I looked up epistemology and was confused on the definition: the study or a theory of the nature and grounds of knowledge esp. with references to it's limits and validity. (Merriam- Websters Collegiate Dictionary)
Its just that this word is very odd, and to be honest, the first time I've ever heard of it was in this book. Could someone just tell me what they found on the word, if you looked it up, too? That would be very appreciated. Thank you!!!
-BabyLika F.
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Friday, June 27, 2014
AOTD: Vocabulary Problems
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Babylika: I read the wikipedia article on it and I think it just means the study of how much knowledge you can gain about a certain thing and how you gain it. It also has something to do with differentiating between opinions and beliefs, but I didn't really understand that part of the article... I hope this helped!
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Think of this idea as how knowledge is constructed...how do we know things? How do we put knowledge together? Does it matter? Epistemology is a word that describes this question, the philosophical underpinning of the construction of a world view. For example, what if everything you understood about how the world works was based on what you've seen on TV? To what degree is that true for people?
ReplyDeleteEpistemology is one of my favorite words, and remembering when I looked it up last year off of some weak article that's only foundation was clever word play, it always has been. Although I must say I'm not entirely certain if the definition refers to some fancy scientific theory or just a natural theory that occurs in our own minds as human beings, I like to think of it as philosophically questioning the philosophical part of our minds. I'm also not entirely sure why I like this word to begin with, because in my opinion (or to my own personal "episteme") trying to completely understand or label the personal part of the human mind with any kind of perspective is ridiculous and will always bring you back full circle. How we gain and use our knowledge and our own philosophy will always be questionable, and ironically enough, can only be answered by using our own knowledge and philosophy- which usually will always will bring us somewhere between the anatomy of our brain or whatever religion we are. Since we as humans have some weird complex that makes us refuse to be okay with each others beliefs as to how we got here and what makes us individuals, I don't think we will get to any kind of agreement on this subject. That leads me to believe that epistemology will always just be a word we use in replace of saying "Since this part of our brains makes us do this." or "Since God made us to do this." In the end, I think of the word "epistemology" as 'trying to pinpoint what makes us believe what we do, how it does it, and why'.
ReplyDeleteThank you all much. I asked my dad as well and he basically said "the study of understand and knowledge" which infuriated me beyond belief because of your guys crafted responses and his 7 word definition. But still, I got clarification.
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