Epistemology Overview

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that seeks answers to questions about the possibility and nature of human knowledge. How do we know? What can we know? What are the grounds (or justification) for believing a given piece of knowledge is true? Considering such questions invites more questions about the nature of reality, questions considered in Metaphysics, another branch of philosophy. What can be known depends on what there is, in reality, to be known. These two branches of philosophy have connections. A particular standpoint in epistemology may commit one to a particular metaphysical position, and vice versa. Our focus in this module will be on the main theories of knowledge, rationalism and empiricism. Selected issues about the nature of reality are addressed in the unit on Metaphysics.

Coursework

The Epistemology Unit text is the primary reading material, with links to additional reading or viewing resources.  Subject matter is subdivided as follows:

Section 2.1: How Do We Know?
Section 2.2: Rationalists and Empiricists
Section 2.3: Rationalists and Empiricists – Continued

Philosophers We Will Meet

In our investigation and readings for Epistemology, we will encounter the work of these philosophers. You may select a name here to link to a short biography, or you may link to the same information at your first encounter of the philosopher’s name in the unit text:

Plato
Rene Descartes
John Locke
Gottfried Leibniz
David Hume
Immanuel Kant

Key Terms

It is important to understand the meaning and use of these terms.

a posteriori
Requiring sensory experience of the world. An a posterioriproposition can be known only after experience. (Latin “from what comes after”)
a priori
Requiring no sensory experience of the world. An a priori proposition can be known independently of and prior to experience. (Latin “from what comes before”)
Analytic
Refers to a proposition being true based on what its words mean; it is true by definition. No experience of the world is required to justify.
Empiricism
Reliance on experience as the source of ideas and knowledge.
Innate idea
Mental contents that are presumed to exist in the mind prior to and independently of any experience.
Intuitionism
A theory of knowledge that is a variety of rationalism in which knowing relies on non-inferential mental faculties, rather than reasoning, and not on sensory experience. One “just knows.”
Rationalism
Reliance on reason as the only reliable source of human knowledge.
Skepticism
The theory that certain knowledge is impossible, or that we must doubt what we think we know.
Synthetic
Refers to a proposition requiring experience of the world to be known. Justification depends on the way the world actually is.
tabula rasa
The idea that the mind of an individual begins without any mental content and all knowledge comes from experience. (Latin for “blank slate.”)
Transcendental idealism
Kant’s theory of knowledge that maintains that synthetic a priori judgments are possible and provide the basis for truths about the world that are both necessary and universal. Knowledge is acquired by connecting concepts of our understanding to our experiences.