Terminology

Knowledge issues
Questions, ramifications, and problems raised that we refer to our understanding of the world when we try to make sense of a piece of knowledge.


Ways of knowing 
The four ways of knowing are emotion, reason, perception, and language.


Connection, Observation, Wondering (COW)
A relation or an association between things or events, the act of paying attention and making a judgment, showing curiosity by having a desire to know something


Areas of knowledge
A classification of knowledge into subject areas, and the six subjects are natural sciences, mathematics, ethics,  the arts, history, and human sciences.


Knowledge claim
A piece of knowledge that you believe is true


Empirical
Something that is obtained from experience, observation, experiment, and not by any scientific methods nor theory.


Rational
The ability to use reason, logic, and good sense.


Solipsism
A philosophical idea that the only thing that exists is one's mind and others are just creations of the mind.


Skepticism
The questioning behavior of doubting the truth of something.


Relativism
The idea that knowledge, truths, and concepts are not absolute but depend on the are subjective towards the people holding them.


Prejudice/Certainty
A preconceived opinion formed without the support of knowledge, thought, or reason.
The state of having no doubt.


Pragmatic truth
A proposition that is true when acting upon it yields satisfactory results.


Coherence truth
A proposition is true to the extent that is agrees with other true propositions.


Correspondence truth
A proposition is true when they correspond to the reality.


Sources of knowledge
- Faith/revelation
The confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of an idea, person, or thing.
- Print sources
Sources such as book, newspapers, journals, magazines, etc.
- Live sources
Sources such as human.


Reliability
-Valid
The state of being acceptable, having truth, and corresponds to the real world.


Perception
The process of attaining and understanding information.


Justification
The action of reasoning or explaining something.
- Pictorial
Relating or consisting pictures.
-Authority
One who has control over others and whose views are respected and taken as definitive


Plato's cave allegory
A group of people who has only seen shadows in their life mistaken shadows as the reality of life until they are released and allowed to explore the real world.


Elephant and Blind Man allegory
A group of blind men touches parts of an elephant trying to understand what an elephant is. They then compare their experience and ended up with arguments. All of their descriptions of elephants are true but only partially true.


Knowledge by description
A piece of knowledge that one knows what it is without having any experience of it.


Knowledge by acquaintance
A piece of knowledge that one knows how it is because of experience and sometimes it is not easily expressed.


Belief
A mental state that accepts something to be true.


Knower
A person who has a certain level of understanding of a subject.


Common knowledge
Information that is generally known to everyone, does not require specific training, and can be defined by a large number of people.


Justified true belief
The state for someone to know knowledge for something, it must be true and believed to be true, and the belief is justified.


Truth
A statement that is verified to conform to reality


Logic
The sound judgment or persuasiveness of principles that is applicable to any branch of knowledge.


Reason
The explanation or rational thought for a belief, event, or action.


Trust
To have complete confidence or faith in a person.


Mental construction of reality
The link between perception and reality.




Sources of definition from Dictionary.com, thefreedictionary.com and handouts given in class.