KNOWLEDGE AND FOUNDATION

Knowledge and Foundation

Abstract

In this study we try to explore the concept of “Knowledge” in a holistic context. The main focus of the research is on “Knowledge” and its relation with “Foundation”. The research also analyzes many aspects of “Knowledge” and tries to gauge its effect on “Foundation”. Finally the research describes various factors which are responsible for “Knowledge” and tries to describe the overall effect of “Knowledge” on “Foundation”.

Table of Contents

Knowledge and foundation1

Theory Structural Cognitive Modifiability5

Cognitive and Meta Cognitive Strategies7

A Journey through the History of Met cognition7

Meta Cognition and Cognitive Monitoring8

Current Analysis Meta cognition8

Knowledge and Foundation

Knowledge and foundation

How is one to know whether or not one is acquainted with something? Here the plot gets difficult to follow. According to at least some philosophers, one is directly acquainted with something only if one can know without inference that the thing in question exists or exemplifies some contingent property. The test of whether or not one can know without inference that something exists is itself sometimes described in terms of the conceivability of error. On this view, one sign that I cannot be directly acquainted with the physical table before me now is that my evidence for believing that the table exists does not logically guarantee its existence. My evidence is said to consist of what I know about my sensations, knowledge that would be no different were I dreaming or hallucinating the table's existence. I am directly acquainted with my severe pain because the justification I now have for believing that I have this pain precludes the possibility of my being wrong - I cannot hallucinate the existence of severe pain.

Some critics complain that making the impossibility of error the mark of direct acquaintance is in tension with other things philosophers want to say about the relation of acquaintance. Specifically, acquaintance is not even supposed to involve bearers of truth value. Let us explore this alleged tension.

In addition to giving examples of things with which we can be acquainted, Russell and others also gave negative characterizations of knowledge by acquaintance. When one knows a thing by being acquainted with it, that knowledge does not involve the application of concepts to the thing - one does not categorize the thing. Presumably, knowledge by acquaintance does not even presuppose linguistic or conceptual capacity on the part of the knower. To know a truth, on the other hand, one must explicitly or implicitly apply a concept to a thing or property. To think that this color with which I am acquainted is red is to apply the concept red to the thing with which I am acquainted. According to some philosophers it is only with the application of concepts that it makes sense to talk of truth and error. I can correctly or incorrectly categorize something with which I am acquainted, but the prior act of my being acquainted with the thing does not involve the possibility of error, because acquaintance does not by itself involve an attempt to categorize ...