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Epistemology

Epistemology (/ɪˌpɪstəˈmɒləi/ ih-PISS-tə-MOL-ə-jee; from Ancient Greek ἐπιστήμη (epistḗmē) 'knowledge', and -logy) is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemologists study the nature, origin, and scope of knowledge, epistemic justification, the rationality of belief, and various related issues. Debates in contemporary epistemology are generally clustered around four core areas:[1][2][3]

"Theory of knowledge" redirects here. For other uses, see Theory of knowledge (disambiguation). "Epistemic" redirects here. For the alternative name for cognitive science, see Epistemics. For the album, see Epistemology (album).

In these debates and others, epistemology aims to answer questions such as "What do people know?", "What does it mean to say that people know something?", "What makes justified beliefs justified?", and "How do people know that they know?"[4][1][5][6] Specialties in epistemology ask questions such as "How can people create formal models about issues related to knowledge?" (in formal epistemology), "What are the historical conditions of changes in different kinds of knowledge?" (in historical epistemology), "What are the methods, aims, and subject matter of epistemological inquiry?" (in metaepistemology), and "How do people know together?" (in social epistemology).

knowledge is knowledge that is independent of experience. This means that it can be known or justified prior to or independently of any specific empirical evidence or sensory observations. Such knowledge is obtained through reasoning, logical analysis, or introspection. Examples of a priori knowledge include mathematical truths, logical tautologies (e.g., "All bachelors are unmarried"), and certain fundamental principles of reason and logic. One of the key proponents of a priori knowledge was the philosopher Immanuel Kant. He argued that certain fundamental truths about the nature of reality, such as the concepts of space, time, causality, and the categories of understanding, are not derived from experience, but are inherent in the structure of the mind itself. According to Kant, these a priori categories enable the organization and interpretation of sensory experiences, giving rise to an understanding of the world.

A priori

knowledge is knowledge that is derived from experience. It is based on empirical evidence, sensory perception, and observations of the external world. A posteriori knowledge is contingent upon the information gained through the senses and relies on the collection and interpretation of data. Scientific observations and experimental results are typical examples of a posteriori knowledge.

A posteriori

Historical context[edit]

Contemporary philosophers consider that epistemology is a major subfield of philosophy, along with ethics, logic, and metaphysics,[4] which are more ancient subdivisions of philosophy.[116] But in the early and mid 20th century, epistemology was not seen as an independent field on its own. Quine viewed epistemology as a chapter of psychology.[117][118]Sect.1.1 Russell viewed it as a mix of psychology and logic.[119] William Alston presents a similar contemporary perspective, but in a historically 'oriented' manner: for him, epistemology has historically always been a part of cognitive psychology.[note 4]


The claim that psychology is a background for epistemology is often called its naturalization. The epistemology of Russell and Quine in the 20th century were naturalized in that way. More recently, Laurence Bonjour rejects that there is a need for that kind of psychologism in contemporary epistemology.[120] His argument is that, nowadays, the required part of psychology, which he refers as minimal psychologism, conceptual psychologism, and meliorative psychologism, are self evident within contemporary (traditional) epistemology, "involves at most a quite minor departure from traditional, nonnaturalized epistemology" or "poses no real threat to traditional epistemology".[120] In this view point, naturalized epistemology has integrated all required psychological aspects, which are considered non controversial, and can be severed from psychologism.


For Luciano Floridi, "at the turn of the [20th] century there had been a resurgence of interest in epistemology through an anti-metaphysical, naturalist, reaction against the nineteenth-century development of Neo-Kantian and Neo-Hegelian idealism." In that perspective, contemporary epistemology, which in Bonjour's perspective does not need to be "naturalized" through psychologism anymore, emerged after a naturalization that rejected meta-physical perspectives associated with Immanuel Kant and G. W. F. Hegel.[121]


Historians of philosophy traditionally divide the modern period into a dispute between empiricists (including Francis Bacon, John Locke, David Hume, and George Berkeley) and rationalists (including René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, and Gottfried Leibniz).[4] The debate between them has often been framed using the question of whether knowledge comes primarily from sensory experience (empiricism), or whether a significant portion of our knowledge is derived entirely from our faculty of reason (rationalism). According to some scholars, this dispute was resolved in the late 18th century by Immanuel Kant, whose transcendental idealism famously made room for the view that "though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows that all [knowledge] arises out of experience".[122]

 – term used in philosophy, economics, and virtually any field of study to refer to different ways of knowing things, different epistemological methodologies for attaining a fuller description of a particular field

Epistemological pluralism

 – Ambiguous term applied to several concepts

Evolutionary epistemology

 – Deliberate misrepresentation of knowledge

Knowledge falsification

 – 2000 philosophical essay by Timothy Williamson

Knowledge-first epistemology

 – Branch of ethics seeking to understand ethical properties

Moral epistemology

 – Spanish philosopher (1898–1983)

Noölogy

 – Cognition about knowledge and knowing

Personal epistemology

 – School of philosophical thought

Reformed epistemology

 – Epistemologically probative proposition

Self-evidence

 – Field of study

Sociology of knowledge

 – Compulsory International Baccalaureate subject

Theory of Knowledge (IB Course)

 – Philosophical study of value

Axiology

 – Theory of human action

Praxiology

entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

"Epistemology"

entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

"Bayesian Epistemology"

entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

"Evolutionary Epistemology"

entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

"Feminist Epistemology and Philosophy of Science"

entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

"Naturalized Epistemology"

entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

"Social Epistemology"

entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

"Virtue Epistemology"

entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

"Knowledge How"

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy articles


Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy articles


Encyclopædia Britannica


Other links