Epistemology- a basic run through

Epistemology was one of the words that came up in the last lecture and to be honest, i had no idea what it meant. So i thought i would post something up to help everyone else if they also had some trouble understanding this, or even wondered what it meant.

In brief, epistemology focuses on the understanding of knowledge and justified belief. It asks questions to gain knowledge for this like---- What are the conditions of knowledge? What are the sources?And what structure and limits does it hold?

Epistemology focuses on the justification of your own beliefs. How justified are your justifications? Is this internal or external to your mind? It has alot to do with the creation of knowledge in specified areas of investigation.

Knowledge comes in many different forms, which you all should know. Things like the knowledge of certain subjects, how to do things, how to deal with problems and specific areas of interest.

This is simply outlined with a very simple scenario and deals with the conditions of knowledge through epistemology.

"Tom knows that James has gone to the park"

Through this we see toms knowledge is that james has gone to the park. But how do we clarify this? Through investigative means (like investigative journalism). What we ask is--- What are the necessary conditions for tom to know that james has gone to the park.

To go into slight more detail, these conditions can be solved in two different ways.

1)Traditional--- Toms knowledge that james has gone to the park can be justified true belief. However, if Tom did not beleive the it cant be propersitioned that tom knows. Make sense? Is what tom nkows even true? he may belive it but it may not be justified because belief could also be a lie. To justify it it has to meet 3 conditions of truth, belief and justification. If one fo these is out of line then you cant have knowledge of something.

2) the non-traditional method is similar but no the same. It deals with whether toms statement if true out of probability to save it being true just out of luck. Basically, a balance of probabilty rather than guessing something that turns out to be right. This "guessing" idea is also a problem known as the Gettier Problem.

My knoweldge is also starting to get a little jaded at this moment so I will make a couple more points and then that should leave you the basic idea of epistemology.

The idea of justification can also be shown with a different scenario.

"Tom asks dick a question and dick answered with a lie" was dick justified to tell a lie? " Harry thinks that dick was justified because toms question was innapropriate to which the answer was none of toms buisness."

What does it mean to think that dick was justified into telling a lie. Because of the innapropriateness of the question dick was under no obligation to refrain from lying, it was not her duty to tell the truth. This form is also called Deontological justification. Simply---- A is justified in doing B if and only A is not obliged to refrain from doing B.

Non- Deontological justification follows a simply reverse pattern.

Tom is justified in beleiving james has gone to the park if and only tom belives james has gone to the park on a basis that properly probabilifies toms beleif that james has done so.

After these points it becomes very simple, and you can see how these philosophies can be merged in with investigative journalism. The ideas of evidence vs reliability to justify your knowledge through the justification means come into alot of modern day journalism and most of us dont actually realise how often the points above actually happen.