What Are The Differences Between Epistemology And Epistemology?
Since the concepts of epistemology and epistemology are focused on the study of knowledge, it is common for both terms to be confused and used as synonyms.
However, the nuances that each one offers are important, and that is why here Let’s see the differences between epistemology and epistemology in addition to going into more detail with the definitions of both terms.
Before going into more detail about each of the differences between these two terms, it is necessary to talk in greater depth about what the word epistemology means and what the word epistemology means.
Epistemology: what it is and what are its origins
Epistemology, from the Greek ‘episteme’, ‘knowledge’ and ‘logos’, ‘study’, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the philosophical problems surrounding the theory of knowledge, fundamentally scientific knowledge. That is, epistemology is responsible for defining knowledge and related concepts, the sources, criteria and types of possible knowledge, as well as the degree to which each of them turns out to be true. This discipline understands knowledge as a relationship between the person and the object of study.
The origins of this discipline can be found in Ancient Greece from the hand of philosophers as important to the history of Western thought as Aristotle, Parmenides and Plato. Although its origins are very ancient, epistemology did not develop as a science until the 15th and 16th centuries, when the Renaissance occurred.
Each philosopher sees in a different way the relationship in which people relate to the knowledge we want to acquire. For Plato, true knowledge, which is related to scientific knowledge, was that which was achieved through reason He considered that this was the only way to know the true essence of things, the ideas that gave them shape.
The objects of the sensible world, which arose from ideas, could only provide human beings with an opinion or doxa, but never true knowledge, since physical objects can change and, therefore, we can no longer perceive them. there than an appearance.
The physical world, seen through Plato’s eyes, was nothing more than a copy of the world of ideas, a metaphysical world in which, if one reached there, one could have true knowledge of the essence of things. The body, which is material, belongs to the physical world, while the soul, which has been trapped in the body, belongs to the world of ideas and, when we die, it will return to the world from which it came. This is what is known as Platonic realism.
However, his disciple, Aristotle, true knowledge is not found in a distant world that we can only reach once we are dead. For this philosopher, knowledge is born directly from sensitive experience, through what our senses capture. It is through experience that we are able to grasp the essence of things This, which differs radically from Plato’s thought, is called empiricism.
With these examples, and without exposing all existing Western philosophy, the idea behind the word ‘epistemology’ becomes understandable. The discipline that tries to find out how human beings obtain knowledge of the world in which they live, whether through the physical world or through illumination coming from a non-perceptible world.
Gnoseology: what exactly is it?
Gnoseology, from ‘gnosis’, ‘knowledge, faculty of knowing’ and ‘logos’, ‘study’, is the discipline that studies the nature, origin and limits of knowledge, not knowledge itself. That is, this discipline does not study what physics, mathematics or biology is, but rather knowledge in general and what its limits and foundations are. Therefore, it can be understood as a theory of knowledge, in general terms, without it necessarily being scientific.
This discipline also has its roots in Ancient Greece and, in fact, it is considered that the emergence of the first currents of Western philosophy were born at the same time as this concept. Most philosophers have contributed to the development of this branch of philosophy found in works such as From Anima of Aristotle or in his book IV on metaphysics.
Going forward in history, entering the 17th century, empiricists such as John Locke, David Hume and George Berkeley defend the role of experience when it comes to knowing, maintaining that any type of knowledge comes from sensible experience, based on data. of the senses. The growth of the individual, whatever he knows, occurs through experience and, His first interactions while still an infant turn out to be the source of all knowledge in which the others that you acquire will be settled.
As a combination of both visions, Immanuel Kant proposes in his Criticism of Pure Reason his concept of transcendental idealism. In it he states that The subject is not passive in the act of knowing, but active, knowing the world and constructing his or her own reality The limit of knowledge is experience. However, it is only possible to have phenomenal knowledge of reality, that is, of the way in which the object is presented to the subject and the subject perceives it. The thing itself, its real essence, is not within our reach.
How to distinguish between both?
Once we have seen the definitions of epistemology and epistemology and what their origins are, both historical and etymological, it becomes clear to see why they are so easily confused. They are, in essence, the study of knowledge and, on top of that, these words have an etymological origin that, basically, starts from the same idea: ‘gnosos’ and ‘episteme’ mean knowledge, so they can be translated as “the study of knowledge.” “.
However, they do differ. Very subtly, but they do it. Although the vast majority of philosophers who have addressed epistemology in their philosophy have also done so with epistemology, some of them being those who have used the two terms interchangeably, both concepts are different.
The main distinction between epistemology and epistemology, although it may seem somewhat arbitrary, is the type of knowledge they address On the one hand, epistemology is dedicated to more ethological or psychological knowledge, more oriented towards the idea of ​​intelligence and directly related to the sciences, whatever they may be.
Epistemology refers to knowledge as that which occurs between a subject with the capacity to learn and think and the object of study. On the other hand, epistemology addresses the theory of knowledge in general, whatever this knowledge may be, from something as simple as everyday experience to something somewhat more complex.
Spinning a little more finely and returning to the issue of etymological origin, it is worth saying that there are a significant difference in the origin of both words, but it is so subtle that it tends to lead to error. ‘Episteme’ refers more to a system of knowledge, that is, what is modernly understood as a discipline or science. On the other hand, ‘gnosis’ refers more to individual knowledge, what a person has learned throughout their life, regardless of whether it is something complex or not so complex.
