EPISTEMOLOGY

● Epistemology mainly focuses on the following four

questions:

(1) What is knowledge?

(2) Can we know anything at all?

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(3) How do we obtain knowledge?

(4) What is the limit of knowledge?

 █ What is knowledge?

● What kind of knowledge we are talking about.

● Consider the following knowledge-claims:

(1) S knows that the earth is round.

(2) S knows [of/about] Mr. Barak Obama.

(3) S knows how to ride a bicycle.

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►The kind of knowledge-claim made in (1) is called the

Propositional Knowledge.
 █ What is a proposition?

● A proposition or a belief is a linguistic expression

that expresses a relation between two concepts.
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█ The TEST

● All propositions are either true or false.

 ■ Debate about propositions:

► A proposition is a specific kind of linguistic

expression/sentence.

► The thought expressed by a specific kind of

expression/sentence is a proposition.
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 we can continue our present journey of philosophy

without entering into the deep of this debate.
 Sentences and Propositions

● All propositions are sentences [all propositions are

expressed by sentences] but not all sentences are
propositions [not all sentences express propositions].

■ The knowledge-claim made in (1) is a claim about

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a proposition. So, we call the kind of knowledge-

claim made by it a propositional knowledge or,
sometimes, “know-that”.
 Knowledge by acquaintance or object-knowledge

The kind of knowledge-claim made in the sentence (2) does

not involve a particular proposition but an object which is
claimed to be known by S. Here, what is claimed is the
following: S has some sort of direct or indirect acquaintance
with the object in question, namely Mr. Barak Obama. This
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kind of knowledge-claim is an example of knowledge by

acquaintance or object-knowledge.
 Knowledge by acquaintance or object-knowledge.

● One may know Mr. Barak Obama by knowing some

propositions about him, but none of the propositions
mentioned is necessary to know Mr. Barak Obama.
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● So, the knowledge-claim made in (2) is not about any

proposition but about the person/object of knowledge.
 Competence knowledge or “Know-how”

● The knowledge-claim made in the last sentence is

about a certain type of competence or ability, not about
a particular object or a particular proposition. This kind
of knowledge is called competence knowledge or
performative knowledge or sometimes “know-how”.
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 Competence knowledge or “Know-how”

A claim: to know how to ride a bicycle is to know some

propositions related to the matter.

 But the claim is not true. You may know how to ride a
bicycle without knowing any of these propositions. And
the physicist who knows all these propositions may not
know how to ride a bicycle.
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■ The kind of knowledge we are concerned here is the

Propositional Knowledge.
 Various definitions of knowledge

█ Knowledge equals to perception.

● What is perception?

► Perception refers to the interpretation of what we

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receive by our sensory organs. Perception is the

interpretation of sensation
 Problems of this definition:

(1) Infants, animals perceive; but they do not have

the kind of knowledge we are concerned with.

(2) Perception may not come with a beliefs or

judgments or propositions.
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(3) One may perceive something which is not

true.
 ★ Lessons we learn from the above:

You know that p, in case

(1) You believe that p.

(2) p is true.
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 █ Knowledge equals to sincere judgments.

 Problems of this definition:

(1) A sincere judgment may be false. But there cannot be

any false knowledge.

(2) A lucky guess may result a true sincere judgment, but

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that is not an instance of knowledge.

(3) Standard deck of 52 cards example.

 ► What makes the last example (example of knowing
something) different from the ones discussed earlier
(examples that do not constitute genuine knowledge-
claim)?

● The last example involves an account/justification/reason

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that supports the judgment made, the former ones do not

involve anything like that.
 ★ The lesson we learn from the last example:

You know that p, in case:

(1) You have an account/justification/reason

for believing that p
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  By joining the lessons we have learned, we can
make the following claim:

S knows that p, if and only if:

(1) S believes that p.

(2) p is true.
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(3) S is justified for believing that p.

  Thus, we may define knowledge in the following
way:

Knowledge is justified true beliefs.

► This is the JTB concept of knowledge.

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