Institute of Philosophy and Religious studies. Affiliated to The Catholic University of Malawi

PHILOSOPHY OF KNOWLEDGE
(Epistemology)

Student: OTIENO STEPHEN MBAKA

Class Notes

INTRODUCTION
Fundamental Notions
THE "PHILOSOPHY OF KNOWLEDGE" is that branch of philosophy which tries to determine in a general way what the nature and scope of man's capacity to know are. Precisely what this determi-nation will turn out to be cannot be foreseen at the beginning of our investigation since the very reason for undertaking such a project is to find that out in a methodical and systematic way. Nonetheless, even at this point, we do have a vague sense of what we are after, and, presumably, we have had enough experi-ence of our ignorance and capacity for error to motivate us to take up this arduous task.
Our common-sense notion of nature tells us that an investigation into the "nature" of anything means at least that we are ask-ing "what sort of thing is it?" To be sure, this question is none too precise, but it will do for a beginning. Again, our common-sense notion of "scope" tells us that an inquiry into the "scope" of any-thing means at least that we are asking "how far does it extend?" Again, this imprecise query will do for the moment.
Notice that we are not asking whether we know anything at all. The reason is, as we shall see in detail later that this question cannot be asked at all, because to have asked it is to have answered it affirmatively. The real issue in any philosophical discussion of human knowing is to determine what is meant by 'knowing" and what general conditions must be fulfilled before one can legitimately make a claim "to know." Plato tried to answer these questions in the Theaetetus where he took up the dis-tinction made in the Republic between knowledge (epistēmē) and true belief (doxa). The