Epistemology is a discipline of philosophy concerned with the study of knowing that has long piqued the interest of philosophers. It is an area that has piqued the interest of great thinkers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, to name a few. They have various explanations for the source of knowledge, its breadth, character, and justification. In this sense, two competing viewpoints on the source of knowledge have emerged. Empiricists, such as Aristotle, believe that knowledge is obtained from experience and sense perception, whereas rationalists, such as Plato, believe that we gain knowledge via reasoning and thinking, which we are born with. Modern philosophers have also taken their time and resources to inquire into epistemology and make their contributions including Rene Descartes, John Locke, George Berkeley, David Hume and Immanuel Kant.
Rene Descartes is undeniably among the major contributors to epistemology who viewed the acquisition of knowledge to be rational. He believed that human beings naturally possessed the power to reason and through its application they could attain knowledge. In his famous work, Meditations on First Philosophy, he defines knowledge in terms of doubt as conviction based on a reason so strong that it can never be shaken by another stronger reason. Descartes therefore advocates for a scientific inquiry into one’s world which kicks off with doubting everything including the senses and the body. In search of knowledge the individual proceeds to keen investigation of everything separately assuming all prior prejudice to find the fundamental truth upon which knowledge lies hence better understanding. To Descartes there was nothing that could be accepted automatically as the truth until it was investigated separately and scientifically forming our knowledge.
John Locke is the other great philosopher to contribute to epistemology and defines knowledge in terms of an idea in one’s mind agreeing with that in another’s. Unlike Descartes, Locke viewed the acquisition of knowledge empirically. He places all knowledge source on the senses and disagrees with innate knowledge at birth as advocated by Plato in his 1689 An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Locke believed that human beings came into the world with a blank slate upon which everything gained in the world through experience was written. To him there was the world and ideas about the world which he combined in his ‘Causal Theory of Perception.’ According to this theory, the world interacts with our organs like the eyes, tongue and nose to cause ideas in our minds which will then form our ideas about this world.
In his quest to explain the source of knowledge, Locke claims that there are two types of ideas which the mind develops from the world; simple ideas and complex ideas. The simple ideas are constructed directly from interaction with the world while complex ideas are a combination of the simple ideas or the complex ideas themselves. He further stresses that human beings give names to these ideas hence the development of language and that words are a representation of what is in the mind. John Locke therefore made it clear that knowledge was obtained from experience through the senses and made the mental representation of the world to which names are given.
Irish philosopher, George Barkley was also not left out in providing insights into epistemology. The famous bishop was also a staunch empiricist who argued that the external world existed only because its perceived to but did not exist on its own in reality. He was triggered mainly by Locke’s stance and viewed it as one that would lead to atheism. He claimed that abstract ideas were in fact the source of philosophical perplexity and illusion as neither could they be formed nor needed for knowledge and information. To him a word became general by being made a sign of several particular ideas of which one corresponded to that suggested by the mind. Barkley used the fact that infants and poorly educated people could communicate to show that abstract ideas were essential in communication and knowledge. He concluded by asserting that not all general words denoted objects or types of objects.
Berkeley suggests that ideas are the immediate objects of knowledge and they can be of sense, reflection and imagination. He further argues that there must therefore exist something which perceives these ideas, makes sense of them and remembers them implying to the mind. He differentiates the minds and ideas with the mind being the knower and an idea the known thing. He also says that things only existed either as a result of their being perceived or just being the ones doing the perceiving. The bishop saw that God filled for all human beings if they were not there to do the perceiving of the world. To him anything the human beings could see was the language and handwriting of God.
Therefore, according to Berkley who put science and Christian theology compatible, the world is made up of minds and ideas. The ordinary things are what makes up the human ideas which the human minds then give meaning to. The human senses are all in coordination and the understanding of one thing through a particular sense leads to further grasp by another sense.
David Hume a skeptical imperialist further claimed that human knowledge was based in perception. He claimed that these perceptions are in form of ideas and impressions. Impressions are the direct products of immediate experience for example the size of one’s own fingers at observing them while ideas are the copies of the original impressions for example remembering the size of someone else’s fingers prior observed. He further said that perceptions differed from person to person and only linked when associations were made. These associations were achieved through mental operations involving resemblance, contiguity and cause and effect. Repeated associations enabled formation of human beliefs. Beliefs were also formed on that that was beyond daily experience like death.
Hume therefore made it clear that knowledge could not be established by reason and only experience and observation could be used in its explanation. To him, human knowledge was of two categories; relations of ideas and matters of fact. Relations of ideas encompassed logical propositions within the mind which can enable demonstration while matters of fact are the propositions of contingent observations of the world and ideas we develop with sensations. Matters of fact attempt to explain how and why things are the way they are.
Immanuel Kant, an influential German philosopher in Western philosophy also contributed to epistemology where he strived to bridge the divide created by the empiricists versus rationalists. This was in the of Hume’s skepticism which Kant claimed to have awakened him from his ‘dogmatic slumber. His approach to epistemology saw him agreeing with both empiricists that innate knowledge was not in itself enough for knowledge and that required experience also and rationalists that experience and sense perception was just not enough for knowledge therefore it depended on the mind to organize the experiences for knowledge.
Kant observed that knowledge begins with experience but experience is not the sole source of knowledge. To him, experience was the initiator of the journey to knowledge possession which would work hand in hand with the existing categories in the mind by which the experience was framed for understanding. The twelve ‘categories of understanding’ represented the ways that the mind could form and give meaning to experiences. Kant asserted that the mind was actively involved in knowledge acquisition as it contributed to the world as known to it and the world conformed to how the mind knew it. He therefore placed the world on the subjective dimension and the mind on an objective dimension. The human mind only gave knowledge of appearance ‘phenomena’ and not the ‘nounema’ the actual reality of things in the universe
According to Kant therefore human beings did not know reality as it may be for it was only how the mind put it. The mind only structured experiences based on its independent reality which could turn to be different in the actual world reality. Human beings therefore can’t know things which they don’t experience and organize in the mind for example the unending mysteries about God, hell and heaven. Kant culminated the undying debate of rationalism and empiricism in knowledge by clearly pointing out that human knowledge is as a result of collaboration between the mind and experience.
The world of epistemology has evidently attracted the attention of philosophers all the way from the Pre-Socratic period to the modern day. All have sort to explain the acquisition and nature of knowledge to their best. This has consequently led to opposing fronts as some take a rational lead while others explain knowledge empirically. Descartes maintained a rational approach while Locke, Berkley and Hume took the empirical lead. Kant however took an acknowledgeable path and appreciated the role of both the mind and experiences in acquiring knowledge.
Works cited
Berman, David. George Berkeley: Idealism and the Man. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.
Don Garrett. Cognition and Commitment in Hume’s Philosophy. Oxford University Press, 1997.
Fogelin, Robert. Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to Berkeley and the Principles of Human Knowledge. Routledge, 2001
Hartnack, Justus. Kant's Theory of Knowledge: An Introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason. Ed. Translated by Holmes Hartshorne. Hackett Publishing Company, 2001.
Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. Edited by Selby Bigge. Clarendon Press, 1985.
John Locke. An Essay concerning Human Understanding. Edited by Nidditch Peter, Clarendon, 1975.
Spinoza Baruch. Principles of Cartesian Philosophy. Philosophical Library, 2007.
