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Created: July 13, 2003
Latest Update: July 13, 2003
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Epistemology: A Philosophical Term for Knowing

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, July 2003.
"Fair use" encouraged.

This introduction to the term "epistemology" is based on The Blackwell Guide to Epistemology, by John Greco and Ernest Sosa. Blackwell Publishers. 1999. ISBN: 0-631-20291-9 (pbk).

The Blackwell text will serve as a background for our investigations into knowing. It provides a good summary of the orignins and development of the "Big Questions" of knowing. (Greco, at p. 2). And it will take us through current developments in the field. If philosophy intrigues you, you should consider ordering the book. But most of you have opted for sociology and its practical applications to lived experience. So we'll depend on lectures and discussions for the philosophical background, and focus on a more sociological approach in your reading.

The "big questions" that Greco and Sosa identify, at p. 2, are:

• What is knowledge?
• What can we know?
• How do we know what we do know?

I think that gives us a reasonable critical framework for asking questions on "knowing." So we'll rely on some such tools from Greco and Sosa's text to analyze our other readings.

Discussion Questions

1. Historically, who in sociology was seriously concerned with epistemology?

   Consider Mannheim, Berger and Luckman, the phenomenologists.