Questions tagged [knowledge]
Knowledge is a familiarity with someone or something, which can include facts, information, descriptions, or skills acquired through experience or education.
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Can knowledge exist without structure?
For reference:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-analysis/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-how/
https://plato.stanford.edu/...
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What Is Critical Thinking, and How Does One Go About Learning It?
I am a freshmen taking an 'Effective/Logical Reasoning' course as an elective. Admittedly, I thought it would be something I could understand easily, but I soon found that this is not something I can ...
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Is the true definition of a word "everything an object is not" until we learn otherwise?
..I am hoping that someone can help correct me if I am wrong or mislead.
Using a tree as an example to explain my question: it is difficult to narrow down an exact definition of a tree because every ...
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Wanted references to the Phillip K Dick Total Recall (1990) paradox
The movie Total Recall 1990 was inspired by the book "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" written by Philip K. Dick whose leading role was played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. The storyline is about a ...
user22051
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Necessity of multiple theories to understand our world
I understand that in any branches of knowledge or fields, there are theories which do well in describing one or possibly more than one phenomena. However, any theory has its limitations and cannot be ...
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How did Suarez defend objectivity of human knowledge (cognition)?
It seems that Aquinas (and the first scholastics) founded objectivity of knowledge in the unity of intellect and the thing known. Namely, the intellect receives the form of the thing and literally ...
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Doubt about the possibility of knowing someone is actually saying the truth [closed]
Except for a few cases in which you can have proof someone is saying the truth, can you actually ever know if someone is being honest when they say things like "I love you", "this is nice" or "you ...
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From knowledge based society to society based knowledge?
I would like to know what do these two terms (society based knowledge and knowledge based society) mean and what is the difference between them? And also what does it mean that we are moving from KBS ...
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Did Logical Positivism fail because it simply denied human emotion?
Did the denial of human emotion lead to the death of logical positivism?
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Philosophic current in this excerpt of Ask the dust
I read Ask the dust by John Fante. The following is an excerpt from the book. It is right after Arturo went to Vera Rivken's place and feels guilty for having slept with her.
My question is: what is ...
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Knowledge and certainty
From a French point of view, influenced by Descartes, knowledge is strongly linked to certainty: strictly speaking says Descartes, I cannot know anything unless it is impossible for me to doubt it, ...
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Is there a reason to know? [closed]
I am going to talk about the necessity of the reason to know by talking about the nature of spacetime, and therefore, of our nature. I'm not sure whether this is specific enough for StackExchange, but ...
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Why is it obviously false that the distribution of prime numbers can only be a matter of knowledge and never of opinion?
I'm reading "The Routledge Guidebook to Plato's Republic" (3rd edition) and Plato's "Republic".
In the Guidebook (chapter 7, pg 158, the section on Knowledge and Opinion), the 12th fundamental ...
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An Argument that Knowledge is a Matter of Choice
I have met someone who argues as follows:
What I know depends on what axioms I take. As these axioms are left unjustified, I have as much justification for them as for their negations, so I could ...
user26166
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When does knowledge become wisdom [duplicate]
I am curious about wisdom, I was questioning myself if I could figure out what is wisdom, and I guess wanted to go with obvious answer and conected wisdom with knowledge, but this is not one to one ...
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What's the role of certainty in discussions about philosophical positions?
Karl Popper was one of the twentieth century’s preeminent philosophers of science. He was an avowed realist who was dedicated to the correspondence theory of truth. In his seventh decade of life, ...
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How should "knowledgeability" be defined? Is it merely w.r.t. to best scientific knowledge? [closed]
How should "knowledgeability" be defined?
Is it merely w.r.t. to best scientific knowledge? What about things that science cannot measure?
Or are there other "reasonable" forms of knowledge? Why ...
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The tree of knowledge
A group of scientists come into a hostel and start studying people's behaviour. They create subgroups sorting by countries, jobs, habits, and so on; build models to predict whether someone is up to ...
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Epistemology: What role does " intensionality" play in the knowledge relation? Is " intension" a third term in the knowledge relation?
How to analyse the fact that , at the same time, my 7 y. old nephew
(1) knows that : 1+1 =2
(2) does not know that : sqrt (1) + 1² = the absolute value of the cube root of -8. ?
Certainly, "...
user37859
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Is it possible to track the truth?
Epistemology seems to show that knowledge is always fallible. How can that position be satisfying at all? It seems to me that we are eternally condemned to hope we are going in the right direction and ...
user34482
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What is the point of acquiring knowledge when time would take it away soon enough?
After spending hours and hours of researching on different aspects of philosophy, not to mention the effort, here is my question:
What is the point of acquiring knowledge when time would take it ...
user37486
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Kant and the absolute a priori
Frome the Critique of Pure Reason:
"First, then, if a proposition is thought along with its necessity, it is an a priori judgment; if it is, moreover, also not derived from any proposition ...
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Under what definitions of truth and knowledge (especially Bayesian) are 'definitely knowing' and 'certain' different
Under what definitions of truth and knowledge are 'definitely knowing' and 'certain' different? Apologies if too much of a semantic question, but I think we should agree that we can have a sense of ...
user35983
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What is the difference between Theory of Knowledge and Epistemology?
What are the differences, similarities, and contrasts between the two fields of study, namely, Theory of Knowledge and Epistemology?
Are these terms interchangeable? Are they near-identical?
What ...
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Are there any attempts to define "doubt"?
Traditionally, Knowledge is defined as a True Justified Belief (Let us ignore epistemic caveats and objections to this definition).
According to Wittgenstein, there is no place for knowledge where ...
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Do humans have the comprehension of an ant regarding certain things?
The leading theory behind the anomaly that is human intelligence is that humans had the greatest diversity in selective pressures over the course of our evolutionary history which allowed only the ...
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What relevance, if any, does collective memory in ants have to John Searle's Chinese Room argument?
In his Chinese room argument, Searle dismisses the possibility that a system of separate agents can possess collective knowledge even if the individuals don't have it.
Yet, it's possible that ant ...
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Human science and contasting perspectives
In my lecture notes on introduction to philosophy, my professor asked us some questions in class last semester, and I was so confused even till now. So I want to hear some perspectives in this forum ...
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Is there a philosophy of what we can't know?
Is there a philosophy of what we can't know?
I'd guess that some things we can't know may exist, and have properties. But is that the same as things that we can't know exist?
user35983
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Your irreducible ground truth [closed]
What is the ground you build your arguments on? By this I mean something that would be the ultimate base for your reasoning, something irreducible, a (self) evident and therefore unprovable fact, an ...
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Can a fact be ambiguous? [closed]
I have read online and personally believe that every statement has some degree of ambiguity to it. With this in mind, I was wondering how any propositions can be true. For example, I have heard some ...
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Who/What is the source of knowledge?
This question mostly pertains to physics and math, but I think it fits best on this site. I am not very familiar with philosophy, so I apologize if my question is not very formal.
Essentially, the ...
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Indirect Realism – what are the main objections?
In dialog with others about philosophy, I have generally assumed that the basis of epistemology is a settled question – I. E. that the Locke/Russel/Popper approach, that our worldview is a hypothetico-...
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References discussing self-evident truths?
I am interested in philosophical or logic-based texts that discuss the nature of self-evident truths, which seem related to Alvin Plantinga's discussion of so-called properly basic beliefs. I am more ...
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Arendt on Factual Truth in "Truth and Politics"
I'm reading Hannah Arendt's "Truth and Politics" (1967). I thought I was getting it, but then I read two statements that to me, seem to be in conflict with one another:
"Factual truth, on the ...
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The Gettier problem
I've been looking for an explanation of the meaning of knowledge and I've come across this video on Youtube :
PHILOSOPHY Epistemology: Analyzing A
Knowledge #1 (The Gettier Problem)
[HD]
What I can't ...
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Could the existence of just 5Ws+H (who, what, where, when, why, how) limit us in our search for answers
To summarize, most questions fundamentally come from these 6 words. But, are there more unknown or unthought conditions that could allow us to ask (and thus eventually be able to answer) more about ...
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Why is belief necessary for justified true belief?
In justified true belief it is said that for a person to know a fact it must be true, she must believe in it and she must be justified in believing it.
My question is: Is belief necessary? Why is the ...
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Hume and the notion of causation
Hume argues that what most people associate as "cause" could be the constant conjunction of events. There is no way to prove a necessary connection between A and B.
However, my question has to do ...
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My first thought is always: I AM
This question is derivative of the question here: Could 'cogito ergo sum' possibly be false?
It is noted by authors such as Nietzsche and Kierkegaard that there are several assumptions ...
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Is it possible to know the truth value of a statement without knowing any information about that statement?
Is it possible to know the truth value of a statement without knowing any information about that statement?
If no, then to me that would imply that truth values are not absolute and depend on how we ...
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Some questions regarding knowledge
We know that knowledge is very important and powerful, but does robust knowledge require some sense of consensus and disagreement?
How would one even approach this kind of question? It really makes ...
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Can "knowledge" only be synthetic according to Kant?
I have read secondary sources claiming that Kant conceives of knowledge as a strictly synthetic affair, and that analytic judgments are thus not knowledge. This is relatively consistent with what Kant ...
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Do other animals have conscience?
Does any other animal (apart from humans) have conscience, feel guilt, and have the ability to discern right and wrong?
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Does non-empirical knowledge exist?
I think this question might be dismissed very easily, but I'd like to try to provoke a sort of blurring-the-lines idea that may be interesting.
I'll start by putting two definitions here, the first ...
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On the way we relate to the world\thinking the way we think
Walking down the streets I heard:
Measuring means comparing.
I was shocked. Why $A$ is better\bigger\higher\etc than $B$?
It becomes somehow obvious: that simple idea shapes part of our reality.
...
user29573
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What is the name of the school of thought that holds "humans did it"?
My world view is that there is no way to peek behind the curtains of the universe to reveal its truths-- whether spiritual, religious, or even scientific.
I don't think the word to describe this is ...
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Where is the knowledge that AI's "knowledge representations" represent?
I find this really confusing. AI often says its computer systems "know" things, but when AI explains how to program a computer to be intelligent, it talks only about "knowledge representation". E.g., ...
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How do we obtain scientific knowledge
I have seen some posts about knowledge but want to explore another perspective.
Here is the sort of thing I thought, maybe you can help with a complete answer or at least give some recommendation. ...
user29573
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How to answer a question that you don't know its answer, but your life depends on it? [closed]
Suppose that:
You want to live.
The only way to live is to answer question Q1 correctly.
Q1 is a binary question accepting only yes/no as answers.
You don't know the correct answer of Q1.
You have a ...
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