What is epistemology and how is it defined?
Epistemology is the philosophical study of knowledge and related concepts such as justification. It is also called theory of knowledge and examines the nature and types of knowledge.
Common questions about Epistemology
Short answers, pulled from the story.
When was the word epistemology coined and what are its ancient Greek roots?
The word epistemology was coined only in the 19th century to designate this field as a distinct branch of philosophy. The term comes from the ancient Greek terms episteme meaning knowledge or understanding and logos meaning study of or reason.
What are the main types of knowledge distinguished in epistemology?
Epistemologists distinguish between propositional knowledge known as knowledge-that and non-propositional knowledge in the form of knowledge-how and knowledge by acquaintance. They also differentiate between a posteriori knowledge based on sensory experience and a priori knowledge that does not depend on sensory evidence.
Who are the key philosophers associated with epistemology and what were their contributions?
Plato studied what knowledge is and proposed that learning is a form of recollection while Aristotle explored the role of sensory experience in scientific knowledge. René Descartes used methodological doubt to find facts that cannot be doubted and David Hume is associated with empiricist views on knowledge.
How does epistemology differ from psychology and cognitive sociology?
Epistemology is a normative discipline that examines the evaluative norms of belief acquisition while psychology and cognitive sociology are descriptive disciplines. Psychology and cognitive sociology study the beliefs people actually have and how people acquire them instead of examining the evaluative norms of these processes.
What are the primary sources of justification in epistemology?
Often-discussed sources of justification include perception introspection memory reason and testimony. Perception relies on sensory organs to gain empirical information while reason is responsible for inferential knowledge and non-empirical facts.