We all want to know things for what they truly are. Sometimes things may appear a certain way, but on closer observation they turn out not to be that way at all, like it is with a mirage. Appearance is not always reality, as they say in philosophy. The situation of things appearing to be something else is the cause of erroneous cognition, deceit, falsehood and paranoia. The preferred case is to know things for what they actually are. And the eminent philosopher, Parmenides, offers an epistemological path toward such ideal situation. It is a metaphysical approach to knowledge, an epistemology of actuality.
One of the earliest groups of thinkers in Ancient Greece were the Milesians. They believed that all things were made from material stuff, such as water, air and fire. Because of this they were always changing. The problem with this for knowledge was that, if all things were always changing, then we could not properly know anything because the moment we described a thing as being a certain way, it promptly changes and is no longer that way at all. Heraclitus for example famously said, "We do not step into the same river twice."
In contrast to this state of fluctuation existing in reality, Parmenides advanced an epistemology of "what-is," which was indeed a clean break from the earlier materialistic school. What-is is without beginning or end; is a whole unit of a single kind, actual, stable and complete in itself. What-is never changes, and always is. There is no coming to be of what-is, and there is no increase or reduction either. The reason what-is cannot change is that what-is-not cannot come from what is, as things only come from their own kind. Can a fish be born by a squid for example? Of course not. And so, the species of "what-is" does not come from that of "what-is-not." What-is is reality transcendent of all the irregularity of change, the change attributable to matter. In other words, what-is is pure form. And because it never changes, it can indeed be known for what it is.
Therefore, true knowledge is of what-is, and never of what-is-not. Since what-is depends only on itself for existence (because it is not generated from anything else), it is the first principle, and so is the ultimate principle of all thought. It is true causation, the principle of all metaphysics and philosophy, especially when considered in the following: scientia rerum per ultimas causas (science of all things in their ultimate causes). This sort of knowing, of forms rather than materials, is different from the opinions of things sourced via the five senses of taste, sight, sound, smell and touch. The opinions sourced via sense perception are of what-is-not, and so are untrue and prone to falsity and alteration. The knowledge derived from knowledge of forms on the other hand is true and always stable. So, in a person's search for truth, the person should study forms, rather than composites or materials. Instead of studying individual dogs, the person should study "dog-ness"; instead of studying individual humans, the person should study humanity, and so on.
Because opinions derived from the senses are prone to alteration and misinterpretation and error, they cannot ultimately be relied upon for knowledge or truth. Also, they are usually of material substances and characteristics. They are so one day, and other another day; shifting and switching and changing. Like emotions, which crest and undulate like the tides of a river. And so, while natural philosophers busied themselves with the cosmos and the material principle behind it, Parmenides disregarded this sort of philosophizing and rather concentrated on metaphysical reality, actual reality.
In other words, Like Robert Frost, Parmenides proposes that the preferred “route” for the acquisition of knowledge should be through the contemplation of “what-is,” which is stable, and incapable of motion (be it generation, diminution, locomotion or alteration). Parmenides in this way marks his philosophizing off from the earliest Greek philosophers, like we previously stated. The earliest Greek philosophers may be called materialists, because they were interested in explaining the world based on material principles, in other words physical reality, which Parmenides would call “what-is-not,” because they are susceptible to motion (and to be susceptible to motion would imply the possibility of allowing “what-is” to come from what-is-not,” which Parmenides shows is absurd).
According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Parmenides’ method of inquiry was to focus less on the physical or cosmic sources of knowledge, in which there was no reliability, and rather to focus on the immaterial for knowledge that is more reliable than sense perception, since the knowledge obtained via the senses, unlike the latter, is profitable only in the attainment of “mortal opinions.” Hence, the theory of knowledge proposed by Parmenides is metaphysical and transcendent of the material concerns of the Milesians. Parmenides also transcends Pythagorean philosophy which, though of a higher quality than physics, being as it were concerned with mathematics and psychology, did not rise to the level of metaphysics. Parmenides alone in the Theaetetus is set apart by Socrates from all other philosophers, as being singularly interested in the eternal, the unchanging, the motionless. In short, Parmenides in his break from natural philosophy to metaphysics offers a preferred epistemology.
Parmenidean philosophy greatly influenced Plato and Socrates. They were able to similarly break away from material studies and focus on ethics, metaphysics and other subjects. They were able to build a classical school on the back of Parmenides' thoughts, and afforded the world a heritage of lessons and ideas therefrom. What we learn from Parmenidean epistemology in our day, owing to their work, is that we should look for truth in what-is and not what-is-not. We should engage in an epistemology that is transcendent of the opinions derived from the senses and focus rather on truth that is derived from the forms, from what-is, which is not prone to change or alteration, but which rather is stable and timeless. In this way we can avoid error, falsehood and paranoia. We can instead begin to know things for what they are.
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