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Everything we know is based on knowledge. Without it we would know nothing. Because of this, some consider the philosophy of knowledge one of the most important parts of philosophy. Charles Peirce, considered one of the greatest American philosophers ever, analyzed this problem and came up with four different ways that we get knowledge. The first one we shall discuss is the method of tenacity. With this method knowledge is acquired when it is told to you by another person. This is basically what the idea of school is based on; you gain your knowledge from your teacher. it is rather straight-forward, but there is an inherent problem with this method. That is the possibility that the person giving you the knowledge is wrong. Think of it, where did your teacher get her knowledge? Probably from a book. Where did the author of that book get his info? Probably from a research book. And where did that author get his knowledge? Hopefully from a science experiment. Well, as you can see, there are plenty of chance along this line of knowledge for their to be a slip-up and for the knowledge to become false. the other problem is our inherent trust in others. This often leads us to accept what others have told us as true knowledge. As we mentioned previously, there is a decent chance that the knowledge is false. But since we tend to trust people, chance are that we will take that knowledge is true, so that if we were told by another person a different piece of knowledge that contradicts the knowledge told to us by the first person we would tend to believe the first person, regardless if the second person was right since we got our initial knowledge from the first person. This, of course, is a big problem that everyone has, but it is human nature, so there is nothing you can do about it. So, as usual, we move on to the next idea... |