EPISTEMOLOGY AN INTRODUCTIONTheory of Knowledge

WHAT IS EPISTEMOLOGY?

• The branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope (limitations) of knowledge

• How knowledge is relates to truth, belief, and justification.

• The means of production of knowledge• Skepticism about different knowledge

claims• James Frederick Ferrier (1808–1864)

Epistemology (from Greek ἐπιστήμη - episteme-, "knowledge, science" + λόγος, "logos") or theory of knowledge

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EPISTEMOLOGICAL QUESTIONS

What is knowledge?

How is knowledge acquired?

What do people know?

How do we know what we know?

Is human knowledge trustworthy?

Can our senses be trusted?Difference between opinion, knowledge and

wisdom

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WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE?

(i) expertise, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject;

(ii) what is known in a particular field or in total; facts and information; or

iii) awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation

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KNOWLEDGE

What you didn’t knowYou didn’t know that you didn’t knowSince you didn’t know you didn’t miss what you didn’t know

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VALID KNOWLEDGE

Imagination 60%

Wishful thinking 20%

Belief 15%

Essence 05%

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DESIRE TO KNOW

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PROPOSITION

• The content or meaning of a meaningful declarative sentence that may be true or false

• the meaning of such a sentence: I am warm always expresses the same proposition whoever the speaker is

A proposition is a sentence expressing something true or false

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WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE?

Justified

True

Belief

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THE GETTIER PROBLEM

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RESPONSES TO GETTIER• The justification for the belief must be infallible• a belief must not only be true and justified, the

justification of the belief must necessitate its truthFallibilism

• There should be no overriding or defeating truths for the reasons that justify one's beliefIndefeasibility

• know p and know that one knows p - these are different events

• The second level is a sort of implicit inference that usually follows immediately the episode of knowing p Nyaya theory

• a true belief counts as knowledge only if it is produced by a reliable belief-forming process.Reliabilism

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OTHER RESPONSES• S knows that P if and only if:• P; S believes that P;• if P were false, S would not believe

that P;• if P is true, S will believe that P.

Robert Nozick

• "we do not want to award the title of knowing something to someone who is only meeting the conditions through a defect, flaw, or failure, compared with someone else who is not meeting the conditions.".[

Simon Blackburn

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EXTERNALISM AND INTERNALISM•Externalist

s think that factors deemed "external", meaning outside of the psychological states of those who gain knowledge, can be conditions of knowledge

Externalism

•all knowledge-yielding conditions are within the psychological states of those who gain knowledge.

Internalism

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HOW KNOWLEDGE IS ACQUIREDIssues concerning epistemic distinctions such as that between experience and apriori as means of creating knowledge.

Distinguish between synthesis and analysis used as means of proof

Debates such as the one between empiricists and rationalists.

What is called "the regress problem"

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TYPES OF PROPOSITION

• be justified in believing them just so far as we understand their meaningAnalytic

• Kant held that all mathematical propositions are syntheticSynthetic

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TYPES OF KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION•is

knowledge that is known independently of experience (that is, it is non-empirical, or arrived at beforehand).

A priori

•is knowledge that is known by experience (that is, it is empirical, or arrived at afterward).

A posteriori

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nTHEORIES OF KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION

•A role of experience, especially experience based on perceptual observations by the five senses.

Empiricism

•A knowledge acquired by intuition or is innate

Rationalism

•all knowledge is "constructed" in as much as it is contingent on convention, human perception, and social experience

Constructivism

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THE REGRESS PROBLEM

•to justify a belief one must appeal to a further justified belief.

•Justification just meanders in and out through our network of beliefs, stopping nowhere

Regress Problem

•It is not impossible for an infinite justificatory series to exist

•the infinite series to be merely potential

Infinitism

•some beliefs that support other beliefs do not themselves require justification by other beliefs.

Foundationalism

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WHAT DO PEOPLE KNOW?

Skepticism

Further Development

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APPLIED EPISTEMOLOGY

Law

AI

Cognitive Science

Mathematics

Science

Medicine

Psychology

Philosophy

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The End