What is Knowledge?
To define what exactly knowledge is has been a problem encountered by many a philosopher and academic. A great number of people have attempted to outline the idea of knowledge, but there is still no certainty or consensus as to what it truly is. The big question which arises and one which is particularly important to this essay is: what does it mean to know?
There are three main types of knowledge: propositional, procedural and personal. Propositional knowledge is the knowledge of fact or ‘knowing-that’ something is the case. Procedural knowledge is knowledge of an action or ‘knowing-how’ and personal knowledge is knowing by acquaintance. However, despite these appearing distinctly categorised there is a great deal of
…show more content…
It suggests that our perceptions of knowledge are influenced by our relationship with the society we live in. Across the world, it is clear to see that this is the case as the knowledge required to live in one society will vary dramatically from that in another, for example a child in the United Kingdom will grow up with a different set of knowledge than one in China or Malawi. However, the international power base of knowledge lies in the West. News and cultural influence from the United States of America has made its way into Africa, Asia and South America causing “the universal truths of Western science [to be] pounded into the consciousness of diverse peoples” (Kincheloe, 2008). It appears that in a worldwide sense there is a correlation between power and knowledge but this is also true in an educational sense. Knowledge in the curriculum is decided in the main by policy makers and those in government. In creating the curriculum, policy makers and educational organisations are defining the knowledge which pupils will aim to acquire in their scholastic years. This in turn reflects on the types of knowledge which we in Scotland identify as important. With the knowledge taught in schools being somewhat dictated, it is assumed that every child in Scotland to a greater or lesser extent will have knowledge within these prescribed parameters as well as knowledge which
it is seen that knowledge can hurt. It is also shown that sometimes one can know
Life without knowledge would be worthless. Talking about knowledge what i mean is knowledge about something. The description of the state of some object is knowledge. The object may be either abstract or physical. Some examples of abstract things include memory, feelings and time. But how we obtain knowledge? Many philosophers tried to find an adequate answer to this question. They came up with so many theories summarizing the process of knowledge. But none of them all was able to state a clear definition of pure knowledge. One of those philosophers is Plato. In this essay I am going to discuss the concept of knowledge according to Plato’s philosophic conception of knowledge. I will clarify what knowledge is not perception. And from this I will move to explain the justified true belief theory. Then I will show the lack in this theory by referring to counterexamples: the Gettier cases. To end up with a conclusion that states what is my understanding of the process of knowledge.
According to the reading, Writing as a Mode of Learning by Janet Emig, knowledge is described as “an act of knowing that enters as a passionate contribution of the person to know what is being known, which is a coefficient that is no mere imperfection but a vital component of a person’s knowledge.” Essentially, knowledge is composed of what a person, association or discourse community knows about what is already known in their area of expertise or fully know what could occur in a certain situation, similar to how a rhetor must prepare and know what rhetorical situations might occur at any moment during their speech or writing. Knowledge is created to prepare for various outcomes and situations as goals are being constructed in a discourse community.
Knowledge is defined as information and skills one acquires through experience or education. There is; however, a certain knowledge than cannot be certain and is unjustifiable from the scientific perspective. Karen Armstrong, Robert Thurman, and Azar Nafisi wrote about this type of knowledge in their essays: “Homo Religiosus,” “Wisdom,” and “Reading Lolita in Tehran,” respectively. Each of these authors has a different view of what knowledge is exactly, how it can be achieved, and what it means to have achieved it, but each author takes on the view that the concept of knowledge should be viewed from a social stance. Armstrong refers to this uncertain knowledge as “myth,” Thurman refers to it as “wisdom,” and Nafisi refers to it as “upsilamba";
How do we know what we know? Ideas reside in the minds of intelligent beings, but a clear perception of where these ideas come from is often the point of debate. It is with this in mind that René Descartes set forth on the daunting task to determine where clear and distinct ideas come from. A particular passage written in Meditations on First Philosophy known as the wax passage shall be examined. Descartes' thought process shall be followed, and the central point of his argument discussed.
Many researchers distinguish between declarative, procedural, and conditional knowledge types, with varying agreement on those distinctions (Cross & Paris, 1988; Kuhn, 2000; Schraw et al., 2006; Schraw & Moshman, 1995). Declarative knowledge is the factual information that one knows; it can be declared—spoken or written. An example is knowing the formula for calculating momentum in a physics class (momentum = mass times velocity). Procedural knowledge is knowledge of how to do something, of how to perform the steps in a process; for example, knowing the mass of an object and its rate of speed and how to do the calculation. Conditional knowledge is knowledge about when to use a procedure, skill, or strategy and when not to use it; why a procedure works and under what conditions; and why one procedure is better than another. For example, students need to recognize that an exam word problem requires the calculation of momentum as part of its solution.
What is more important to education? The content or the how the content is taught? Many policy makers today believe that the former is far more crucial to the development of our youth. With high-stakes testing and an entire industry of textbooks and test making, the current system places empirical results over all else. Unfortunately, this approach only helps with the lower levels on the depths of knowledge (DOK) and Bloom’s Taxonomy charts. It only helps with basic recall of facts and knowledge. A second area of concern with this type of teaching is that only instills one point of view in the pupils. This is also problematic for diverse classrooms with students from various backgrounds. Would an approach that reinforces critical thinking and higher levels of DOK be more appropriate? A technique that incorporates the diversity of the classroom and life experiences of those students can be explained by Christopher Emdin and Django Paris who are two advocates of Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy or Reality Pedagogy.
Zagzebski defines knowledge by expressing the relationship between the subject and the truth proposition. A truth claim becomes knowledge when your state of belief makes cognitive contact with reality. What it is to know that you understand something is different from having a relationship with something. Propositional knowledge, that can be known or believed, is her focus due to simplicity. The criteria required for belief is to have a thought, followed by augmentation with experience. The minimal criteria for a definition of knowledge must incorporate two types of “good”; a moral and an ethical. These truths are implemented to develop the foundation on which Zagzebski later builds her definition.
Donald Davidson identifies three forms of knowledge which he believes to be irreducible and interdependent: knowledge of self, which is immediately known; knowledge of the outside world, which is simply caused by the events and objects around you, and thus depends on sense organs to be semi-immediately known, yet open to uncertainty; and knowledge of the minds of others, which is never immediately known. The standard approach to philosophy tries to reduce one of these forms of knowledge to one or two of the others, often leading to unanswerable questions. Davidson argues that all three varieties of knowledge are interdependent—that is, you cannot have any one without the other two. In this paper, I will primarily review Davidson’s argument of the interdependence of the three varieties of knowledge. I will then briefly discuss the plausibility of Davidson’s account and question if it truly can explain how we come to understand others’ feelings and emotions.
Plato and Aristotle propose theories of knowledge in which they both agree that the knower is measure by the known and that knowledge is an exchange within the world. However, their respective theories may be considered polar opposites of one another especially when considering that Aristotle rejects Plato’s theory and admits that ‘informed opinion’, is a form of knowledge whereas Plato rejects opinion as a form of knowledge.
(q), his belief that he sees a barn, isn’t justified, though. Therefore, Dom cannot know (q). The internalism of my account is obvious. What’s required for justification of (q) is different for Henry and Dom because of each’s belief about the kind of environment he is in. It is the belief about the environment and not the environment that matters. In other words, two people could be in the exact same circumstances but what required for justification would be different because of the beliefs they have. Causal accounts of knowledge can’t account for why Henry is justified for (q), but Dom is not. My account is not a causal account; as is shown in the Dom variation above, my account has no problem accounting for the different justifications required for Dom and for Henry.
"Knowledge, Truth, and Meaning." Cover: Human Knowledge: Foundations and Limits. Web. 17 Feb. 2011. .
Question No. 5 “No knowledge can be produced by a single way of knowing.” Discuss.
Real knowledge, like everything else of the highest value, is not to be obtained easily. It must be worked for, studied for, thought for, and, more than all, it must be prayed for”
To provide solutions to philosophical problems such as, how world process was created, man must be in possession of rational, intuition, and intuitive knowledge. Rational knowledge is human reasoning and requires verification. The ability of man to reason while giving logical step by step demonstration and arguments is referred to as human knowledge and it has a rational source. According to Carriero and Broughton (2011), genuine rational knowledge is provided by clear and separate knowledge of wholesome intellect with sense deliverances interaction. Sen (1996) considers rational knowledge as the knowledge of change in states of specific entities, in the sense that human experience is a confirmation of change. What are its classes, provisions and philosophical problem associated with rational knowledge? The paper seeks to examine rational knowledge by addressing the above three issues.