Sources of Knowledge

The problem regarding the sources of knowledge is one of the central problems of philosophy. In fact,
the very etymological sense of philosophy implies that philosophers are highly concerned with
epistemological problems. It asks the following questions:

What is Knowledge?

What are the sources of knowledge?

Do we have any limitations of knowledge?

Whence do we get our ideas originally?

What is opinion or belief?

Can opinion or belief be converted into knowledge?

Does knowledge originate from a single source?

Does knowledge originate through the combination of different sources?

We are endowed with certain faculties of knowledge.

Sense------ colour, taste, smell

Reason----- geometrical figures and mathematics

Intuition----------- aesthetics

Religious truths------specifically competent minds and holy scriptures.

According to R.M Chisholm, knowledge is justified true belief supported by adequate evidence.

For example, S knows that h (e.g. that the earth is round) means

1. S accepts H
2. S has adequate evidences for H, and
3. H is true

Sources of knowledge: Authoritarianism, Rationalism, Empiricism, Criticism orCritical Theory,

Intuitionism and Mysticism.

Authoritarianism: is the doctrine that the ultimate source of knowledge is an authority of some
type-an institution like the church or the state, a scripture like the Quran, moral code, civil code or
person.

There are extraordinary men powered by God to whom alone such knowledge occurs.
There are some criteria by which an authority is tested or its merits assessed:

Number: The weight of an authority is proportionate to the number of its followers. For instance,
our ordinary standards of morality, as well as our national prejudices, rest upon this notion.

But truth is not democratic and not to be determined by a counting of heads.

Age or temporal duration: The older an authority, the more trustworthy it is. An institution which
has retained its sway for centuries is certainly more authoritative than the one which has just seen
its birth or is in its childhood.

Prestige: By prestige is meant reputation earned from previous achievements. Honesty and insight,
respectively, constitute the moral and the intellectual prestige of an authority. This test demands
that only that authority is to be trusted which has already established its prestige.

We are not jack of all trades. We need to depend upon others for our survival. Historical knowledge.
Religious truths may be obtained from authority.

Rationalism: Rationalism as a theory of knowledge maintains that reason is the only source of
certain knowledge. Reason is simply our faculty of correct thinking which works in collaboration with
or independently of senses.

Advocates of rationalism from different periods:

Ancient period: Eleatics. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle.

Modern period: Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, Wolf, Hegel,Bradley and Bosanquet

Contemporary period: Robert Brandom.

Descartes (1596-1650), French philosopher and mathematician. Discourse on Method and

Meditations.

Rules followed by Descartes as self-guidance for his philosophical inquiry:

He wanted to establish knowledge which is clear, distinct, certain, indubitable, beyond reasonable
doubt like mathematics.

1. Never to accept anything as true unless I already know it as such.

2. Divide each of difficulties, under examination into as many parts as possible.
3. Commence with a simplest object and ascend, step by step to a more complex.
4. In every case make the enumeration so complete that I might be assured that nothing was
omitted.
Method of Doubt:

Ideas: According to Descartes ideas are of three types: Adventitious, Fictitious and innate.

Adventitious Idea: Adventitious ideas are the ideas of the external objects obtained from
perception. They are indistinct and confused and therefore doubtful. Those ideas vary from person
to person as they depend upon the perception of individuals.
 Factitious Ideas: Fictitious ideas are nothing but the creation of our imagination and obviously they
are false. They don’t have any concrete existence. Mermaid, golden mountain, flying horse, unicorn
are the examples of fictitious ideas.

Innate Ideas: Avoiding both adventitious and fictitious ideas he accepts innate ideas such as God,
truth, perfect being, causality, infinity etc. They are innate in the sense that we are clearly conscious
of them at birth. Their innate characters are evidenced by the fact that they cannot be derived from
experience, but rather constitute the basis of our experience. Descartes’ proof for the existence of
God is an instance of the rationalistic procedure.

Empiricism:

Empiricism is a revolt against rationalism. Empiricism is that epistemological position according to which
the ultimate source of knowledge is experience.

The empiricist argues that rationalists’ belief in innate ideas is mistaken. Reasoning may tell us what
follows from ‘X exists’ and thus extend our knowledge. But reason cannot tell us whether ‘X exists or
not’.

Carvaka(Indian Philosophy), Sophists(Ancient Greece),Francis Bacon, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, John Stuart
Mill(1806-1873) (Modern period), Logical positivism and pragmatism from contemporary period.

John Locke(1632-1704), An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.

Negative and positive aspect of Locke’s position: Negatively, Locke tries to refute the Cartesian doctrine
of innate ideas; and positively, he tried to establish his own view that all ideas are empirical.

Refutation of innate idea: (a) If there are innate ideas, they must be equally present in all minds.
Children, savages, idiots and illiterate persons are quite unaware of the so called innate ideas. They are
not conscious of the idea of causality, infinity, eternity, God and the like. To suppose that innate ideas
exist in their minds of which they are not is self-contradictory.

(b) If there are innate ideas in the mind, they must be the same in all minds. For instance, God.

(c) Even if there were the same idea in all minds, it would not prove their innateness. All persons have
the same idea of fire. But it is not an innate idea; it is derived by all from experience. Universality of an
idea does not prove its innateness.

(d) The so-called innate principles are general truths which are inductions from particular facts of
experience. All generalizations are acquired from perceptions. The child knows that sweet is sweet and
not bitter from which the law if identity and law of contradiction are formed.

Locke maintains that the mind at birth is like a tabula rasa, clean slate, blank paper on which experience
gradually writes its impressions. Experience is two-fold: sensation and reflection. By sensation we
perceive the external objects through our sense organs: by reflection we perceive our internal states.
Sensation is prior to reflection. We reflect only when our mind is stocked with sensation. “There is
nothing in the intellect which was not previously in the senses.

Fundamentals of classical empiricism:

1. Mind at birth is a clean slate or tabula rasa. All the characters of knowledge are acquired
through sense experience”.
2. Sensation and reflection, the outer and inner sense-experience, are the only two windows
through which the dark chamber of mind comes to be filled with light.
3. The elements of experience, for example, the sensation of light and heat, color and smell etc.,
are all simple and unrelated.
4. Of course, knowledge can never be exhausted by particulars supplied by senses.
5. We find that judging, relating, subtracting, compounding, comparing and combining the discrete
items of sense impressions is the special function of intellect. Without these functions there can
be no knowledge proper.

Simple and complex idea:

Locke lived in an age of composition theory according to which a complex whole is only a sum-
total of simple parts. A simple idea is one which is uncompounded, contains in its nothing but
one uniform appearance or conception in the mind and is not distinguishable into different
ideas. Simple idea is an analyzable simple datum of knowledge. Simple ideas enter into the mind
one by one. For example, we get the ideas of color, smell, taste, touch of the apple one by one.
In forming ideas, the operation of mind is essential. Once we have got the simple ideas through
sensation and reflection we can compound them in infinite number of ways to get complex
ideas. Compounding is that operation of the mind upon its ideas by which it “puts together
several of those simple ones it has received from sensation and reflection and combines them
into complex ones.”

Primary quality and secondary quality: We do not know the objects directly. We know them
through primary (solidity, extension, figure, motion and number) and secondary (color, sound
taste, smell) qualities. Qualities represent objects i.e., representative realism.

Theories of Truth

Truth is one of the central problems of epistemology. Truth ultimately means consistency or
harmony. Truth refers to the state of being in accordance with facts or reality.
Formal truth and material truth:
A judgment is formally true when it has a harmony within itself, without any necessary
reference to the facts. For example, “Mr. X is a shrew” is formally untrue, since there is an
obvious contradiction between its subject and predicate.
“Mr. X lives in the Mars” is formally true even though we know of none like him.
An argument lacks formal truth when its premises and conclusion cannot be accepted together
or have no necessary relation.
An argument is formally true only when its premise and conclusion can be and must be accepted
together.
On the other hand, a judgment is materially true when, besides being formally true, it is
consistent with the facts. Formal truth is called validity and material truth is called simply truth.

What are the marks of true judgment which distinguishes it from false one? What are the
criteria of truth?
The Test of Authority: The truth or falsity of judgments is to be determined with reference to
some authority. A judgment is true if it either directly comes from that authority, or is consistent
with those already accepted upon that authority. Superiors, parents, teachers, largely applied in
religion.

The Test of Self-evidence or Obviousness: According to this test, a judgment is true, if its truth
is apparent, self-evident or obvious; no reasoning or reference to the facts is necessary.
“Nothing can be both black and not black.” “Apart is always less than the whole.” Descartes and
Leibniz are the advocates of this test.
Spinoza: Just as light reveals both itself and darkness, so truth is the standard of itself and of the
false.

The test of Coherence or Consistency: A judgment is true if it coheres or is consistent with a

judgment which has already been proved to be true. Supported by rationalists.
Air is essential to life, The moon is without air, Therefore, the moon is without living beings.

The Test of Correspondence: A judgment or proposition is true if and only if it corresponds to

the facts or agrees with reality. “The sun is hot”, “Honey is sweet” is true because it conforms to
the actual situation. Empiricists support this view.

Aristotle: “To say of what is that it is not or what is not that is, is false; while to say of what is
that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true.”
Russell: A belief is true when there is a corresponding fact, and is false when there is no
corresponding fact.

The Pragmatic Test of Truth: Truth is not a stagnant property. Truth means utility and
workability. No ideas are originally true or false. They become true by the process of
verification. Ideas are instruments of action, and become true or false according as they satisfy
or do not satisfy the purpose in hand.
Example: The transparent liquid substance is water if it can help to quench one’s thirst.
William James, F.C.S Schiller, John Dewey and C.S Pierce were the advocates.