ABSTRACT
How do we know what we know? This question is central to the branch of philosophy called epistemology. At its heart are two very important, very interesting questions about being human: How are human beings ‘hooked up’ to the world? And what ‘faculties’ do we have that enable us to gain knowledge? We will discuss two positions: that all of our ideas and concepts, and all of our knowledge, come from experience; and that we have ideas and knowledge that we have gained some other way, for example, through reason or innately. By the end of the chapter, you should be able to analyse and evaluate a number of arguments for and objections to both these views, and be familiar with important four pairs of concepts: analytic/synthetic (p. 8), a priori/a posteriori (p. 9), deductive/inductive (p. 18), and necessary/ contingent (p. 38). In addition, you should be able to evaluate claims about what is ‘certain’ and about the relationship between experience and concepts.
