Epistemology
Epistemology is the area of philosophy that has to do with knowledge. I didn’t think of myself as interested in knowledge because I was interested in the prior question of how you conduct research.
Research is interesting because what you discover isn’t necessarily true, and so to characterize research as an epistemic endeavor runs contrary to the way that knowledge is usually framed. Knowledge is usually framed as a matter of truth, and I always thought that we weren’t in a position to figure out what was true until we figure out how we can engage in research.
In time I started to appreciate that our ordinary ways of thinking about knowledge are actually confused. Knowledge is what we gain from learning and the real value of learning isn’t that we discover what’s true but rather that we learn how to process information responsibly. That is, the value of education is that it helps us become researchers. If we don’t understand that that’s the value of education, it turns into an exercise of indoctrination.
Logic and Knowledge
Mature work depends on a contrast between interpretation and explication. What I show is that if we are serious about reason, we have to get rid of making sense of things in terms of propositional attitudes like belief, or even propositional attitudes to only true thoughts, which are sometimes called factive states. The reason that we need to drop this way of framing knowledge is that if we insist upon framing knowledge as some type of propositional attitude, it gets in the way of reasoning because reasoning is not an exercise of propositional attitudes.
Knowledge as Responsiblity At a Meta-Theoretic Level
Litorally we can talk about whether we know 2+2=4 or whether we know which way to drive to the drugstore. These are examples of propositional attitudes that we take seriously. If we were to become serious about knowledge as something that is rational, we should reframe it not in terms of having true beliefs or true attitudes to true thoughts, but rather in terms of the skill necessary to sort through information to understand options.
The reason that understanding options is so central to knowing is that we are rarely in a position to know what is true but we are in a position to understand what the options are. Each option may not be factual or correct but understanding what the options are is a way for us to cement our knowledge in cases where agnosticism cannot be ruled out. That’s pretty much all the time.
Knowledge vs. Colonization
If we invest in knowledge as research skills, what this allows us to do is move away from the political pressure to conform to some particular outlook. That political pressure to conform to an outlook is colonization because colonization is so ordinary. People tend to confuse the propositional attitudes we have by virtue of the political pressures we have to participate in the one view we’re all supposed to hold with knowledge. Actual knowledge deconstructs that oppression because it creates space for an understanding of options, and what this does is restore our autonomy as epistemic agents.
This idea of knowledge as an ability is certainly something I trace back to the Yoga Sutra but it also animates and informs all my mature work. For an example of how far-reaching the way of thinking of knowledge is to see my Moral Philosophy and De-Colonialism; the Irrationality of Oppression.