Create a new account

It's simple, and free.

Knowledge

One might think that human beings, having labored long and hard to acquire knowledge (about whatever in particular it is that they as individuals wish to gain knowledge about) would cease their mental struggling and simply be content to revel in that knowledge. However, this is not the case, for no sooner have we poor humans acquired knowledge than we find ourselves swarmed by epistemologists and philosophers of language demanding that we explain to them how exactly it is that we come to have this knowledge. How exactly can we be sure that we do know anything? Are we - as Wittgenstein will proffer (and Russell will go a long way towards agreeing) limited in our knowledge of the world by the limits of our language - or at least by the limits of Language? Or do we have knowledge that lies outside of our own cognitive state?

Those who answer in the negative to this last question are grouped together as "internalists" who argue that all knowledge (and all justification of the validity of perception and experience, which may be seen to be analogous with and even interchangeable with knowledge) must always and only depend upon the limits of the cognitive states of the subject - that is the knower, the possessor of knowledge. This theory has a great deal of appeal to many, although it is perhaps seen as a little old-fashioned today, and it is certainly limited by the fact that it seems overly sanguine about human cognitive abilities. The model may be seen to be most obviously old-fashioned in this view of human capability, this idea - begun in the 18th century and foundering in the 20th - that humanity has the ability to think great thoughts until the limit of those thoughts is the limit of the universe itself.

But externalism - which argues the converse of internalism, for the two are as opposite and also as neatly matched as a left hand held up to meet a right hand - has its limitations too. Externalists argue that we may know true th...

Page 1 of 2 Next >

More on Knowledge...

Loading...
APA     MLA     Chicago
Knowledge. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 08:38, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1688217.html