Epistemology

Epistemology is the study of how we know what we know (or claim to know). It contains the roots therefore of whether knowledge and research is reliable and believable. Knowledge evolves, so is never absolute. Knowledge of science in 1900 was very different from science knowledge in 2000, and scientists are constantly updating it. This applies to all disciplines.

• Skepticism lies at the heart of epistemology, constant questioning of evidence and interpretation. Knowledge claims should never be taken for granted but always doubted, tested and deconstructed in order to build a more secure version of that knowledge.
• Objectivity simply means we can touch and feel the object, and can therefore measure it. Science is based on measurement, and through description searches for hypotheses. Measurements are not always meaningful, as we know too well in education - we need to be skeptical about what is measured, why and how. In quantitative questionnaires, for example, what is asked and what is not asked is important. Also, the truth is not always found in majority opinion, as Galileo once understood.
  
• Knowledge is in fact no more than a truth claim, which may be reliable and may be not. The concept of 'truth' suffers from the same problems as 'knowledge' - it is a fallible claim that someone makes, and must be tested.
• As individuals, we have a basic foundation of beliefs we believe to be true. This is called foundationalism.
  
• Not all knowledge is measurable. You cannot measure quality, but only perceptions of quality. Research that we call qualitative looks for reliable strategies in different ways.
  
• Perceptual knowledge tries to make sense of what we see, hear, taste, smell and feel. We see an object as a tree, an oak, a table. We can be tricked or mistaken. We can have hallucinations. We look therefore to justify our sense perception, to make absolutely sure.
• A priori arguments or assumptions are things taken as true at the start. If we meet a four footed creature we make the a priori assumption it is an animal. It may be a statue, or a robot, so we are not always right. Our conceptual system labels things in order to help us make rapid identifications. Our concepts might become stereotypes which emphasise similarities but mask differences. Racism for example is rooted in negative stereotypes.
• Moral knowledge. A positivist would say that there is no such thing as moral knowledge or ethics, since they are not observable or measurable. Most would hold however that this is a travesty. That genocide is morally wrong would generally be held as a meaningful statement. There is however great diversity in what counts as ethical - ranging from rational judgements to the application of moral laws in scriptures. Few today would recognize as moral demands in my own upbringing not to shop on a Sunday, and not to enter a pub.
• Religious knowledge, or knowledge about God is a next step, and of course is problematic and controversial. What place do we give to religious experience? Is a phenomenology possible? And can the believers interpretation of religious experience ever be bracketed out to reveal the 'pure' experience? Probably not. Is there a link between mysticism and mental disorder? What is the link between drug-induced mysticism, fasting induced hallucinations, and other religious/psychological phenomena?
  
• Feminist Epistemology presumes that positivism is a male obsession with black-white, where the reality is grey (or pink/green or whatever, richer and more interesting. Many qualitative approaches owe their early development to feminist research where understanding human experience is given greater value than experiment.
• Social Epistemology addresses what counts as knowledge of society and social relationships.
• Procedural Epistemology explores the construction of simple rational arguments as the basis of computer AI (artificial Intelligence).
  
• Hermeneutics as Epistemology emphasises that all we have is interpretation, and we need sharp and critical tools to interpret these interpretations. In this case (and this is widely found today) epistemology is less about the absolute justification of knowledge/ what is true, and more about the refining of our rational processes. This is a stark recognition that we know little or nothing in any hard sense, and we assume a great deal. We started with skepticism, and completing the circle, this is where we end. Recognizing that we can be sure of nothing, we have to make a convincing case which persuades others to see things as we do.
  

Stephen Bigger, 2010

Reference:
Greco, G and Sosa, E (eds) The Blackwell Guide to Epistemology Basil Blackwell, 1999.