EPISTEMOLOGY

EPISTEMOLOGY

• Epistemology is the study of knowledge. The word itself originates from the Greek words episteme + logos. Epistemic knowledge is not about what we know, but about what it means to know. It is helpful to note the basic (Socratic) distinction made between beliefs, which hold to opinions, and knowledge, which holds to 'truth'. Knowledge concerns apodictic facts that are absolute and simply cannot be false (while opinions can be and often are false). According to Karl Popper, the only way we can distinguish between truth and not-truth is by subjecting test-statements to experimental invalidation. Plato thought otherwise; he believed that truth is not subject to invalidation. So then the epistemological question: Where does our knowledge come from? And to take it further (as many philosophers have): What are the limits of human knowledge? Here one should read up on the two main competing philosophical branches of the early modern age: Rationalism and Empiricism. Rationalist thinkers like Descartes argue that all knowledge comes from reason, and everything in the world of homo cogitans is fundamentally rational. It is through the human mind that the human knows. Empiricists (at that point, the British thinkers: Berkeley, Hume, Locke) insist that most, if not all, *real* human knowledge can only be arrived at through human experience. It is through the human senses that the human knows. There is also the theologically-driven idea of knowledge as (divine) revelation ( Mohammed and the Holy Quran). There is an interesting blurring of the lines separating belief and knowledge here. St. Augustine gives us an eloquent discussion of reason vs. faith.
  
  
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• Rationalism is a philosophical movement declaring that the most certain form of knowledge is derived from reason and that our senses are not reliable submitters of information about the outer world. The most famous rationalists were Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, creating theories of knowledge totally independent from any experience. The senses, according to the rationalists, can not tell us real truth, for example: we could dream that we are the king of the world and not truly be, but the angles of a triangle still sum up to 180 degrees. Knowledge from reason alone and not experience is known as a priori. Plato is considered by many to be the main precursor to rationalism, whereas his student, Aristotle, is often considered to be a precursor to empiricism.
  

• Empiricism is a philosophical idea based on the idea that all reliable knowledge about the world is gained in the process of experience. Famous empiricists were Hume, Locke and Berkley, basing themselves on ideas already postulated by Aristotle, that we are born with the Tabula Rasa which receives throughout our lives information on which it can base all thinking and knowing. The movement of empiricism was in part a countermovement to what Descartes and Spinoza had proposed as rationalism. Knowledge derived from experience is called a posteriori.
  
  
• Pragmatism is a philosophy that was developed and passed on by Peirce, Quine, James, and others.
  The Correspondence Theory of Truth, which was held by Aristotle among others, holds that when we say something is true, this means that my understanding of reality corresponds with reality. So if I say that the Sun revolves around the Earth, it is not true because this does not correspond to reality. On the other hand, a Pragmatist would say that if it "works" for you, if it does not make your life problematic and has no significant impact on your life, then it is "true" in the sense that it works; it's pragmatic. This is similar to the perspectivist view adopted by Nietzsche.