Knowledge
**1. Understanding Knowledge**
– Knowledge is a form of familiarity, awareness, understanding, or acquaintance.
– It involves possession of information learned through experience.
– Academic definitions focus on propositional knowledge.
– Types of knowledge include knowledge-how and knowledge by acquaintance.
– Knowledge can refer to a characteristic of a group of people as group knowledge.
– Knowledge is often defined as justified true belief.
– Essential features of knowledge are belief, truth, and justification.
– Truth is a fundamental aspect of knowledge.
– Belief is a necessary component of knowledge.
– Justification is a key factor in distinguishing knowledge from mere belief.
**2. Sources and Disciplines of Knowledge**
– Empirical knowledge is mainly derived from perception.
– Introspection allows learning about internal mental states.
– Other sources include memory, rational intuition, inference, and testimony.
– Foundationalism suggests basic sources can justify beliefs independently.
– Coherentists argue for coherence among mental states for knowledge.
– Epistemology investigates what people know and how they acquire knowledge.
– It questions the value of knowledge and explores philosophical skepticism.
– Knowledge is crucial in sciences that use the scientific method.
– Religions often attribute knowledge to a divine source.
– Anthropology and sociology study knowledge acquisition and societal impact.
**3. Types and Forms of Knowledge**
– Propositional knowledge (knowledge-that) and non-propositional knowledge (practical skills or acquaintance).
– Declarative knowledge can be stored in books.
– Knowledge-how involves practical skills or competencies.
– Knowledge by acquaintance is familiarity from direct experiential contact.
– A priori knowledge is independent of experience.
– A posteriori knowledge is based on experience.
– Self-knowledge encompasses knowledge of sensations, thoughts, beliefs, and personality traits.
– Explicit knowledge can be articulated and shared, like historical dates and mathematical formulas.
– Tacit knowledge is not easily explained, like recognizing faces or practical expertise.
**4. Validity and Reliability of Knowledge**
– Introspection, memory, inference, rational intuition, and testimony serve as sources of knowledge.
– Perception is the most important source of empirical knowledge.
– Memory retains past knowledge and makes it accessible in the present.
– Inferential knowledge arises from reasoning applied to known facts.
– Testimony relies on statements from others as a source of knowledge.
**5. Philosophical Perspectives and Limits of Knowledge**
– Knowledge can be valuable either because it is useful or good in itself.
– Scientific knowledge seeks natural laws to explain empirical observations.
– Foundationalism, coherentism, and infinitism are theories of justification in epistemology.
– Limits can affect knowledge about the external world, oneself, and what is good.
– Radical skepticism doubts all forms of knowledge.
– Arguments against skepticism point out its self-contradictory nature.
– Knowledge structure relates mental states for knowledge to arise.
– Knowledge may have intrinsic value, especially forms linked to wisdom.
Knowledge is an awareness of facts, a familiarity with individuals and situations, or a practical skill. Knowledge of facts, also called propositional knowledge, is often characterized as true belief that is distinct from opinion or guesswork by virtue of justification. While there is wide agreement among philosophers that propositional knowledge is a form of true belief, many controversies focus on justification. This includes questions like how to understand justification, whether it is needed at all, and whether something else besides it is needed. These controversies intensified in the latter half of the 20th century due to a series of thought experiments called Gettier cases that provoked alternative definitions.
Knowledge can be produced in many ways. The main source of empirical knowledge is perception, which involves the usage of the senses to learn about the external world. Introspection allows people to learn about their internal mental states and processes. Other sources of knowledge include memory, rational intuition, inference, and testimony. According to foundationalism, some of these sources are basic in that they can justify beliefs, without depending on other mental states. Coherentists reject this claim and contend that a sufficient degree of coherence among all the mental states of the believer is necessary for knowledge. According to infinitism, an infinite chain of beliefs is needed.
The main discipline investigating knowledge is epistemology, which studies what people know, how they come to know it, and what it means to know something. It discusses the value of knowledge and the thesis of philosophical skepticism, which questions the possibility of knowledge. Knowledge is relevant to many fields like the sciences, which aim to acquire knowledge using the scientific method based on repeatable experimentation, observation, and measurement. Various religions hold that humans should seek knowledge and that God or the divine is the source of knowledge. The anthropology of knowledge studies how knowledge is acquired, stored, retrieved, and communicated in different cultures. The sociology of knowledge examines under what sociohistorical circumstances knowledge arises, and what sociological consequences it has. The history of knowledge investigates how knowledge in different fields has developed, and evolved, in the course of history.