Theory of Knowledge - Essay Example

"Epistemology, or the theory of knowledge, is that branch of philosophy which is concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge, its presuppositions and basis, and the general reliability of claims to knowledge." D. W. Hamlyn, 1967, 3:8-9.

A conception of epistemology has arisen in western philosophy since the turn of the century and has become increasingly widespread since then: the conception that epistemology is to be defined and otherwise explained in terms of philosophical skepticism (A. J. Ayer, 1975). The conception has been advanced and propounded by a large number of writers in a number of theses taking a variety of forms: (1) definitional (a definition of epistemology itself), (2) definitional again (a definition of knowledge), (3) genetic (a thesis about the conditions under which epistemology and all its problems arise), (4) semantic (a thesis about a necessary condition of a question's making sense), (5) historical (theses about the founder of epistemology and the period of its founding), (6) scopic (a thesis about the scope of epistemology), and (7) existential (a thesis about the existence of general skeptics). As the conception seems to have originated with Bertrand Russell early in the century, it seems fair to identify it for convenient reference as the Russellian conception, although over the course of the subsequent three-quarters of a century elements -- introduced by G. E. Moore, L. Wittgenstein, and others -- not to be found explicitly in the Russellian original have been incorporated in the conception, modifying it in various ways.

A complete epistemology would presumably be one that deals with all the essential problems of epistemology indicated in the definition of epistemology and specified in general terms in the account of the philosophical problems about knowledge. It would seem, then, that Hamlyn's reference to the scope of knowledge is the equivalent of Chisholm's reference to the extent of knowledge, and that Hamlyn's reference to the general reliability of claims to knowledge is the equivalent of Chisholm's reference to the decision problem.