Theory of Knowledge

- Week 1
Diploma Programme 1
Greetings
Mr. Joshua Frear
 Today’s Agenda

01 02
Introduction Basics
The importance of Some definitions and
knowledge review

03 04
Empiricism Rationalism
A theory about A competing theory of
knowledge knowledge
 01
Introduction
An imprecise hold on language and reality produces
a citizen who has become not a participant in the
society but an always hungry consumer.

Literate, critical education has an extraordinarily

important role to play in providing the instruments
of resistance to this.

Otherwise, the picture of billions of people whose

volition has been pacified and whose consciousness
has been usurped is a truly frightening one.

-EDWARD SAID (PROFESSOR,

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY)
Theory of Knowledge
What’s in a name?
 Knowledge is Universal
and Timeless

Every language has a word for “know”!

Knowledge in our context
● Easier than ever to acquire knowledge

● Easier than ever to acquire mere opinion

● How can we tell the difference?

● What does it mean to have a “theory” of knowledge?

● Doing philosophy
 02
To Know
 What does it
mean to “know”?
- some content
- we believe it
- it is true
- (but what about a lucky guess?)
EDMUND GETTIER
 Where does knowledge
come from?
If we try to classify knowledge that we have, what
categories might we come up with?

Is every piece of knowledge dependent on another

piece of knowledge?

How do we learn new things?

 03
Empiricism
 Our Senses
How much could we know if just laid
on the couch - eyes closed, no phone?
Where does knowledge
come from?
According to the Empiricists, all our
knowledge comes from experience.
 Let us suppose the mind to be, as we say, a tabula
rasa, void of all characters, without any ideas. How
comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that
vast store, which the busy and boundless fancy of
man has painted on it, with an almost endless
variety? When has it all the materials of reason and
knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from
experience.

JOHN LOCKE
 04
Rationalism
 Beyond
experience
Are things we know that go beyond our
individual experiences?

Think of a spider spinning a web - how

does it know how to do that? Is there
anything in human life like that?
 Two Rationalist Concepts
1. The Innate Knowledge Thesis:
We have knowledge of some truths as part of our
nature.
2. The Innate Concept Thesis:
We have some of the concepts we use as part of
our rational nature.
 Next Week:

Skepticism Foundationalism
Are you sure you actually Infinite regresses and
know anything? what to do about them