Talk:epistemology

Definitions

Candidate definitions; building material

No.	Definition	Dan's Notes	WikiPedant's Comments (12 Sep/08)
1.	The branch of philosophy dealing with the study of the limits of knowledge.	Original entry in WT.	Too specific. Epistemology also studies the kinds and uses of knowledge. No good reason to emphasize "limits."
2.	The branch of philosophy dealing with the study of knowledge; theory of knowledge, asking such questions as "What is knowledge?", "How is knowledge acquired?", "What do people know?", "How do we know what we know?".	Current entry in WT.	Accurate and just about right, I think, for a good dictionary entry. Any more would be encyclopedic.
3.	A branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge.	W:Epistemology, as of now.	Also OK, but pretty much equivalent to the WT entry, and I think the WT entry is clearer with the questions Dan added to it.
4.	The theory or science of the method or grounds of knowledge.	“Epistemology”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.	Has a dated ring. "Science" is here used in the old-fashioned sense of "area of learning."
5.	The theory of cognition; that branch of logic which undertakes to explain how knowledge is possible.	“epistelomogy”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.	Also quite dated. "Logic" now means all that symbolic stuff logicians do. Here it is used in an older sense, closer to the Greek root term "logos."
6.	The study of what distinguishes the knowledge of a proposition from mere belief in it, and related questions.	Self-made, based on terminological contrast found elsewhere ("knowledge" vs "mere belief").	Not good. This defn is tied to a particular school of thought. I'm not quite sure what "knowledge of" a proposition means, but many philosophers would maintain that there are more kinds of knowledge than propositional knowledge (such as, say, intuitive knowledge).

--Daniel Polansky 07:21, 1 July 2008 (UTC)