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The Civil Argument Of Epistemology

Decent Essays

For decades, there has been an open deliberation over whether knowledge is intrinsic or if it springs itself from life experiences: the civil argument of epistemology. Epistemology is the investigation of knowledge and its techniques and legitimacy. Individuals from philosophers to scientists to psychologists have argued their perspectives, yet even today the contention is not yet settled. Personally, I believe that it bodes well for knowledge to originate from experiences. Three philosophers that are solid proponents for the belief that knowledge is derived from experiences are Gaston Bachelard, Immanuel Kant, and John Locke. One of the great epistemologists was Gaston Bachelard who was more commonly known as a “philosopher of science.” …show more content…

Kant concurred with empiricists that “concepts without perceptions are empty” (lonestar). He acknowledged that concepts and ideas cannot constitute knowledge alone and that innate ideas do not constitute knowledge at all. This brought about his conviction that there must be experience(s) in life for there to be knowledge. His theory was that there are two sorts of reasoning to acquire knowledge: posteriori reasoning and priori reasoning. The posteriori reasoning depends upon experience in the world that provides us with information. For example, if I said that “Barack Obama was the president of the United States in 2010,” I would only know that this is true through experience; I would not be able to determine this through an analysis of the concepts of “president” or “Barack Obama.” In contrast, a priori reasoning does not rely on experience to inform it, but to create the knowledge. Kant believed that with priori reasoning, the dynamic mind relates and understands experiences in terms of causes and effects where an event takes place and causes an experience to happen with the effect of knowledge being gained. Kant's crucial insight here is to argue that experience of a world as we have it is only conceivable if the psyche provides an efficient organizing of its representations; the mind makes deductions prior to experiences, but can only truly experience something in the event that it obtains knowledge from the

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