Classical theory of knowledge or epistemology (the scientifically oriented knowledge) informs part of the important areas in philosophy. It addresses such questions as what is knowledge; from where do we get the knowledge? How are our beliefs justified? How do we perceive the world around us? Do we know anything at all? How do we ascertain that we have the knowledge? How do we quantify the knowledge that we have?
What is knowledge? Rene Descartes (rationalist) in his apology to his disciple Plato claimed to be the wisest man in the whole world alive because he knew that he knew nothing. This is as contradicting as it sounds as everybody’s perception is that wise people should have the “knowledge.” According to him knowledge is inclusive of the things that people have taken in entirety and made the overriding decision to believe that they are the truth. People have the claim to have the knowledge in different fields both professionals and non-professionals, meaning that they claim to have the total truth about a subject matter only for them to apply it and produce very distressing results with grave consequences.
The opposite is also the case, this is, where someone has knowledge but because of the fear of the unknown he does not put it into practice or ventilate his ideas. It might also be true that though he believes to have known it, he is just skeptical about it. Skepticism may be philosophically described as the conflicting thought of not being able to know whether we have the knowledge in entirety. It may also mean that we are not able to figure out if any of our beliefs are true or whether we have conviction in our beliefs in the first place. Descartes seemed to doubt almost everything including his own existence. He might have been right; he had to take a deeper look into his senses, when one dreams he sees things to be so real only to wake up and realize that they are not.
The tripartite theory of knowledge claims that knowledge is a truth with full justification. How does one know that their justification is the best and further claim to possess knowledge while another person might have the justification of the opposite view? Some justified truths, from Gettier cases do not constitute knowledge. In the long run defining what knowledge is has been as contentious as it was in the earlier days.
According to Locke, there is a posteriori (experience based) and priori does not exist at all. Berkeley never agreed with Locke’s material world based on the commonsense notion in his argument; and he claims that matter does not exist. To him only perceptions and perceivers exists. Hume, on the other hand, seems to bring forth the empiricism version of skeptism to expalin how knowledge is acquired which is against what John Hospers believe.
The institution of knowledge according to the philosophers is not easy to determine due to the fact that it involves: acquiring the truth, cognitive relativism and rationality. When Descartes decides to scrap out all that he had been taught as he realised that most of them turned out to be a lie, he seems to build the rationality in his argument to explain how people should have gotten knowledge. He seems to start doubting everything from then in order to start a fresh quest for knowledge. The same seems to support the empiricism group because one would still learn from the environment. In the empiricism tradition, a cognitive relativity to connect between what we have experienced and knowledge that one has is needful. The science oriented worldview though borrows a lot from the empiricism tradition as there are many reasons to think that the synthesis about the above traditions are far much plausible than any of them individually.
How are our beliefs justified? There are always bad and good ways to form a belief on barely every aspect of life. Belief, according to Bertrand Russell, is a state of the mind of a specific sort. Those who are behavior oriented in defining the belief do not really think that such a thing as the state of the mind exists. They are not able to say how the states can even be determined and, therefore, feel that whenever the word is used it should refer to someone’s characteristics. This is further supported by Rorty and Siegel.
In general, it has been considered wise to consider the weight of the evidences supporting such a belief before believing. By so doing, it entails making the right step towards the truth in that context as what is true in one region might not make any sense in other regions. For example, when considering communism or capitalism; the two have critical evidences to their credit. That is both position themself as the truth considering the region each one is practiced. However, viewing one from the perspective of the other region, the former appears untrue. The mythical stories about ogres, ghosts and vampires are believed though no one has the proof to support the same. The three most used theories in explaining the justification of the truth are the coherent, foundationalism and reliability theories.
In the coherent theory, it is stated that all the systems of belief are justifiable by their coherence. Coherence, in addition, consists of three elements: consistency, compressive and cohesive. Consistency involves the ability of the belief to have non-conflicting contents. Cohesive means that the members of the belief must be supportive of one another while the compressive element refers to the ability of the belief to concur with the scope to which the belief is all about. Foundationalism refers to the possibility of doing away with the regress of a belief by positioning a belief to have a basis or a foundation and not to have been a subclass of another. Reliability relates to the fact that whether a belief can be justified or not does not depend on whether it is related to another belief or not as James and Salmon states.
How do we perceive the world around us? Much of our knowledge is obtained via senses and perceptions. Perception is very complex though as it entails a lot more than the experiences and the senses. The way that we experience the world around us is solely dependent on the world itself and by the human beings. We do not just receive the information using our senses, it is arguably correct to say that we contribute as much to the experiences. Our ability to understand the co-existence between us, our perception and the world we inhabit is extremely important in the determination of how our experiences with the world are helpful in achieving the right knowledge.
Do we know anything at all? Philosophical skepticism is the branch of classical theory of knowledge that has captured most imaginations. Alongside the other questions such as what is knowledge and how it should be acquired, is the fact of whether we have the knowledge or not. There is a philosophical theory that states that we do not have the knowledge. Though its arguments are not supported by most people, it seems to carry a lot of weight and, therefore, cannot be overlooked. This theory is further supported by Descartes’ quote on his apology to Plato as has been indicated above. The biggest problem when it comes to the topic of knowledge is not necessarily the questions raised above; it is more to the thought of whether we are able to prove that it exists in the first place or is it just another misconception that nobody will be able to prove it’s reality as Dennett believes.
Work Cited
Pojman, Louis P and Lewis Vaughn. PHILOSOPHY, The Quest for Truth. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. pdf.
