Blackwell Reference Online

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Knowledge has been a subject of philosophical study since ancient times. This is not surprising since knowledge is crucial for humans to control their actions and the appetite for acquiring it seems innate to the human race. Philosophy, therefore, has always occupied itself with the question as to the nature of knowledge. This area of philosophy is generally referred to as epistemology from the Greek word for knowledge: episteme. Plato defined knowledge as “ justified true belief ,” and this definition has influenced philosophers ever since; cf. Gettier (1963) and Pollock (1986) . Although sensible, this definition does not yet explain the nature of knowledge, since all of the three notions of ‘justification’, ‘truth’, and ‘belief’ are not yet clear and still subject to discussion. It would go beyond the scope of our purposes here to go into this at this moment, but it is touched on later in this chapter. Further issues concerning knowledge include the question of how it comes to us. There is the controversy between rationalists, such as Plato and Descartes, who argued that knowledge only comes via reason(ing), and empiricists, such as Locke and Hume, who maintained that knowledge derives from sense experience. Kant considered categories of analytical knowledge (‘derivable by purely logical argument’) versus synthetic knowledge (where this is not the case) and of a posteriori ... log in or subscribe to read full text