive tensions," this piece rounds out the issues well. This is especially true of the Lippman/Dewey debate, of which I was unaware. After completion, I hope I can ask of you a quick read and a brief, surface level response at your leisure, should you find yourself with any leisure that is.
Truth & reality...In a way this is Trump's third term:
The Biden Administration Did Not Take Place
Nathan Pinkoski
When Jean Baudrillard wrote his infamous 1991 polemic The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, his point was not to deny the existence of the conflict in the Persian Gulf. It was, rather, a reflection on the changing character of war.
The primary arena of military power, Baudrillard argued, had shifted from the use of actual force to the control of the information space. Information technology and those who controlled it—the media and the military—had captured reality.
The Biden administration likewise revealed the changing character of Western politics. Its actions did not proceed from the political will of the executive. It was, instead, a non-administration, an experiment that aimed to put an end to politics, and to all political threats to a unified system of control.
The speed at which Trump’s opponents have retreated, after all their rhetoric about the existential threat he posed to democracy, “clearly shows that on all sides”—as Baudrillard would say—that the Biden administration “is considered not to have taken place.”
Almost everything on this planet IS and has ALWAYS BEEN political, because politics is “ the process whereby it is decided who gets what, when, where and how”.
In recent year I've discovered I often write/think about things that can ba 'classed' as "moral philosophy", I'm wondering how that (if we put to one side the rabbit hole of ethical dilemmas) compares to "political epistemology".
I personally find ontologies more annoying than epistemologies.
I agree with Laura that any difference is nonexistent or inconsequential, but for me it's more a matter of informal vs. formal usage than whether there is a theory of knowledge or other ways of knowing. In my experience, "epistemic" refers broadly to anything explicitly concerned with knowledge or knowing (including belief, evidence, truth, etc.), including informal contexts. "Epistemological" means the same thing, but might sound a bit stuffy and awkward for colloquial contexts since it's more associated with the study of knowledge or formal questions of knowledge. It doesn't matter that much though.
I'm in the 'there is no difference' camp. But the people writinh philosophy who think there is a difference - or at least all the people I've read who have asserted that there is one - say that there are 'ways of knowing' that don't connect to any 'theory of knowledge'. So "epistemic" is broader, and is about "all of the ways that we know what we know". But I've never been convinced that there are any. Even if your answer to 'how do you know X is true' is 'I took a lot of LSD and saw it' or 'God gives me visions' you _still_ have a theory of knowledge, just one that says 'I can apprehend truths that are revealed to me through drug use or come from God'. I admit that the conversation is likely to either end or spin monstrously out of control when I ask, "ah, and how do you know that", but the same thing happens when I ask "how do you know the evidence of your senses is real?".
Not sure if that helps...
[edit -- also some of the people using the term epistemic are neurologists and other scientific sorts who are studying cognition and who wanted to keep the philosophers out of their conversations, i.e. my theory of knowledge says that your entire field of epistemology isn't relevant.]
re: "If you believe something, you must think it’s true. Otherwise you wouldn’t believe it. Likewise, if you disagree with someone, you must think they’re wrong—that their perspective on reality is false or inaccurate in some way. Otherwise, you wouldn’t disagree with them."
I think you just need practice in believing untrue things.
"I can't believe that!" said Alice.
"Can't you?" the Queen said in a pitying tone. "Try again: draw a long breath, and shut
your eyes."
Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said: "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I
always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six
impossible things before breakfast."
(Lewis Carroll -- Through the Looking Glass, and what Alice Found There)
<grrr, no matter what I do substack won't preserve my formatting>
Easy to take this as a tongue-in-cheek comment, but it's a great point. Beliefs don't just appear out of thin air fully formed; there is usually a transitional process of coming to believe, or allowing yourself to believe, or even choosing to believe (William James). I think the technical term is "as-if" thinking.
Indeed. Also there are a good many people who are committed to believe things, because their faith or ideology demands this of them. Catholics who believe in the Transubstantiation aren't going to abandon this belief if you run a chemical analysis of the Eucharist and report that you didn't find any haemoglobin in it. Marxists of a certain stripe assert that Dialectical Materialism demands that logical contradictions in thought be resolved, politically, by changing the world, rather than by concluding that at least one of the contradictory things is simply wrong. I think many people aren't much worried about whether their beliefs are true but more whether they are fashionable. It's tempting to argue that 'those cannot be real beliefs', but if it walks like a belief and quacks like a belief then our 'real'/'unreal' division begins to look like personal preference.
Thank you for the outline. I would be interested to know why there weren't more Pragmatists in the syllabus.
A review of someone like William James might prove useful in a time of hyperventilated "ideological" discourse.
We have lost the ability to distinguish what creates from what destroys.
He does have the Dewey/Lippmann debate. But discussion of the 3rd person effect in the misinfo/polarization debate often reminds of this essay by James: https://monadnock.net/james/blindness.html
"I had been as blind to the peculiar ideality of their conditions as they certainly would also have been to the ideality of mine."
Very interesting and thanks for sharing your syllabus more widely. I wish more professors would do that.
This comment goes beyond what should be covered in a philosophy course, but I think that it is important to understand the distinction between a philosophy and an ideology. A philosophy seeks to understand the world, while an ideology seeks to change the world (or at least one society) to a desired state.
While it is true that it is difficult to assess how well a philosophy understands the world, it is not very difficult to test whether an ideology once implemented can change a society via the power of government to a state that the upholders of the ideology desire.
Many ideologies have by those terms failed because either:
1) They failed to convince enough supporters to get their policies implemented, or
2) The policies were implemented, but they failed to achieve the desired results.
3) Or in implementing the policies, they produced such catastrophic results that very few people want to follow them anymore.
More specifically, it is also possible to test the actual results of a specific policy in the real world. The most effective means to do so are Randomized Controlled Trials. RCTs do not test the validity of the ideology directly, but they do test the results of the actual policies advocated by the supporters of the ideology.
I write more about this here:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/the-case-for-randomized-trials-in
I am not claiming that the results of RCTs will convince true believers of an ideology, but they can play an important role in convincing those who are not.
Respectfully I disagree with your distinction between a philosophy and an ideology.
Am ideology does not 'seek to change the world to a desired state. ' At least, this was never implicit in the work of early thinkers about ideology eg Lukacs, Mannheim ..
Considering the work of such early thinkers who used the term an ideology was seen as the reason that a social class did not see and act in accordance with its class interests. An ideology was not a guide to action but rather served as a veil, a veil that confused and befuddled those in its grasp. It was why traditional economic class radicalization as outlined by Marx did not appear to be working.
Can you name an ideology that does not seek to change a society to a desired state?
Typically, supporters of an ideology try to use the power of government to do this. Anarchism would be one of the few exceptions to this general rule.
György Lukács was a Marxist, so, yes, he clearly did want to change the world. I don’t know which Mannheim that you are referring to.
More importantly, I am not sure why Lukacs and Mannheim are so critical..
Lukacs was indeed a Marxist and yes he wanted to change the world. Bear in mind that Marx felt it was inevitable that the proletariat would recognize their shared immiseration, develop class consciousness and move to political action. The mystery to him and other Narcissist was why this wasn't happening. It was too address this problem that he proposed the idea of ideology. People were so bamboozled by the ideology of the day that they hadn't been following the previously confidently predicted oath to class consciousness.
I repeat - ideology wasn't seen as a means to change the world it was rather seem as an explanation of if why the world wasn't changing in accordance with the predicted alignment with class consciousness.
If you like, it was an attempt to explain the failures of the Marxist model if social change.
That is the Marxist doctrine of "false consciousness" and the Marxist definition of "ideology." That does not make it the actual definition of "ideology." And no philosopher should confine themselves to Marxist definitions.
Marx and Marxists have the fantasy that their ideology is "scientific" and all other world views are incorrect "ideologies" or "false consciousness."
If you define words only by what Karl Marx believed, then you are headed for trouble, confusion, and bad results.
I never made any claim about what Marx believed. I only made a claim of the term "ideology." Marx was wrong, and so was Lukacs.
I am pretty confident that Dan Williams is not trying to teach of course on Marxist terminology, so all your points are not relevant.
You are right
The Marxist use of the term did not exhaust it's usage.
Let's look at other uses
I'm so such cases I can think of a distinction can useful be drawn between the descriptive and the normative.
In the case of ideology - any ideology - there is a descriptive dimension a model of the world frequently but not always this may include an axis of oppression. So far this is descriptive. However, once believers in this model start promoting actions to remedy such percieved oppression we have entered the normative realm. And this is I imagine what you have in mind when you say that ideologies serve to change human affairs.
The problem is that at this level of generality practical any action is information by what in this sense would constitute an ideology.
What we tend to find is something rather different. My beliefs aren't an ideology but yours are.
No, that is not what I have in mind. I never mentioned “oppression.”
Honestly, your writing is so unclear, obtuse and full of grammatical and spelling errors, that I have no desire to discuss with you.
Goodbye.
I think the confusion arise from two years of the term ideology.
The original use which was influential in philosophy and social theory is the one I described. This usage is consistent with you having contrasted philosophy and ideology.
A more recent usage is a slur on any belief system that one doesn't agree with. This appears to be what you actually have in mind.
I'm social science there are many believe systems you could find an ideology that didn't sell to chance society - anarchism is not one of them.
Lukacs and Managing are important if you care about the history of the word/idea. I suggest that is important because if you don't have a clue what it originally meant you don't really understand how the idea has enjoyed.
No. Ideologies long preceded Lukas. At the very least, they go back to the French Revolution or the Enlightenment.
If philosophers confuse themselves by incorrectly using the word "ideology" that is not my problem.
I never used the term "belief system." I said "ideology."
Ideology is not a slur.
You still did not actually answer my question, and I am having problems even understanding your argument.
I don't know what the phrase "from two years of the term ideology" means.
I don't know what the phrase "I'm social science there are many believe systems you could find an ideology that didn't sell to chance society" means.
If you are trying to convince me and others, you are not doing a good job.
Sorry
Phone typing errors
I can't seem to find a way to correct them in substack
I'm sure there's a way but haven't found it yet
I don't see a clean distinction between "philosophy" and "ideology." A philosophy seeks to understand the world, but then goes on to prescribe how things should be based on that understanding; whereas an ideology has an understanding of the world that it uses to justify its prescriptions for how things should be.
Is Plato a philosopher? What about the "Republic"?
I think in the pre-modern era (let's say before 1830) there was a clear blurring of the two, but that was not restricted to ideology.
Philosophy meant a love of learning. In the modern era, knowledge has become so complex and large that philosophy has been broken down into separate disciplines that are now called social sciences and hard sciences. Modern ideology is one more of those divisions.
Knowledge is far more specialized than in the pre-modern world.
But I still think that there is a fundamental difference between that an using the power of government to change society towards a desired state.
Sorry to disappoint you
This is very exciting!
This is a great syllabus, with great recommendations. I already enjoyed Heath article and I'm planning to read more. Any chances that the course will be recorded and available online?
Unfortunately not - although I will most likely be blogging about many of the topics covered in the lectures
Too bad I'm always a day late to catch up with these. Looks like a great syllabus. I just wanted to mention a new article that looks sort of interesting - it suggests the recent movement in "political epistemology" is caught between a rock and a hard place, in that those coming from analytic philosophy have been overdoing the epistemology while leaving out most politics, history and culture; whereas those from political and critical theory bring theoretical and normative agendas that turn epistemic questions into more politics. You definitely lean to the epistemic side, but I think your empirical and psychological bent helps to bridge some of that gap (or at least, counter some of the excesses). Curious what you'd think: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ejop.13028
Great course. Sorry you didn’t have room to include “Rationalism and Politics “ by Michael Oakeshott, which presents an unfashionable view of the kind of knowledge that is wanted in practical endeavors, including politics.
What about Hayek on knowledge (nobel prize lecture, I think) and Sowell's further development in Knowledge and Decisions against Lippmann's view of political knowledge.? Also Kenneth Minogue Alien Powers: the pure theory of ideology.
Hayek and Sowell are both great - and included in the recommended readings. I'm not familiar with Minogue - I'll check it out (or at least add it to the list)
Good job!
It's terrific that you are teaching a class like this. Really thought provoking. Is he fascinated to learn how it is received.
"it’s intended for philosophy students, so it mostly ignores relevant empirical research in political psychology and social science"
I'm not persuaded that the fact the course is for 'philosophy students' is good to ignore such material. In fact I diubt you find this persuasive.
Would Dennett have written in the mind whilst ignoring neuroscience? I think not.
There is of course excellent reason to not delve into the corpus of material you note - it's just too much to cover in seven weeks. Fair enough. It does however have its dangers. But this danger is of course present for many areas of philosophy which does not exist in a vacuum.
Needless to say. You know all this but ..
Excellent timing.
I am wrapping up a direct, apolitical response to one of your post-election pieces (regarding Darwinian Cynicism and Economics), and leading into a response piece to David Pinsof's presentation of Darwinian Cynicism. On his recommendation, I separated the question of the veracity of Darwinian Cynicism from the question of whether it is prescribable or even constitutes a functional ESS.
As the common thread will be the concept of "productive tensions," this piece rounds out the issues well. This is especially true of the Lippman/Dewey debate, of which I was unaware. After completion, I hope I can ask of you a quick read and a brief, surface level response at your leisure, should you find yourself with any leisure that is.
Hi William. That sounds really interesting. I’m completely swamped atm but will do my best!
Truth & reality...In a way this is Trump's third term:
The Biden Administration Did Not Take Place
Nathan Pinkoski
When Jean Baudrillard wrote his infamous 1991 polemic The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, his point was not to deny the existence of the conflict in the Persian Gulf. It was, rather, a reflection on the changing character of war.
The primary arena of military power, Baudrillard argued, had shifted from the use of actual force to the control of the information space. Information technology and those who controlled it—the media and the military—had captured reality.
The Biden administration likewise revealed the changing character of Western politics. Its actions did not proceed from the political will of the executive. It was, instead, a non-administration, an experiment that aimed to put an end to politics, and to all political threats to a unified system of control.
The speed at which Trump’s opponents have retreated, after all their rhetoric about the existential threat he posed to democracy, “clearly shows that on all sides”—as Baudrillard would say—that the Biden administration “is considered not to have taken place.”
https://tinyurl.com/3z55spv3
“As with all intentional action…political activities are guided by people’s beliefs about the nature of reality.”
Thanks for these posts! If you were building a civics class from scratch, how young would start, and how would you teach this to kids?
Almost everything on this planet IS and has ALWAYS BEEN political, because politics is “ the process whereby it is decided who gets what, when, where and how”.
In recent year I've discovered I often write/think about things that can ba 'classed' as "moral philosophy", I'm wondering how that (if we put to one side the rabbit hole of ethical dilemmas) compares to "political epistemology".
I personally find ontologies more annoying than epistemologies.
What is the difference between "epistemic" and "epistemological"? My 1980 unabridged Webster's only has the latter, and I don't trust the internet.
I agree with Laura that any difference is nonexistent or inconsequential, but for me it's more a matter of informal vs. formal usage than whether there is a theory of knowledge or other ways of knowing. In my experience, "epistemic" refers broadly to anything explicitly concerned with knowledge or knowing (including belief, evidence, truth, etc.), including informal contexts. "Epistemological" means the same thing, but might sound a bit stuffy and awkward for colloquial contexts since it's more associated with the study of knowledge or formal questions of knowledge. It doesn't matter that much though.
Seriously, "epistemic" may just be the newer-fashion in words. There may be no difference at all.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=epistemologic&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&case_insensitive=true&corpus=en&smoothing=3
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=epistemic&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&case_insensitive=true&corpus=en&smoothing=3
I'm in the 'there is no difference' camp. But the people writinh philosophy who think there is a difference - or at least all the people I've read who have asserted that there is one - say that there are 'ways of knowing' that don't connect to any 'theory of knowledge'. So "epistemic" is broader, and is about "all of the ways that we know what we know". But I've never been convinced that there are any. Even if your answer to 'how do you know X is true' is 'I took a lot of LSD and saw it' or 'God gives me visions' you _still_ have a theory of knowledge, just one that says 'I can apprehend truths that are revealed to me through drug use or come from God'. I admit that the conversation is likely to either end or spin monstrously out of control when I ask, "ah, and how do you know that", but the same thing happens when I ask "how do you know the evidence of your senses is real?".
Not sure if that helps...
[edit -- also some of the people using the term epistemic are neurologists and other scientific sorts who are studying cognition and who wanted to keep the philosophers out of their conversations, i.e. my theory of knowledge says that your entire field of epistemology isn't relevant.]