PY1103 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Haruspex, Episteme, United States Academic Decathlon
14 Jun 2018
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Lecture 6
Where does knowledge come from?
Babylonians search for knowledge
- Astronomical events are perodic
- Year / months
- Catalogue of stars
- Planets
- Hepatoscopy: investigation of liver in order to reveal important information
- Astrology: claims causal relationship btw stars / planets and the events to which they
correspond. They supposedly bring about the events they foretell
Epistemology
- The philosophical study of the nature, origin and limits of human knowledge
- The term is derived from the Greek episteme (knowledge) and logos (reason)
- Field is sometimes referred to as the theory of knowledge (TOK)
Plato: Knowledge is justified true belief
- P must be true – believe that can be justified is true through evidence
- I believe P
- I have found reasons for believing P. I need a type of justification
- I have no evidence that negates or erodes in my belief in P
- Allergy for your already existing beliefs
Theory of Knowledge
- Its not called the facts of theory
- There is not one answer regarding knowledge
- There is not one answer to questions regarding knowledge
How do we know what we know?
- If its not objective facts, what is it that we are saying as knowledge? We need some
sense of the truthfulness of a statement
- What makes up the things we think of as knowledge
- When we know something how do we know its even really true
- It helps us eaie our lies ad helps us e ritial of koledge lais hih are
not actually knowledge but instead only belief, opinion, propaganda and even deceit
What do we know?
- Knowledge claims are claims made by someone when they say they know something
- Knowledge claims are made up from different people about different things that
they know
- The world we know is made completely up of knowledge claims
- How do we know if these knowledge claims are representative of reality?
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Historical Artefacts
- Historical artefacts are silent, they tell us nothing
- We interpret a meaning onto / over the top of them
- Whatever affects these interpretations will also affect any knowledge claims being
made
- Stonehedge, the pyramids – all different interpretations
How do we know what the universe is like?
- Have we discovered for ourselves?
- How does science answer the questions about the origin of the universe?
- What came before the big bang?
- How can science ever hope to give us the answers?
- Evidence this from scientifically argument – the problem is the evidence is grounded
in reality
What is reality
- Reality is the world or state of things as they actually exist rather than our
experience of them – that does in fact rely the physical object hypothesis (you exist,
the light exist)
- Perception is not a snapshot – its like a scanner and the brain fills in the blanks
itetioal lik doest proess eer it of isual stiuli, gies ou a sese of the
world
- As humans, we create our own reality through perception
- Reality is created within our minds and cannot be shared identically between two
people
- Even with a physical object hypothesis – we can still not be sure of it (we cant
communicate the exact spectrum of lights, we might see the same but describe it
with different words)
Reality?
- How do we know?
- We say our reality is far more accurate - due to more scientific methods and
evidence
- Why is our reality more real than realities of people in the past or other people?
- Very much of our reality is based on faith in scientific claims
- We believe in reality
- Perception can be slippery (perceptually slippery)
- Different tools – gets different information – different reality
- People before believed in a different reality. It was different but just as real to them
- Are we really angry closer to getting to the whole, complete, real picture of how
things really are?
- Different sorts of knowledge to explain different sources of knowledge knowing
1. A priori knowledge – simplest to explain
- Literall eas fro efore ad fro earlier
- Tend to think about what a fact is
o Depends upon what can derive from the world without experiencing it
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o Better known as reasoning
- Mathematical equations are one of the most popular examples of a priori knowledge
o E.G 4 + 6 = 10
2. A Poseriori knowledge
- Literall eas fro hat oes later or fro hat oes after
- Uses experiences and inductive reasoning and then using logic and reflection to
derive understanding from that deductive reasoning
- It is believed that a priori knowledge is more reliable than a posteriori knowledge
3. Explicit Knowledge
- Knowledge you can find in your textbook + easy to communicate (transmitted easily)
bc its explicit it means you can hand it over
- Knowledge that is recorded and communicated through mediums. This specifics of
what is contained is less important than how it is contained
- The defining feature of explicit knowledge is that it can be easily and quickly
transmitted from one individual to another
- It also tends to be organized systematically
- Examples of where it can be found = manuals, documents, how to guides, data
bases, memos, notes, official records
4. Tacit Knowledge
- (other side of the coin to explicit knowledge)
- It can be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to communicate tactic knowledge
through any medium
- Tacit knowledge must be acquired to a degree that goes far, far beyond
- Would most closely resemble posteriori knowledge, as it can be only achieved
through experience
- The biggest difficulty of tacit knowledge is knowing when it is useful and figuring out
how to make it usable
- Can only be communicated through consistent and extensive relationships of
contact (such as taking lessons from a professional musician)
- Example: Leap of not haig to thikig aout talkig i a laguage that oue
learnt
- Example: Making a joke (knowledge of cultural boundaries and perction of sense of
humour)
5. Propositional knowledge (also descriptive or declarative knowledge)
- Key attribute it actually knowing that something is true
- Knowledge that can literally be expressed in propositions
- Similar to priori and explicit knowledge
- Key attribute is knowing that something is true
- Knowing something or having knowledge of something
- Key aspect is knowing that something is true
- Simply knowing something or having knowledge of something e.g. reading an
instruction book and knowing that a particular skill is possible
- Foundation of hypotheses
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Hepatoscopy: investigation of liver in order to reveal important information. Astrology: claims causal relationship btw stars / planets and the events to which they correspond. They supposedly bring about the events they foretell. The philosophical study of the nature, origin and limits of human knowledge. The term is derived from the greek episteme (knowledge) and logos ((cid:858)reason(cid:859)) Field is sometimes referred to as the (cid:858)theory of knowledge(cid:859) (tok) P must be true believe that can be justified is true through evidence. I have found reasons for believing p. i need a type of justification. I have no evidence that negates or erodes in my belief in p. There is not one answer regarding knowledge. There is not one answer to questions regarding knowledge. We need some sense of the truthfulness of a statement. What makes up the things we think of as knowledge. When we know something how do we know it(cid:859)s even really true.
