Throughout the history of humanity, people have been striving to comprehend the world they live in, constructing theories of various kinds to explain their observations. Some of the most fundamental philosophical problems are addressed by the branch of philosophy called epistemology, which studies the nature, origin, and limits of human knowledge. Epistemology, as the theory of knowledge, has its origins in the Ancient Greece and continues to be a subject of philosophical debates up to this day.
Subject of Epistemology
Epistemology is one of the four branches of philosophy along with ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Ethics seeks to resolve the questions of human morality, logic studies reasoning, metaphysics examines the fundamental nature of reality, and epistemology concerns itself with knowledge. Its central concepts are knowledge, belief, truth, and justification (Greene et al., 2016). Knowledge is defined as an awareness or understanding of such notions as skills, facts, or objects. Belief is “an attitude that a person holds regarding anything that they think is true,” and it is considered to be justified if a person has a good reason for holding it (Schwitzgebel, 2019). Truth is defined as the “property of being in accordance with facts or reality” (Greene et al., 2016, p. 13). Epistemology studies the nature, origin, and limits of human knowledge, determines the main criteria for knowledge, the rationality of belief and its justification, and explores the concept of truth.
The main questions around which epistemological debates are centered can be divided into three categories. The first is the analysis of the nature of human knowledge, which aims to “answer the question of what it means to say that someone knows or does not know something” (Hasan, 2017, p. 40). Philosophers argue over the prerequisites necessary for a belief to be regarded as knowledge, such as truth and justification.
The second issue is the potential sources of knowledge, which include perception, reason, memory, and testimony. According to this classification, knowledge of empirical facts is based on perception, the use of the senses. Knowledge of non-empirical facts and abstract concepts exclusively relies upon reasoning. Memory allows people to know something that they learned in the past, and knowledge can also be passed from one person to another via testimony.
The third problem of epistemology is the extent of human knowledge. Epistemology aims to determine how much people know and how much they can know, if there are limits to knowledge and if there are things that are unknowable (Hasan, 2017). Philosophical skepticism questions the possibility of knowledge or certainty, claiming that people do not know anything, or, at least, know less than they think they do.
History of Epistemology
The origins of epistemology are traced back to the Ancient Greece. The ancient Greek philosophers mainly concentrated their efforts on cosmological issues and did not give particular attention to the problem of knowledge (Greene et al., 2016). Most pre-Socratic philosophers held that knowledge is identical to being and can be described in a similar way. Heraclitus emphasized the pre-eminence of sense knowledge, while the Eleatic Parmenides stressed the role of intellective knowledge in the apprehension of reality.
The first philosopher to profoundly concern himself with epistemological questions was Plato, who developed his own theory of knowledge. It consisted of two parts: “an investigation into the nature of unchanging objects and a discussion of how these objects can be known through reason” (Greene et al., 2016, p. 36). To illustrate his ideas, he used the allegory of the cave, which depicted people living in a cave and only being able to see material objects as shadows, perceiving them to be real. By overcoming this illusion and rejecting the familiar sensible world, they begin to ascend from the cave into the reality, with this ascension being the analog of the exercise of reason (Greene et al., 2016). For Plato, knowledge was more than just a true belief — it needed justification.
For Aristotle, epistemology started with the study of things that exist or happen in the world and rose to the understanding of the universal. His concept of knowledge was a part of his doctrine about the nature of the soul. He believed that every living thing has a soul, and the mind is only one aspect of it (Greene et al., 2016). Aristotle claimed that “actual knowledge is identical with its object,” implying that a person can know something only if it is true (qtd. in Greene et al., 2016, p. 42). Aristotle is considered to be the precursor of empiricism, while Plato is regarded as the founder of rationalism.
In Medieval philosophy, the concept of knowledge was inherently connected with the idea of God, and the subject was mainly addressed from the theological perspective. Epistemological questions came to the foreground only in the 17th century, when several schools of thought started to develop in Western philosophy, offering different theories on the nature of knowledge. The most important of them were rationalism, empiricism, skepticism, and pragmatism.
Empiricism is a theory that states that knowledge comes primarily from sensory experience, and empirical evidence play a crucial role in the formation of ideas rather than innate notions or traditions. Empiricists hold that no knowledge is properly inferred or deduced unless it is derived from one’s sensory-based experience (Greene et al., 2016). There are many branches of empiricism, which include British empiricism, founded by John Locke and Francis Bacon, logical empiricism, developed by Ludwig Wittgenstein, and phenomenalism, developed by George Berkley and John Stuart Mill.
Rationalism is a theory that considers reason to be the main source and the essence of knowledge. Rationalists claim that reality has an intrinsically logical structure, and, “through the use of reason, the human mind can directly grasp certain truths in various domains, such as logic, mathematics, ethics, and metaphysics” (Greene et al., 2016, p. 54). For them, “the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive” (Greene et al., 2016, p. 54). The origins of rationalism can be traced back to Plato, and the theory was developed by Rene Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, and Gottfried Leibnitz.
Skepticism is a philosophical position that questions the possibility of human knowledge or certainty in general. It has its origins in ancient Greece and is not considered to be a part of any particular school of philosophy. There are two branches within skepticism: one that defies all possibility of knowledge, and another that advocates for the suspension of judgment due to inadequacy of evidence (Hasan, 2017). In his Meditations, Rene Descartes offered the following argument in support of skepticism. He claimed that some human perceptions are inaccurate and, as a result, some of their beliefs are false. In order to be justified in their beliefs, people need to be able to distinguish between those beliefs which are true and which are not. As there is no way to justify between trustworthy and untrustworthy beliefs, all beliefs are unjustified, which means that people cannot know anything (Greene et al., 2016). Skepticism has had a significant influence on modern philosophy and science, emphasizing the idea that any proposed knowledge claim can be doubted.
Another approach to knowledge is pragmatism, an empiricist theory developed by Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. It regards the truth as something that can be practically applied, meaning that something is not true unless it can be observed (Greene et al., 2016). Pragmatists believe that people analyze ideas and objects for their practical value, with truth being the final outcome of a scientific inquiry. Pragmatism, along with skepticism, empiricism, and rationalism, is regarded as one of the most influential theories within epistemology that shape the common theoretical and practical perceptions of knowledge.
Conclusion
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy dedicated to studying human knowledge, its nature, origin, and limits. Different theories within epistemology, such as empiricism, rationalism, skepticism, and pragmatism, hold different approaches to its three main questions, emphasizing different aspects of people’s relations with the world around them. The primary idea of epistemology is that any claim to knowledge needs to be evaluated and analyzed in order to determine whether it constitutes knowledge. Such an evaluation requires an understanding of the nature and extent of knowledge. Epistemological concepts are inherent to any scientific inquiry because they provide the basics for critically assessing the reliability of knowledge and allow scientists to determine the truth.
References
Greene, J., Sandoval, W., & Braten, I. (Eds.). (2016). Handbook of epistemic cognition. Routledge.
Hasan, A. (2017). A critical introduction to the epistemology of perception. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Schwitzgebel, E. (2019). Belief. In E. Zalta (Ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Web.