Understanding Knowledge: Elements, Sources, and Essence

Knowledge: Subject, Image, Object

Knowledge is the identification of the subject by the object. It is true if the content matches the object mentioned. It has three main elements: subject, image, and object.

Possibility of Knowledge

Dogmatism

Knowledge is not a problem; objects are taken directly.

Skepticism

Knowledge is not possible; the subject cannot grasp the object.

Descartes' method of systematic doubt is a methodical skepticism. Mitigated skepticism refuses certainty and accepts likelihood.

Subjectivism and Relativism

• Subjectivism: Something can be true for one person but not for others.
• Relativism: Knowledge is relative to cultural context (Protagoras, Spengler).

Pragmatism

Human knowledge only makes sense in practical terms. Truth is the congruence between practical purposes and thoughts (W. James, Schiller, Nietzsche, Simmel).

Criticism

Proposed confidence in overall human knowledge, with a certain distrust of all determined knowledge (Kant).

Source of Knowledge

Rationalism

Epistemological stance that supports thought and reason as the main source of human knowledge. Found in Plato, Plotinus, St. Augustine, Malebranche, and Descartes.

Empiricism

Knowledge comes from experience and direct contact with reality. Prominent in the modern age with Locke and Hume.

Intellectualism

Mediates between rationalism and empiricism. Aristotle began this synthesis, developed by Aquinas in the Middle Ages. Conceived as the rational element derived from empirical experience.

Apriorism

Another attempt to mediate between rationalism and empiricism. Kant is regarded as its founder. The a priori component does not derive from experience but from thought.

Essence of Knowledge

Knowledge represents the relationship between a subject and an object. The real problem is discerning this relationship.

Attempts at a Solution

Premetaphysical

• Objectivism: The object determines the subject.
• Subjectivism: Separate objects of consciousness exist, but consciousness spawns them.

Metaphysics

• Realism: Real things exist independently of consciousness.
• Idealism: We do not know things as they really are, but as we perceive them. The world is presented to an organization because of consciousness, not things in themselves.

Theological

• Pantheist and Monist Solution: There is only an apparent duality between subject and object.
• Theistic Dualist Solution: Object and subject, thinking and being, reside in the divine.

Species of Knowledge

Intuitive Knowledge

Immediate learning.

Criterion of Truth

For idealism, truth is the consistency of thought with itself and logical correctness.

Realistic

Truth is the agreement of thinking with real objects.

Criteria

• Idealists: The absence of contradictions in thought leads to a criterion of truth.
• Realistic: The criterion of truth comes from evidence.