We explain what epistemology is, what it studies and the functions it performs. We also explain its characteristics, types and examples.
Epistemology seeks to answer the question of what it is possible to know.
What is epistemology?
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that studies how knowledge is obtained and what its validity is. Its name comes from the Greek words epistḗmē (“knowledge”) and logos (“study” or “science”). That is why it is called the “science of knowledge.”
In particular, epistemology addresses the way we understand, acquire, and validate knowledge. To achieve this, the question is asked about what it is possible to know and through what means.
Epistemology and the sciences: Epistemology is the critical, historical and contextual study of science, as well as its principles, methods and results. Science is understood as any discipline that aims to produce or obtain knowledge in general.
See also: Philosophical knowledge
What is epistemology for?
Epistemology deals with the way in which knowledge is acquired. Some of its functions within the field of research are:
- Question the limits of knowledge. Review and question accepted methods of formulating knowledge from the real world.
- Review the methodologies. It calls into question the methods we use to distinguish valid knowledge from a belief or assumption, or to distinguish knowledge based on where it comes from.
Epistemology often combines his field of study with that of many other disciplinessuch as pedagogical studies, religious studies and ethics. It can also serve as a basis for these to think about themselves in relation to the way in which they obtain and validate their knowledge.
For this reason, part of the current academic community maintains that the specific field of epistemology is scientific knowledge itself: its possibility, its nature, its scope and its methods.
Object of study of epistemology
Epistemology studies the types of possible knowledgethe mechanisms by which we can form them and the logic that allows us to determine whether it is valid knowledge or not.
Broadly speaking, epistemology deals with:
- The historical, social and objective context of the emergence of scientific knowledge.
- The criteria used to determine whether a knowledge belongs to the field of scientific knowledge or not.
- The concepts of truth, justification, corroboration and hypothesis.
Examples of epistemology
One way to apply epistemological criteria is through the use of belief, truth, and justification. The objective of applying these aspects points is to satisfactorily ensure that a belief can be considered knowledge.
- Belief. Someone cannot say that he knows something if he does not believe that that is true.
- TRUE. Someone who believes in something false, does not believe it. knows as a fact, but it is wrong.
- Justification. Someone must have a reasonable justification for what he believes to be considered true knowledge.
For example: Juan knows that there are cows in the neighboring field. This can be considered as something that John knows, given that:
- John believes it is true (belief).
- There are cows in the neighboring field (true).
- Juan saw the cows in the neighboring field (justification).
In this way, by distinguishing the aspects of belief, truth and justification implicit in the statement about John and the cows, epistemology allows us to identify, in John’s belief, true knowledge.
History of epistemology
Although epistemology is today a science with its own autonomy, its history can be traced back to the work of Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle. At that time, a distinction was made between two types of knowledge: the doxa or vulgar knowledge, and the epistḗmē, which was the reflective knowledge that was the fruit of thought. However, there was not yet a discipline equivalent to modern epistemology.
Epistemology as a branch of philosophy recently took his first formal steps in the Renaissance European (15th and 16th centuries), from the scientific turn that took place when the transition from faith to reason was made as a method of obtaining truth and knowledge in general.
Locke’s works, for example, detailed methods of obtaining knowledge, as did the works of Descartes and Kant, each from their own perspectives.
However, Those who most influenced the scientific field for the development of epistemology were the thinkers of logical empiricism, also known as logical neopositivists. This movement emerged at the beginning of the 20th century in Central Europe, represented by two groups of philosophers and scientists: the Vienna Circle and the Berlin Circle.
Logical empiricists addressed methodological and epistemological problems motivated by the advances of the time in physics, logic and mathematics. In addition, they discussed different epistemological conceptions of the time.
The Vienna Circle was made up of thinkers such as Rudolf Carnap, Otto Neurath and Moritz Schlick, while the Berlin Circle had Carl Hempel, David Hilbert and Hans Reichenbach among its members. Both groups were motivated by the works of Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell, on the one hand, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, on the other.
Karl Popper, for his part, criticized and replaced the concept of induction (the process by which we get from a particular statement to a general one) by the method logical-deductive. In this way, he arrives at the statement that theories are not verifiable, but rather momentarily corroborated, until others end up replacing them. His ideas started a movement known as critical rationalismwhich was joined by thinkers such as Nelson Goodman and WVO Quine.
Following these works, the post-Popperian movement emerged, with authors who, although inspired by positivism or Popper’s work, did not fully identify with it. The most notable cases were Thomas Kuhn and Imre Lakatos.
Thus, Epistemology was key in the formulation of the concepts of science and scientific knowledge that dominated the thinking of the 19th and 20th centuries. During the 20th century, hermeneutics was developed as a philosophical theory. From that perspective, Hans-Gadamer argued that the task of the philosopher was to interpret already written texts, seeking their meaning and the way in which they articulated different ideas to generate knowledge. Thanks to Gadamer’s work, epistemology made its way into other branches of knowledge such as history, politics, economics and even art.
Representatives of epistemology
Some thinkers and philosophers who worked on epistemology are:
- Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970), Otto Neurath (1882-1945) and Morritz Schlick (1882-1936). They were logical empiricists who were part of the Vienna Circle and emigrated to the United States to continue their work.
- Carl Hempel (1905-1997), David Hilbert (1862-1943) and Hans Reinchebach (1891-1953)They were logical empiricists who formed the Berlin Circle and worked alongside the Vienna Circle.
- Karl Popper (1902-1994). He was a fervent critic of logical neopositivism and is credited with using the logical-deductive method.
- Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996) and Imre Lakatos (1922-1974)They were continuators of Popper’s epistemological work. Kuhn formulated epistemological relativism and Lakatos proposed sophisticated falsificationism.
- Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002)He is considered the founder of hermeneutics, and used epistemology to work on different human sciences, generally far removed from traditional scientific discourse.
- Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005)He was a French phenomenologist and hermeneutician, and he brought the scientific-hermeneutic method into dialogue with the field of study of phenomenology, which is the branch that studies the appearance of phenomena.
Differences with gnoseology
Gnoseology is a branch of philosophy that studies the way in which we construct knowledge of the world. The fundamental difference with epistemology lies in the fact that Gnoseology deals with studying the scope of all types of knowledge in general, while epistemology is limited to scientific knowledge.
However, this distinction is often questioned. Some scholars in the English-speaking world argue that epistemology can be synonymous with gnoseology. They also use it as a synonym for an even broader category, which is epistemology. theory of knowledge.
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References
- Yesterday, AJ (Ed.). (1965). Logical positivism. Fund of Economic Culture.
- Bachelard, G. (1975). Epistemology. Anagram.
- Grondin, J. (1999). Introduction to philosophical hermeneutics. Herder.
- Stroll, Avrum and Martinich, AP (2023). Epistemology. In Encyclopaedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/
- Truncellito, David A. (n.d.). Epistemology. In Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://www.iep.utm.edu/
- Verneaux, R. (1999). General epistemology or criticism of knowledge. Herder.
- Waetofsky, MW (1973). Introduction to the philosophy of science. Alliance.