Knowledge as a Problem

Abstract

From its pre-Socratic beginnings, Western philosophy has been riven by a battle over the natures of knowledge and Being. On one side were Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, and their intellectual descendants, the rationalist philosophers; on the other, the sophists, among them Protagoras, Gorgias, Antiphon and their intellectual descendants, the skeptical philosophers. For the former, knowledge is essentially different from opinion and belief because it is universal, necessary, and certain, revealing truths about a reality external to and independent of the mind. For the latter, knowledge is opinions and beliefs for which supporting reasons drawn from experience can be given and has ever-changing experience as its object, not an unchanging reality beyond experience. Modern science internalized both sides of this battle.