Is there More than One Type of Knowledge? – An Analysis of an Independent Concept of Scientific Knowledge

Maciej Jarzębski

Jagiellonian University

Epistemology has been treating the concept of knowledge mostly as a unified subject that is viable for a one common description. The analysis of knowledge has been usually done on the ordinary (or everyday) cases; tigers behind the door (Gibbard 2007), dogs on the field (Chisholm 1966), fake barns (Goldman 1976), etc. Science, and the scientific knowledge, was usually left to philosophers of science who were rarely involved in the debates with epistemologists. Only in recent years more attention has been brought to epistemology of science (Bird 2010,2023; Bueno 2016). There has been attempts at incorporating the two areas of philosophy approaching the problem from both sides. In my talk I will start from the junction of epistemology and philosophy of science in an attempt to prepare the ground for the further analysis and debate on the issues of scientific knowledge.

I will argue that the notion of knowledge has to be understood as a conglomerate of at least two parts that are connected only partially. I claim that the concept of scientific knowledge has to be understood as different from the concept of ordinary knowledge. For the sake of the argument, I shall understand science broadly as both natural and social sciences.
I will start my presentation by defining what I understand to be ordinary knowledge i.e. knowledge we use in our day-to-day life. Then I will proceed to present the two main reasons for the differentiation of those two notions of knowledge. Firstly, I will maintain that the formal structure of scientific knowledge necessitates the high degree of testability and also requires constant revaluations and reconsideration of propositions, even those widely accepted. Secondly, the subject of scientific knowledge has to be necessarily social, that is to say, a scientific proposition to be scientific has to be inter-subjectively recognisable and testable. Finally, I will contend that those two aspects are inherently connected to scientific knowledge while at the same time excessive (in case of social aspect) and unnecessary (in case of the strict formal structure) to ordinary knowledge. This leads to a conclusion that those two types of knowledge are essentially distinct from each other.

Chair: Freya von Kirchbach

Time: September 11th, 14:50 – 15:20

Location: SR 1.003