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Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge.Also called theory of knowledge, it explores different types of knowledge, such as propositional knowledge about facts, practical knowledge in the form of skills, and knowledge by acquaintance as a familiarity through experience.
Various other types of knowledge are discussed in the academic literature. In philosophy, "self-knowledge" refers to a person's knowledge of their own sensations, thoughts, beliefs, and other mental states. A common view is that self-knowledge is more direct than knowledge of the external world, which relies on the interpretation of sense data.
The more common view is, therefore, to see knowledge-how and knowledge-that as two distinct types of knowledge. [7] [9] [4] Another often-discussed alternative type of knowledge is knowledge by acquaintance. It is defined as a direct familiarity with an individual, often with a person, and only arises if one has met this individual personally.
A priori and a posteriori knowledge – these terms are used with respect to reasoning (epistemology) to distinguish necessary conclusions from first premises.. A priori knowledge or justification – knowledge that is independent of experience, as with mathematics, tautologies ("All bachelors are unmarried"), and deduction from pure reason (e.g., ontological proofs).
A priori ('from the earlier') and a posteriori ('from the later') are Latin phrases used in philosophy to distinguish types of knowledge, justification, or argument by their reliance on experience. A priori knowledge is independent from any experience. Examples include mathematics, [i] tautologies and deduction from pure reason.
In Immanuel Kant's philosophy, a category (German: Categorie in the original or Kategorie in modern German) is a pure concept of the understanding (Verstand). A Kantian category is a characteristic of the appearance of any object in general, before it has been experienced ( a priori ).
For example: In the sentence "This is a house" the substantive subject "house" only gains meaning in relation to human use patterns or to other similar houses. The category of Substance disappears from Kant's tables, and under the heading of Relation, Kant lists inter alia the three relationship types of Disjunction, Causality and Inherence. [32]
Classification chart with the original "figurative system of human knowledge" tree, in French. The "figurative system of human knowledge" (French: Système figuré des connaissances humaines), sometimes known as the tree of Diderot and d'Alembert, was a tree developed to represent the structure of knowledge itself, produced for the Encyclopédie by Jean le Rond d'Alembert and Denis Diderot.