· Descartes ·

· Descartes ·

            Descartes (1596-1650), was a philosopher who stands out of the other philosophers because he questions everything, he considered false anything that could be doubted. He began a search for truth, and he finally realized that the only unquestionable thing is our own existence  there is from where his  famous quote was born, "I think, therefore I am", because we cannot be sure of the existence of the rest of the people, but we can be sure that we exist. 

             This philosopher says that knowledge comes from ideas of the intellect, not from the senses; he is clearly a rationalist. He was influenced by the Skepticism, that is why he doubted almost everything and this method helped him to get to the conclusion of our own existence.

· Immanuel Kant ·

· Immanuel Kant ·

              This philosopher used premises to justify something, to prove it is true. There are four types of judgments; the analytic proposal, which stated that something said about a concept is implicit because what was said is included in the definition of the concept, such as bachelors are unmarried; the synthetic proposal is when saying something about a thing that is not included in the definition of that thing, for example: all bachelors are unhappy; A priori is a proposition that doesn't require us to experience it in order to know that, we don't need to be bachelors to know they are unmarried; and the last one is A posteriori, this one does require experience. 

                Kant affirms that we can combine those judgments, but in order to be true, we must make the right combinations; an analytic proposal with A priori, it does make sense, because we do not need to experience being a dog to know them; a synthetic proposal with A priori, those are things you can deduce, if you see a girl with her arm plastered and you say she broke her arm, a broken arm is not part of the definition of "girl", but it may be true; a synthetic proposal and a A posteriori, when what is said is not part of the definition and we must experience it in order to know it, such as getting to know a bachelor who is unhappy. 

Immanuel said that we could never achieve the whole knowledge of a thing, because we will never know its real purpose neither all their characteristics. After using the reason and experience, we get to a final interpretation, but we cannot know the real essence of the thing, which is called noumena. 

                                                    

David Hume

         David Hume was a philosopher unlike any other; he was ever able to attend to a university because it was believed that he was a heretic, so he didn’t think like the philosophers of that time as he did not follow the same doctrine of pattern as the others.

He was a very good friend of Rousseau but as their philosophical understanding started to grow apart, they began having conflicts. They ceased to talk for the rest of their lives.

He also followed to a certain extent the scientific method, because he performed many analysis of the human mind with this method.

         He believed that knowledge is acquired through your senses, therefore he was an empiricist, but he was a skeptic because he believed true knowledge is impossible as we are not sure if our world is real or not, so we do not know if our reality is in fact existent.

         Another theory he has is called “The Bundle Theory” in which he states that we do not exist and we are only senses, experiences and ideas in the air that happen to be together. He also said that objects do not exist as they cannot exist if they are removed of their properties.He also stated that you can never see yourself, and therefore you are undefined.

         Unfortunately he also published a theory called “Induction Problem” because he was an skeptic and he believed you cannot have any knowledge, all his theories could be incorrect. So, as real knowledge does not exist, this means inductive assumptions can’t be justified. 

Karl Popper

Karl Popper had one of the most interesting epistemological ideas regarding how you acquire knowledge and why.

He was a Austro-British philosopher that created the idea of revolutionary epistemology, this theory states that all theories about epistemology are an evolution of the previous one. This means that Aristotle’s theory is an evolution of Plato’s, but with more information. He also said that all theories were correct in their time, but as the years pass they become inadequate for that time. 

He also said that all theories will be incorrect someday because they will be obsolete as the new knowledge we have of the world was not considered when creating them.

 

Liebniz

Liebniz, a german philosopher was the first to introduce many concepts such as monads and a new division of knowlegde, he also reinvented many other theories such as how you aquire knowedge.
     His concept of monads was that everything is a monad, and God is the perfect monad, he also stated that the body is an unperfect monad and that the soul is a perfect one. The perfect monad(soul) is trapped in an imperfect monad(body). This concept may also be applied to physics, where the smallest object in the universe is the monad(aka atom).
      His division of knowledge was very complex and had a lot of sublevels, the first one was dividing the knowledge in obscure and "clear", the "clear" part was divided again into two parts, and then one of those in two, an so on and on. The divisions go from general knowledge to specific knowledge, the last division is the one where you know the concept so well that when you think about the concept you can imagine all its properties as a whole, it is very difficult to acquire this level of knowledge for any concept, but not impossible.
     He believed that you acquired knowedge partially from your senses, but he also thought that not all of your knowledge can be acquired empirically, certain things such as ideas come from reasoning knowledge. Because of this he was a rationalist and kinda of empiricist.

What is Epistemology?  

                               

                     



            Epistemology is basically the study of knowledge; it may sound simple, but when we really get into it, when we start asking questions about knowledge, we realize it is more complex than what we first thought... Since the IV century before Christ, with Plato, there are millions of people who have tried to develop new theories related to Epistemology, this branch is close to the study of reality, Metaphysics.

        When we think of Epistemology, we try to answer questions such as, what is knowledge? How do we know that we know? How do we acquire knowledge, if possible? Does truth exist? Can we get to know the truth? 

               Well, as you know now, it is a very difficult branch of Philosophy... This is why the persons who did create a theory about it are so important, some of them are: Plato, Aristotle, Ockham, Hume, Descartes, Wittgenstein, Kant, Popper, and Spinoza; you will be able to find out what are their theories about in this blog.

              We will try to answer some of the main questions of Epistemology here, based on the 10 philosophers mentioned... 
1. What is knowledge? 
                 It is when a person knows a statement is true, but also, knowing why it is true. Knowledge is different from "containing information", because a computer doesn't have the capacity to know, it doesn't achieve knowledge; in the other hand, we have the human beings, those who are supposed to have the capacity to know, because they are able to understand, to reason the information obtained, and therefore, they are capable of discovering if a statement is true or false. +

2. How do we acquire knowledge?
               According to David Hume, we acquire knowledge through our senses, by interacting with the external world, those are the outward sentiments; but also with our feelings, the inward sentiments. If we mix his empiricist theory with Plato's and Descartes', the answer to this question would be: we get information through our senses, but it is necessary to understand, analyze and reason this information, in order to turn it into knowledge.

· William of Ockham ·

According to Ockham, knowledge is the representation of the understanding of ourselves. To him the basis of knowledge is intuition, or the existence within senses.

His theory of intuitive knowledge states that there is no gap between the object and the knower. Intuitive knowledge is divided into two classifications: natural and supernatural intuitive knowledge. Ockham describes natural intuitive knowledge as a type of knowledge in which an object exists, the knower judges that it exists, and what gives you the knowledge is the object itself. By supernatural intuitive knowledge, Ockham refers to the knowledge in which an object doesn’t exist, the knower judges that it doesn’t exist, and what gives you the knowledge is God. There is a contradiction in this theory of intuitive knowledge because we are unable to distinguish between the two kinds of knowledge.

By basing himself on Aristotle, who said: “Nature works in the shortest way”, Ockham created his theory called Ockham’s Razor. This theory states that by choosing the simplest theory, one chooses the most accurate one. This is because the excess, or the unnecessary assumptions from an argument are removed.

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Disclaimer: this blog post is part of a school assignment, it is not intended to be a reliable source of information for research.

· Aristotle ·

Aristotle describes knowledge as true, exact, and incapable of deviating from its object. He proposes two different levels of knowledge, the first one being the understanding of knowledge, which is developed through life thanks to the second level, which is sensitive knowledge (through senses and experience).

The process of acquiring knowledge starts with impressions for Aristotle. These are the intellection of senses. An example of how someone achieves an impression is by using an organ (senses) which could be the eye. To Aristotle, the eye was the power of the soul.

Aristotle’s understanding of soul refers to it in a scientific way. He proposes that the soul is what makes someone alive, and within the soul there is the mind. The mind is the power or faculty for acquiring knowledge. Inside the mind, we have the intellect, which is divided into two categories: passive and active. Passive intellect refers to the acceptance of a certain degree of knowledge, without further questioning over the process of understanding of the world. Active intellect refers to the thinking and  reasoning of information to acquire knowledge, and the further questioning of the results of this reasoning.

Epistemology was considered a discipline by Aristotle. He believed that trying to understand the world is the basic objective of the people. He classifies people into two groups, according to the type of intellect the used: the ones who stop at a certain degree of knowledge (use of passive intellect) and those who construct theories after acquiring knowledge (use of active intellect). 

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Disclaimer: this blog post is part of a school assignment, it is not intended to be a reliable source of information for research.

· Plato ·

For Plato, acquiring knowledge was related to reason and sense experience, but it didn’t end there. He considered sense experience only the basis of what it means to reason/think, since it is always changing and often unreliable. To him, information becomes knowledge at the moment it undergoes a reasoning process.

Plato’s theory in metaphysics has to do with the World of Forms, where everything is perfect. This theory is closely related to his epistemology theory. He says that when we leave that perfect world to live in this imperfect world we forget about the knowledge and awareness of truth we had before. In order to regain that knowledge, we must go through the process experiencing and sensing this world to then remember the truth we forgot. Forms (ideas) let us think and reason, therefore leading us to understanding. The mind achieves knowledge after thinking about, reasoning, questioning, and understanding ideas. 

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Disclaimer: this blog post is part of a school assignment, it is not intended to be a reliable source of information for research.