Epistemology


The subject of knowledge is not as common a topic as politics and religion but is easily just as controversial and is certainly more fundamental.  After all, if people anywhere are going to argue about anything, they must first settle how we know what we know.  The theory of knowledge is not only concerned with what knowledge is but also with how knowledge is acquired or what kinds of knowledge there are and what are the differences between them.  What, for example, is the difference between the ways of knowing in math and in the physical sciences or in the social sciences?  Knowledge in each of these areas is acquired in different ways which sometimes has to do more with how our minds work and sometimes more with how our senses work and sometimes more with who we listen to and what we read which is to say who is communicating what to us.  Knowledge, as a mental phenomena, is also, at least as mysterious as, if not more so, than the mind itself or as  mysterious as consciousness and self-consciousness.  Is knowledge, for example, what we get after the mind interprets what we see or is an interpretation all we have?  When do we know what we believe is true?

Skills, including the ability to speak, are a kind of knowledge.  In fact, before one even learns grammar, the ability to speak implies one must already know grammar.  So what is happening when one learns grammar?  Is one's consciousness of grammar merely raised to a level we might call knowledge?  And where did that knowledge, which we were not even conscious of, come from?

A lot of what passes as knowledge is just what we take on the authority of experts who disagree and change their minds. Some have had good reasons to doubt what they have learned and others don't.  Just to wonder whether someone knows or should know what everyone else knows is to grapple with the subject of knowledge and do epistemology.

The International Baccalaureate (IB) course abbreviated ToK for Theory of Knowledge is not like a epistemology course in college where students study the history of thought about what the necessary and sufficient conditions are of a true, justified, belief and the history of rationalism verse empiricism.  A Wikipedia article on the TOK course in the International Baccalaureate program lists what students study according to that curriculum.

  • Ways of knowing: (sense perception, reason, emotion, and language). How do we gain knowledge of the world, and what are the advantages and disadvantages of each way in which we learn of the world and our place in it.
  • Areas of knowledge (mathematics, natural sciences, human sciences, history, the arts and ethics): their distinct natures and methods of gaining knowledge, the types of claim each makes and the issues to consider (e.g. "How do you know that the scientific method is a valid method of gaining knowledge?", "What is the reason for having historical knowledge, and how is it applied in life?").
  • Factors that transcend individual ways of knowing and areas of knowledge:
  • Nature of knowing: what are the differences between information, data, belief, faith, opinion, knowledge and wisdom?
  • Knowledge communities: what is taken for granted in a community? How can we decide which beliefs we ought to check further?
  • Knowers' sources and applications of knowledge: how do age, education, culture and experience influence selection of sources and formation of knowledge claims? If you know something, or how to do something, do you have a responsibility to use your knowledge?

1. Theory of knowledge (IB course). (2012, November 2). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 12:47, January 11, 2013, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Theory_of_knowledge_(IB_course)&oldid=521092830





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