The Three Stages Of Epistemology In The School Of Knowledge

With this lesson, we begin a new unit on epistemology, which is the philosophical study of knowledge claims. In this first lesson on epistemology, we begin by examining the question “What do we mean when we say we know something?” What exactly is knowledge? We will begin with a presentation that introduces the traditional definition of knowledge. Wood then discusses some of the basic issues raised in the study of epistemology and then presents an approach to epistemology that focuses on obtaining the intellectual virtues, a point we will elaborate on in the next lesson.

     Epistemology is the nature of knowledge. Knowledge is important when considering what is reality and what is deception. The movie “The Matrix” displays a social deception in which Neo, the main character, is caught between what he thought was once reality and a whole new world that controls everything he thought was real. If I were Neo, I would not truly be able to know that I was in the matrix. However, it is rational to believe that I am in the matrix and will eventually enter back into my reality later. The proof that that I can know that I am in the matrix and that I will return to reality comes from the responses of foundationalism, idealism, and pallibalism.

The topic of knowledge and belief has been a subject of investigation and a primary field in philosophical research for centuries. Whether it was Aristotle or Descartes, multiple ideas on knowledge and belief arise, such as the epistemological theories of foundationalism or coherentism, which provide philosophical explanations to this debate. For the sake of this essay, and in my own opinion, knowledge should be distinguished from belief. Everyone is subject to different types of beliefs based on upbringing, however knowledge of basic items is universal, therefore it immediately becomes apparent that there is a clear distinction between the two concepts.

The pursuit of truth: Epistemology provides understanding for the reader to gain insight to the way that humans process and react to truth. Epistemology is the pursuit of intellectual virtue. It wants to provide an evidentiary basis for belief, rather than one of just opinion. Entwistle then brings up another important topic which is Metaphysics. Metaphysics can be defined as the philosophical investigation of the nature, constitution and stature of reality. Philosophical anthropology attempts to validate assumptions made by theologians and psychologists about human nature and behavior (Entwistle, pp119).

| The study of knowledge: What constitutes knowledge, the nature of knowledge, and whether knowledge is possible

Epistemology is the study of knowledge, or how we know anything and what it means to know anything. It is where one can explain how our mind is linked to reality and if these relationships are valid or invalid. In this paper, I will first present the views of Descartes on epistemology. Next, I will clarify his view of God, the body, and the mind. I will also discuss how well Descartes presents the arguments and how well they work for each topic. Lastly, I will discuss my overall agreement with his project for knowledge in general, however, I further discuss a few key components that later philosophers came to add on.

The purpose of this study is to determine the combined relationship between connected knowing (CK), separate knowing (SK), and epistemological beliefs with student’s academic performance. These variables look at understanding how students acquire knowledge and their attitudes towards thinking and learning. As mentioned in the study done by Schommer-Aikins and Easter (2006) this study would provide future benefit to how students are being taught along with how to manage their time while studying. In addition, this study could result in students acquiring better study habits earlier on, data collected from Wood and Kardash (2003) study showed that there was a large difference between the level of education in the participants and their level of epistemic cognition, which means that if students were to increase their level of epistemological thinking earlier on in their college career through workshops or seminars that taught them this way of thinking, theoretically student’s study habits and learning habits would improve significantly throughout their time in college.

Indeed, the more expert we get in any area, the more obvious it becomes that we see dimly and know only partially.” Kraft’s quote even says the opposite, the more we know about something the more it proves our human minds know very little.

One of the most important branches in philosophy, is Epistemology, which means, theory of knowledge. So far, philosophers have made many attempts to discover the source of knowledge, the standards or criteria by which we can judge the reliability of knowledge. We tend to be satisfied with think what we know about almost everything, even though sometimes we are shocked to discover that something that we thought it was sure and certain, is instead proved dubious and not sure. For example, suppose that one person that you know and trust tells you that the moon landing in 1969 is only a lie, and the pictures and film were made in a laboratory. We might distrust our friend maybe or think that in fact there were no prove

Having a surplus amount of knowledge is often seen as something that is desired. But, sometimes having knowledge that

There are two main schools of thought, or methods, in regards to the subject of epistemology: rationalism and empiricism. These two, very different, schools of thought attempt to answer the philosophical question of how knowledge is acquired. While rationalists believe that this process occurs solely in our minds, empiricists argue that it is, instead, through sensory experience. After reading and understanding each argument it is clear that empiricism is the most relative explanatory position in epistemology.

Epistemology- Epistemology is the division between empiricism and rationalism in different ways of thinking about how we reason and rationalise that knowledge and how it is reliable and certain, epistemology gives us our professional theories, beliefs and practices and how we differentiate between what is true and false. (Scott, 2014).

Epistemology is purposed with discovering and studying what knowledge is and how we can classify what we know, how we know it, and provide some type of framework for how we arrived at this conclusion. In the journey to identify what knowledge is the certainty principle was one of the first concepts that I learned that explained how we, as humans, consider ourselves to know something. The certainty concept suggests that knowledge requires evidence that is sufficient to rule out the possibility of error. This concept is exemplified in cases like The Gettier problem in the instance that we suppose (S) someone to know (P) a particular proposition. As Gettier established the Justified True Belief as a conceptual formula for knowledge, certainty

Lastly, Auguste Comte (1798-1857), a sociologist and empirical researcher, proposed that the invariant laws apparent in natural science were also present in matters of social science. Comte implied that research methods used in natural science were also appropriate to the study of social science and phenomena. Comte influenced 20th Century research paradigms, which resulted in a school of thought called positivism. Positivism states that only observable phenomena count as knowledge. Positivism also promotes scientific research methods and empirical testing of hypotheses. Positivism encouraged the formalising of quantitative research methods, collecting numerical data.

Knowledge, as we all understand, can be general or specialized. We are able to gather knowledge about certain aspects of reality, branches of science, skills, traits and phenomena observable in nature. But there is another kind of “knowledge”, which is the sum of every subcategoric, specific knowledge. This knowledge is what we know about the “world” - how knowledgeable we are, how well can we navigate the seas of reality because of our knowledge about its currents, flows and hidden reefs.