Fallacy Flashcards
In Epistemology, there are three different kinds of knowledge: personal, practical, and
propositional knowledge. Personal Knowledge is the type of knowledge that we acquire as
we experience the world. Since the time we were born, we started to acquaint ourselves with
the way the world is – some refer to this as ‘common sense’ knowledge. An example of this is
the knowledge about gravity: if I jump in the air, I know that I’d certainly fall. This is the kind of
knowledge that we have worked around since our existence started. Secondly, Practical
Knowledge, also known as Procedural Knowledge, is a type of knowledge that is particular for
skills, like knowing how to cook, how to ride a bicycle, how to play the guitar. This is the type of
knowledge that you can practice, and usually involves motor function. The third one which is
Propositional Knowledge is the type of knowledge that makes a claim: it proposes
something to be true. For example, your classmate tells you that there is a ghost on the third
floor of the building. He is ‘proposing’, he is making a claim that there is a ghost on the third
floor of the building. A Propositional Knowledge declares that there is ‘truth’ in the statement,
it involves a whole certainty of the truth.
Propositional Knowledge is the focus of Epistemology.
Since statements that contain Propositional Knowledge
claim something to be true, the mission of Epistemology
is to seek questions and criteria of the extent of the truth
that Propositional Knowledge claims. With regards to the
example provided, the task Epistemology has is to
determine if your classmate’s claim about the ghost is
indeed true. How do we know that it wasn’t just a
mistake? How do we know that it was certainly a ghost?
He could have seen something, and it could be his opinion that it was a ghost. How do we
know that his claim is factual, and not merely an opinion?
