Epistemology

From Geography

Revision as of 16:14, 9 October 2011

Epistemology (in Dutch kennistheorie or epistemologie) is a part of philosophy that seeks to find where the nature and origin of knowledge is. Simply said epistemology is the study of knowledge.

Epistemologists are concerned with tasks that can be sort into two categories. First one is the nature of knowledge, where does it come from and how does it relates to notions such as truth, belief and justification? Second is what is the extent of human knowledge, how much do we are can we know?

The word “knowledge” and its cognates are used in a variety of ways. Some use it as an expression of psychological conviction (I just knew it would be sunny, but then it rained), but philosophers tend to use it only in the factive way (so one cannot know something that is not the case). But even then there are still multiple senses of knowledge. But epistemologists typically focus on propositional knowledge (which is about belief, truth and justification). And don’t focus on procedural (one can know how to drive from Arnhem to Nijmegen) or acquaintance knowledge (one can know the professor).

References:

David A. Truncellito, The George Washington University http://www.iep.utm.edu/epistemo/

Published by Robbert Vossers (4080939) and Thijs Koolhof (4048385)