SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE

SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE

            A plethora of beliefs arise in people for a wide variety of causes, such as desires, emotional needs, prejudices and biases of various kinds. But, when beliefs originate in sources as these, they do not qualify as knowledge even if they happen to be true. For true beliefs to assume the status of knowledge, it is necessary that they originate in sources that afford us good reasons to consider them reliable. These reliable sources are: perception, introspection, memory, testimony and reason.

Perception

            Perception is a source of knowledge which employs our perceptual faculties, that is, our five senses which are: sight, touch, hearing, smelling and taste. While a perceptual experience is got by perceiving that there is a coffee on the table when indeed there is a coffee on the table, a perceptual seeming perceives that a coffee is on the table when indeed that is false. This aspect of perceptual seemings invokes the idea of fallibility in perception. Perceptions are experiential, and experience is a character of the world of flux, where things are today, and not tomorrow, and where appearance may not always connote reality. The structure of perceptual knowledge is held differently by direct and indirect realists. For direct realists, perceptual knowledge is acquired by a direct perception of the object in question. For indirect realists, perceptual knowledge of objects is acquired by perceiving the sense data that represent external objects. Thus, for direct realists, perception of external objects give us foundational knowledge of external objects, while for indirect realists, perception of external objects do not give us foundational knowledge since knowledge of external objects is indirectly derived from our knowledge of sense-data. However, the reliability of our perceptual faculties is problematic. It seems our reliability is memorial, but can memory itself be reliable? Are our memories of perceptual successes really what they are? Could there no be memorial seemings just as there abounds perceptual seemings?

Introspection 

            Introspection is the capacity to inspect the, metaphorically speaking, ‘inside’ of one’s mind. Through introspection one is in epistemic possession of the mental states of a person, like thirst, excitement, depression etc. When compared to perception, introspection is less error prone, because it is internalist, mentalist, private, and experientially unverifiable. Because of this, it has a special status. But, could one introspectively seem to have a headache when in fact one does not? Although it could be argued that error surfaces because of the difference between appearance and reality, and since introspection lacks this, it is incorrigible. But, it may still be asked, is it impossible to confuse an unpleasant itch for a pain? Or a circular shape for an elliptical one? If perception is not immune to error, it is difficult to understand how introspection which provides the firm foundation for our beliefs can be error-proof.

Memory

            Memory is the capacity to retain knowledge acquired in the past. What one remembers, though, need not be a past event. It may be a present fact, such as one’s telephone number or a future event, such as the date of the next public lecture. Buy, not every instance of taking oneself to remember that p, is an instance of actually remembering that p. Hence, memory is fallible. We could think we remembered that p when we actually seemed to remember that p. The distinctively epistemological questions about memory are these: What makes memorial seemings a source of justification? Is it a necessary truth that, if one has a memorial seeming that p, one has thereby a prima facie justification for p? Or is memory a source of justification only if, as coherentists might say, one has reason to think that one’s memory is reliable? Or is memory a source of justification only if, as externalists would say, it is in fact reliable? Second, how can we respond to scepticism about knowledge of the past? Memorial seemings of the past are both evident and rife, but do not and cannot guarantee that the past is what we take it to be. Why, then, should we think that memory is a source of knowledge about the past?

Testimony

            Testimony differs from other sources because it is not distinguished by having its own cognitive faculty. Rather, to acquire knowledge of p via testimony is to come to know that p on the basis of someone’s saying that p. Saying that p includes both oral and written information from media or personal discussions. Knowing the current time by asking someone the time is an example of testimonial knowledge. Knowing of a brutal attack by reading a post or journal is also an example of a testimonial knowledge.

Testimony raises the following epistemological questions: Why is testimony a source of knowledge? Suppose you hear p from someone but in fact that person is utterly unreliable as to the question of whether p is the case or not? Even following the reliability requirement of the externalists, suppose also that you have no evidential clue as to the person’s reliability? Would it not be plausible then to conclude that, since that person’s reliability is unknown to you, that person’s saying that p does not put you in any position to know that p?  Even if as Thomas Reid suggests, attributing reliability and credibility to non-contradicted testimonial sources is a natural human attitude, what makes this attitude reasonable? If testimonial sources have been shown to be fraught with error as above, is it still wise to depend on it?

Reason

            Reason as a source of knowledge affords rational knowledge. This is knowledge afforded by an unmediated employment of reason. Here, beliefs are justified solely by the use of reason. Justification of this kind is said to be a priori: prior to any kind of experience. In a priori justification, s is justified a priori in believing that p if and only if s’s justification for believing that p does not depend on any experience (be they perceptual, introspective and memorial). Beliefs that are thus true and justified in this way (and not somehow gettiered) would count as instances of a priori knowledge. A priori justification is one derived solely from the use of reason.

Strengths

1) Rational knowledge is a purer form of knowledge, because, it severs experience, and as such is undiluted by perceptual, memorial and introspective seemings. It is certain, beyond even the slightest doubt. Whereas what we believe, or even know, on the basis of sense experience is at least somewhat uncertain.

2) Rational knowledge has a universal and eternal character. If one person can think it, so can everyone else, because, as Descartes says, reason is a universally shared endowment.

3) By using various tools of the mind (thinking, intuition, reasoning), one can conceptualize and makes sense of the entire macrocosm of the universe.

4) Rational knowledge is a worthy response to the sceptics. If nothing can be known with certainty, say the sceptics, on the basis of the ephemerality of the world, rational knowledge is not based on the experiential world, and so, something can be known with certainty and assuredness.

Weaknesses

1) A weakness of rationalism is that we cannot gain all knowledge through thinking. I could think of a strawberry and how it would be but cannot imagine the taste. Our brains do not have the capacity to create the taste. We could not simply think "Yum strawberries taste delicious" because we do not "know" how we would react to the strawberries taste. (I confused myself)

2) Rationalism is not useful in proving things to be true because it relies on logic that may or may not be true in itself and cannot account for the real world. 

3) For the sceptics, rational knowledge does not exist at all. Because, even mathematical, geometrical and logical knowledge must in some way arise from experience. It is by joining two things with two things that we know that 2+2=4.

4) Every knowledge ought to be able to solve human problems. A knowledge that is bereft of experience is unsuitable in solving problems concerning the world of experience.