2. knowledge always belongs to some individual or group; the knowledge of a group may go beyond the knowledge of its individual members.
3. Epistemology- is the study of the nature of knowledge, justification, and the rationality of belief.
4. Definition/Perspective:
4.1. Cynical Theory - there is nothing more to knowledge than the perception of power.
4.2. Knowledge depends on the existence of someone who knows.
4.3. Knowledge demands some kind of access to a fact on the part of some living subject.
4.4. knowledge is a link between a person and a fact.
5. Protagoras- Relativist Theory - Some things are true for you, some things are true for me. Splintering the self into momentary fragments
6. Alvin Goldman - Reliabilism - the causal theory of knowledge - experience-based knowledge requires the knower to be appropriately causally connected to a fact; true belief produced by a reliable belief-producing mechanism, where by 'reliable' we mean 'likely to produce a true belief'; knowing is the ideal, and believing is some kind of approximation to that ideal
7. Edmund Gettier - knowledge is something more than the simple sum of justification and true belief; The classical analysis of knowledge: (Where S stands for a subject or person, and p stands for a proposition), S know that p if and only if: (1) p is true, (Ii) S believes that p, (iii) S is justified in believing that p
8. Semantic Externalism (Ruth Barcan Marcus, Saul Kripke, Hilary Putnam)- look at the way our words have meaning or link to reality; words get their meanings not from the images or descriptions that individual speakers associate with those words in their minds, but from causal chains connecting us to things in the world around us; our grasp of the word's meaning is anchored in our history of experiences with real-world objects.
9. G.E.Moore - logical conclusion that external objects actually exist; he does not think there is an all purpose strategy for proving; trust common sense - inference to the best explanation (simpler explanation)
10. Descartes - Rationalism - Meditations on First Philosophy - he felt he solved the problem of scepticism; self exists, God is top of scale of living beings; as long as we stick to the clear and distinct we cannot fail; What can I know for certain? importance of mathematical and abstract ideas
11. Plato - Academic scepticism - Academy of Athens: knowledge is impossible; draws a distinction between impressions and judgments; knowledge is wise judgment or the acceptance of just the right impressions; you attain knowledge only when you accept an impression that is so clear and distinct that you couldn't be mistaken; knowledge is impossible
12. Theories-Theorists
12.1. Pyrrhonian scepticism - way of thinking that is pure doubt, making no claims at all, not even the claim that knowledge could be proven to lie out of reach; criterion: whenever you are tempted to make up your mind one way on an issue, consider the other way - keeping contrary ideas in balance. Pyrrhonians suggested that behavior can be guided by instinct, habit, and custom rather than judgement or knowledge
12.2. Galilleo Galilei & Nicolaus Copernicus - move towards research; earth and humans were no longer the center of the universe; knowledge will be gained by systematic and open-minded observations of nature;
12.3. John Locke - Empiricism - use the 'historical, plain method' to study the natural operations of the human mind; promotion of tolerance of different opinions; required use of reason to discover a truth makes it redundant to claim that this truth is also innate or built in; the mind is 'white paper' before sensation begins to mark it- "tabula rosa"; importance of experience and observation, "What do human beings know?"
