Epistemology: The Philosophical Study Of The Nature Of Truth And Knowledge

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Ultimate Source of Knowledge Epistemology is the philosophical study of the nature of truth and knowledge. This branch of philosophical inquiry attempts to discover what truth and knowledge are, the process of how we obtain truth and knowledge, and the distinguishing differences between truth and falsity and knowledge and belief. The two opposing schools of thought of epistemology are rationalism and empiricism. Rationalism is the epistemological theory which claims that truth and knowledge stems from reasoning alone. The notion that some truths and knowledge are independent of our experiences supports this theory. “For example,” John Chaffee explains, “the principles of mathematics and logic have for the most part been developed independently …show more content…

This theory contradicts the notion of innate knowledge by claiming that we must make observations of the natural world and interpret this data in order to form truthful and knowledgeable concepts. A main supporting philosopher of empiricism was Aristotle who blatantly disagreed with his teacher, Plato. Although Aristotle was a metaphysical dualist, he believed that things existing of the physical world were more real than that of the immaterial world simply because ideas do not exist independently of human beings and our experiences. This claim of Aristotle 's thus supported his theory of empiricism. Another empiricist was John Locke who supposed that the mind is a “tabula rosa”, or blank slate, on which perceptions derived from our experiences are marked. This denied innate knowledge and to an extent denied knowledge through reasoning. Contrary to Spinoza 's infinitely rational God, George Berkeley supposed the infinite Being to be the ultimate perceive of all things. Berkeley follows, “And it seems no less evident that the various sensations or ideas imprinted on the sense, …, cannot exist otherwise than in a mind perceiving them” (Berkeley 152). All things are perceivable to humans because God is constantly perceiving them. This emphasizes knowledge through experience, rather than

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