Understanding Epistemology: Knowledge, Language, and Reality
Understanding Epistemology
Epistemology: A branch of philosophy responsible for analyzing knowledge. Since the 17th century, it has been a central focus of philosophical reflection. The rise of natural sciences, with Isaac Newton and others, led to significant progress and encouraged epistemological analysis, making philosophers aware of its basic dimensions. Philosophy acknowledged the need to determine whether we can know what we intend to consider before any investigation. Epistemology forms the basis of other sciences.
Concept of Knowledge
Knowledge is more than just an opinion or belief:
- Opinion: A subjective assessment that we cannot definitively prove to others. It’s an evaluation of reality, often based on compelling but dubious reasons.
- Belief: Expresses something we are not entirely sure of. We might use assertive language, indicating certainty, even without sufficient evidence.
- Knowledge: A belief we are sure of and can rationally justify and prove. Knowledge becomes an objectively true belief when we can provide objective evidence.
Rationality, Theoretical Truth, and Reality
- Theoretical Knowledge: Describes and explains the natural and social world. It is contemplative and arises from a desire for knowledge, not necessarily for survival or well-being, though it often contributes to both.
- Practical Knowledge: Not just an explanation or description of the world, but knowledge applied to it. It encompasses artistic, technical, and moral aspects. These two types of knowledge are interconnected.
Theoretical Knowledge in Detail
The Greek word “theorem” means looking or contemplating. For Aristotle, theoretical knowledge was disinterested contemplation, a product of human rationality. It involves discovering how something is and understanding why it is so. This involves description, explanation, and prediction:
- Description: Describing reality and indicating its characteristics.
- Explanation: Explaining why reality is the way it is and why it has those properties. We must ascertain the causes to understand events.
- Prediction: Knowing what will occur in the future by understanding the causes of certain phenomena.
Knowing what happens is the first step in acquiring knowledge, and predicting future events is the ultimate goal of theoretical knowledge.
Language and Knowledge
Theoretical knowledge is unthinkable without language, which allows us to acquire, store, and transmit information.
- Acquisition of Knowledge: We receive the majority of information that constitutes our knowledge through language.
- Transmission and Storage: Books, libraries, CD-ROMs, and the Internet make it unnecessary for each individual to start from scratch. We build upon the accumulated knowledge of humanity over centuries, which is fundamental to the advancement of science.
Characteristics of Language
Only humans possess language, the ability to communicate through a system of signs that allows transmitting facts, whether present, past, or future, real or imaginary. From a linguistic perspective, language is the human ability to communicate through a sign system.
- Arbitrary or Conventional: A drawing of an open door marks an exit, and the word “exit” provides the same information. The sign is conventional or arbitrary because different languages use different words to express the same concept (e.g., goodbye, bye, cya).
- Articulated and Creative: A complex system where we create messages from phonemes in combination with more complete structures like words or sentences.
Signifier: How we perceive physical reality.
Signification: The concept or idea associated with a signifier; the real referring to the linguistic sign.
Language, Thought, and Reality
To build a concept, we must abstract what is common in reality. Through this process, we reduce, arrange, and classify the multiplicity of perceptions of the environment into universal concepts, contributing to the understanding of reality. We are providing the raw materials. Concepts or mental images allow us to think. The linguistic sign and words are broken down into three levels:
- Signifier: Sequence of phonemes belonging to linguistics.
- Meaning: Idea or concept associated with a significant level of thought.
- Target: Quality, a process we refer to, areas of reality.