KNOWLEDGE - The Epistemology Of Philosophy

 

Under the branches of philosophy,Epistemology is

the branch which concerned with knowledge.

Click here to read more about the branches of philosophy which discussed on a previous article.

So Epistemology is the study of the nature and scope

of knowledge and justified belief.

It analyzes the nature of knowledge and how it relates to similar notions such as truth, belief and justification.

Under the topic epistemology we have to get know about perception also. Concepts of knowledge and

perception are closely linked.

Perception is a source of knowledge because it is a source of justified true beliefs about the world around us. But the fact that perception is a source of knowledge doesn't mean that the concept of knowledge can't be fully elucidated without reference to the concept of perception.

KNOWLEDGE AND PERCEPTION

The term perception defined as the ability to see,hear, or become aware of something through the senses.

Or according to the Wikipedia Perception is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment.

However when we see about the difference between Knowledge and Perception, when used as nouns, knowledge means the fact of knowing about something, whereas perception means the organization, identification and interpretation of sensory information. Knowledge is also verb with the meaning: to confess as true.

Elements and basic kinds of perception

According to different different sources we can find few number of elements in perception.As perception is a process of sensory organs, perception includes five senses.Simply we can name them as touch, sight, sound, smell and taste.According to them we can list out the elements or the subprocesses of perception as Stimuli, Attention, Recognition, Translation, Behaviour, Performance, Satisfaction.

For example when we are travelling on the road the if a vehicle come towards us turn on head lights and off it we see it by our eyes and then we got know that traffic police is waiting there and then we do a action; slow down our vehicle or check whether our license are in our pocket.This whole scenes can be divide in to parts of above mentioned processes.

ANALYSIS OF KNOWLEDGE

Analysis of knowledge is trying to say what it to be for a subject (P), to be said to know something (Q). 

The aim of an analysis of knowledge is to specify the conditions under which an attribution of knowledge would be correct: the statement’s truthconditions. So it try to say what must be the case for it to be true that Q knows that P.

However the attempt to analyze knowledge has received a considerable amount of attention from epistemologists, particularly in the late 20th Century, but no analysis has been widely accepted.

There are three major components of traditional analysis of knowledge.Namely, Truth , Belief and Justification

Truth Condition

According to Wikipedia a truth condition is the condition under which a sentence is true. For example, "It is snowing in Nebraska" is true precisely when it is snowing in Nebraska. Truth conditions of a sentence don't necessarily reflect current reality. Something’s truth does not require that anyone can know or prove that it is true.If you say I was hungry while typing this and never asked from me, it may be true that if I was, even if nobody has any way to ask it.

Belief Condition

Truth is not sufficient for knowledge.However belief condition is slightly controversial than truth. The general idea behind the belief condition is that you can only know what you believe. A belief is an attitude that something is the case, or that some proposition about the world is true. In epistemology, philosophers use the term "belief" to refer to attitudes about the world which can be either true or false.

Justification

As in Wikipedia Justificatin is a concept in epistemology use to describe beliefs that one has
good reason for holding.

Blog Written by : Sanindu Sandamal

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