Knowledge

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see Knowledge (disambiguation).

The owl of Athena, a symbol of knowledge in the

Western world

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Knowledge is an awareness of facts, a familiarity with individuals and situations, or

a practical skill. Knowledge of facts, also called propositional knowledge, is often
characterized as true belief that is distinct from opinion or guesswork by virtue
of justification. While there is wide agreement among philosophers that propositional
knowledge is a form of true belief, many controversies focus on justification. This
includes questions like how to understand justification, whether it is needed at all, and
whether something else besides it is needed. These controversies intensified in the
latter half of the 20th century due to a series of thought experiments called Gettier
cases that provoked alternative definitions.

Knowledge can be produced in many ways. The main source of empirical

knowledge is perception, which involves the usage of the senses to learn about the
external world. Introspection allows people to learn about their internal mental
states and processes. Other sources of knowledge include memory, rational
intuition, inference, and testimony.[a] According to foundationalism, some of these
sources are basic in that they can justify beliefs, without depending on other mental
states. Coherentists reject this claim and contend that a sufficient degree of coherence
among all the mental states of the believer is necessary for knowledge. According to
infinitism, an infinite chain of beliefs is needed.

The main discipline investigating knowledge is epistemology, which studies what people
know, how they come to know it, and what it means to know something. It discusses the
value of knowledge and the thesis of philosophical skepticism, which questions the
possibility of knowledge. Knowledge is relevant to many fields like the sciences, which
aim to acquire knowledge using the scientific method based on
repeatable experimentation, observation, and measurement. Various religions hold that
humans should seek knowledge and that God or the divine is the source of knowledge.
The anthropology of knowledge studies how knowledge is acquired, stored, retrieved,
and communicated in different cultures. The sociology of knowledge examines under
what sociohistorical circumstances knowledge arises, and what sociological
consequences it has. The history of knowledge investigates how knowledge in different
fields has developed, and evolved, in the course of history.

Definitions
Main article: Definitions of knowledge
Knowledge is a form of familiarity, awareness, understanding, or acquaintance. It often
involves the possession of information learned through experience[1] and can be
understood as a cognitive success or an epistemic contact with reality, like making a
discovery.[2] Many academic definitions focus on propositional knowledge in the form of
believing certain facts, as in "I know that Dave is at home".[3] Other types of knowledge
include knowledge-how in the form of practical competence, as in "she knows how to
swim", and knowledge by acquaintance as a familiarity with the known object based on
previous direct experience, like knowing someone personally.[4]

Knowledge is often understood as a state of an individual person, but it can also refer to
a characteristic of a group of people as group knowledge, social knowledge, or
collective knowledge.[5] Some social sciences understand knowledge as a broad social
phenomenon that is similar to culture.[6] The term may further denote knowledge stored
in documents like the "knowledge housed in the library"[7] or the knowledge base of
an expert system.[8] Knowledge is closely related to intelligence, but intelligence is more
about the ability to acquire, process, and apply information, while knowledge concerns
information and skills that a person already possesses.[9]

The word knowledge has its roots in the 12th-century Old English word cnawan, which
comes from the Old High German word gecnawan.[10] The English word includes various
meanings that some other languages distinguish using several words.[11] In ancient
Greek, for example, four important terms for knowledge were
used: epistēmē (unchanging theoretical knowledge), technē (expert technical
knowledge), mētis (strategic knowledge), and gnōsis (personal intellectual knowledge).
[12]
The main discipline studying knowledge is called epistemology or the theory of
knowledge. It examines the nature of knowledge and justification, how knowledge
arises, and what value it has. Further topics include the different types of knowledge
and the limits of what can be known.[13]

Despite agreements about the general characteristics of knowledge, its exact definition
is disputed. Some definitions only focus on the most salient features of knowledge to
give a practically useful characterization.[14] Another approach, termed analysis of
knowledge, tries to provide a theoretically precise definition by listing the conditions that
are individually necessary and jointly sufficient,[15] similar to how chemists analyze a
sample by seeking a list of all the chemical elements composing it.[16] According to a
different view, knowledge is a unique state that cannot be analyzed in terms of other
phenomena.[17] Some scholars base their definition on abstract intuitions while others
focus on concrete cases[18] or rely on how the term is used in ordinary language.[19] There
is also disagreement about whether knowledge is a rare phenomenon that requires high
standards or a common phenomenon found in many everyday situations.[20]

Analysis of knowledge
See also: Belief § Justified true belief, and Definitions of knowledge § Justified true
belief
 The definition of knowledge as justified true belief is
often discussed in the academic literature.
An often-discussed definition characterizes knowledge as justified true belief. This
definition identifies three essential features: it is (1) a belief that is (2) true and
(3) justified.[21][b] Truth is a widely accepted feature of knowledge. It implies that, while it
may be possible to believe something false, one cannot know something false.[23][c] That
knowledge is a form of belief implies that one cannot know something if one does not
believe it. Some everyday expressions seem to violate this principle, like the claim that
"I do not believe it, I know it!" But the point of such expressions is usually to emphasize
one's confidence rather than denying that a belief is involved.[25]

The main controversy surrounding this definition concerns its third feature: justification.
[26]
This component is often included because of the impression that some true beliefs
are not forms of knowledge, such as beliefs based on superstition, lucky guesses, or
erroneous reasoning. For example, a person who guesses that a coin flip will land
heads usually does not know that even if their belief turns out to be true. This indicates
that there is more to knowledge than just being right about something.[27] These cases
are excluded by requiring that beliefs have justification for them to count as knowledge.
[28]
Some philosophers hold that a belief is justified if it is based on evidence, which can
take the form of mental states like experience, memory, and other beliefs. Others state
that beliefs are justified if they are produced by reliable processes, like sensory
perception or logical reasoning.[29]

The Gettier problem is grounded in the idea

that some justified true beliefs do not amount to knowledge.
The definition of knowledge as justified true belief came under severe criticism in the
20th century, when epistemologist Edmund Gettier formulated a series of
counterexamples.[30] They purport to present concrete cases of justified true beliefs that
fail to constitute knowledge. The reason for their failure is usually a form of epistemic
luck: the beliefs are justified but their justification is not relevant to the truth. [31] In a well-
known example, someone drives along a country road with many barn facades and only
one real barn. The person is not aware of this, stops in front of the real barn by a lucky
coincidence, and forms the justified true belief that they are in front of a barn. This
example aims to establish that the person does not know that they are in front of a real
barn, since they would not have been able to tell the difference.[32] This means that it is a
lucky coincidence that this justified belief is also true.[33]

According to some philosophers, these counterexamples show that justification is not

required for knowledge[34] and that knowledge should instead be characterized in terms
of reliability or the manifestation of cognitive virtues. Another approach defines
knowledge in regard to the function it plays in cognitive processes as that which
provides reasons for thinking or doing something.[35] A different response accepts
justification as an aspect of knowledge and include additional criteria.[36] Many
candidates have been suggested, like the requirements that the justified true belief does
not depend on any false beliefs, that no defeaters[d] are present, or that the person
would not have the belief if it was false.[38] Another view states that beliefs have to be
infallible to amount to knowledge.[39] A further approach, associated with pragmatism,
focuses on the aspect of inquiry and characterizes knowledge in terms of what works as
a practice that aims to produce habits of action.[40] There is still very little consensus in
the academic discourse as to which of the proposed modifications or
reconceptualizations is correct, and there are various alternative definitions of
knowledge.[41]

Types
A common distinction among types of knowledge is between propositional knowledge,
or knowledge-that, and non-propositional knowledge in the form of practical skills or
acquaintance.[42][e] Other distinctions focus on how the knowledge is acquired and on the
content of the known information.[44]

Propositional
Main article: Declarative knowledge
 Declarative knowledge can be stored in books.
Propositional knowledge, also referred to as declarative and descriptive knowledge, is a
form of theoretical knowledge about facts, like knowing that "2 + 2 = 4". It is the
paradigmatic type of knowledge in analytic philosophy.[45] Propositional knowledge
is propositional in the sense that it involves a relation to a proposition. Since
propositions are often expressed through that-clauses, it is also referred to
as knowledge-that, as in "Akari knows that kangaroos hop".[46] In this case, Akari stands
in the relation of knowing to the proposition "kangaroos hop". Closely related types of
knowledge are know-wh, for example, knowing who is coming to dinner and knowing
why they are coming.[47] These expressions are normally understood as types of
propositional knowledge since they can be paraphrased using a that-clause.[48][f]

Propositional knowledge takes the form of mental representations involving concepts,

ideas, theories, and general rules. These representations connect the knower to certain
parts of reality by showing what they are like. They are often context-independent,
meaning that they are not restricted to a specific use or purpose.[50] Propositional
knowledge encompasses both knowledge of specific facts, like that the atomic mass of
gold is 196.97 u, and generalities, like that the color of leaves of some trees changes in
autumn.[51] Because of the dependence on mental representations, it is often held that
the capacity for propositional knowledge is exclusive to relatively sophisticated
creatures, such as humans. This is based on the claim that advanced intellectual
capacities are needed to believe a proposition that expresses what the world is like. [52]

Non-propositional

Knowing how to ride a bicycle is one form of non-

propositional knowledge.
Non-propositional knowledge is knowledge in which no essential relation to a
proposition is involved. The two most well-known forms are knowledge-how (know-how
or procedural knowledge) and knowledge by acquaintance.[53] To possess knowledge-
how means to have some form of practical ability, skill, or competence,[54] like knowing
how to ride a bicycle or knowing how to swim. Some of the abilities responsible for
knowledge-how involve forms of knowledge-that, as in knowing how to prove
a mathematical theorem, but this is not generally the case.[55] Some types of knowledge-
how do not require a highly developed mind, in contrast to propositional knowledge, and
are more common in the animal kingdom. For example, an ant knows how to walk even
though it presumably lacks a mind sufficiently developed to represent the corresponding
proposition.[52][g]

Knowledge by acquaintance is familiarity with something that results from direct

experiential contact.[57] The object of knowledge can be a person, a thing, or a place. For
example, by eating chocolate, one becomes acquainted with the taste of chocolate, and
visiting Lake Taupō leads to the formation of knowledge by acquaintance of Lake
Taupō. In these cases, the person forms non-inferential knowledge based on first-hand
experience without necessarily acquiring factual information about the object. By
contrast, it is also possible to indirectly learn a lot of propositional knowledge about
chocolate or Lake Taupō by reading books without having the direct experiential contact
required for knowledge by acquaintance.[58] The concept of knowledge by acquaintance
was first introduced by Bertrand Russell. He holds that knowledge by acquaintance is
more basic than propositional knowledge since to understand a proposition, one has to
be acquainted with its constituents.[59]

A priori and a posteriori

Main article: A priori and a posteriori
The distinction between a priori and a posteriori knowledge depends on the role of
experience in the processes of formation and justification.[60] To know something a
posteriori means to know it based on experience.[61] For example, by seeing that it rains
outside or hearing that the baby is crying, one acquires a posteriori knowledge of these
facts.[62] A priori knowledge is possible without any experience to justify or support the
known proposition.[63] Mathematical knowledge, such as that 2 + 2 = 4, is traditionally
taken to be a priori knowledge since no empirical investigation is necessary to confirm
this fact. In this regard, a posteriori knowledge is empirical knowledge while a
priori knowledge is non-empirical knowledge.[64]

The relevant experience in question is primarily identified with sensory experience.

Some non-sensory experiences, like memory and introspection, are often included as
well. Some conscious phenomena are excluded from the relevant experience, like
rational insight. For example, conscious thought processes may be required to arrive
at a priori knowledge regarding the solution of mathematical problems, like when
performing mental arithmetic to multiply two numbers.[65] The same is the case for the
experience needed to learn the words through which the claim is expressed. For
example, knowing that "all bachelors are unmarried" is a priori knowledge because no
sensory experience is necessary to confirm this fact even though experience was
needed to learn the meanings of the words "bachelor" and "unmarried".[66]

It is difficult to explain how a priori knowledge is possible and some empiricists deny it
exists. It is usually seen as unproblematic that one can come to know things through
experience, but it is not clear how knowledge is possible without experience. One of the
earliest solutions to this problem comes from Plato, who argues that the soul already
possesses the knowledge and just needs to recollect, or remember, it to access it again.
[67]
A similar explanation is given by Descartes, who holds that a priori knowledge exists
as innate knowledge present in the mind of each human.[68] A further approach posits a
special mental faculty responsible for this type of knowledge, often referred to
as rational intuition or rational insight.[69]

Others
Various other types of knowledge are discussed in the academic literature. In
philosophy, "self-knowledge" refers to a person's knowledge of their
own sensations, thoughts, beliefs, and other mental states. A common view is that self-
knowledge is more direct than knowledge of the external world, which relies on the
interpretation of sense data. Because of this, it is traditionally claimed that self-
knowledge is indubitable, like the claim that a person cannot be wrong about whether
they are in pain. However, this position is not universally accepted in the contemporary
discourse and an alternative view states that self-knowledge also depends on
interpretations that could be false.[70] In a slightly different sense, self-knowledge can
also refer to knowledge of the self as a persisting entity with certain personality
traits, preferences, physical attributes, relationships, goals, and social identities.[71][h]

Metaknowledge is knowledge about knowledge. It can arise in the form of self-

knowledge but includes other types as well, such as knowing what someone else knows
or what information is contained in a scientific article. Other aspects of metaknowledge
include knowing how knowledge can be acquired, stored, distributed, and used.[73]

Common knowledge is knowledge that is publicly known and shared by most individuals
within a community. It establishes a common ground for communication, understanding,
social cohesion, and cooperation.[74] General knowledge encompasses common
knowledge but also includes knowledge that many people have been exposed to but
may not be able to immediately recall.[75] Common knowledge contrasts with domain
knowledge or specialized knowledge, which belongs to a specific domain and is only
possessed by experts.[76]

Situated knowledge is knowledge specific to a particular situation.[77] It is closely related

to practical or tacit knowledge, which is learned and applied in specific circumstances.
This especially concerns certain forms of acquiring knowledge, such as trial and error or
learning from experience.[78] In this regard, situated knowledge usually lacks a more
explicit structure and is not articulated in terms of universal ideas.[79] The term is often
used in feminism and postmodernism to argue that many forms of knowledge are not
absolute but depend on the concrete historical, cultural, and linguistic context.[77]
Explicit knowledge is knowledge that can be fully articulated, shared, and explained, like
the knowledge of historical dates and mathematical formulas. It can be acquired through
traditional learning methods, such as reading books and attending lectures. It contrasts
with tacit knowledge, which is not easily articulated or explained to others, like the ability
to recognize someone's face and the practical expertise of a master craftsman. Tacit
knowledge is often learned through first-hand experience or direct practice.[80]

Cognitive load theory distinguishes between biologically primary and secondary

knowledge. Biologically primary knowledge is knowledge that humans have as part of
their evolutionary heritage, such as knowing how to recognize faces and speech and
many general problem-solving capacities. Biologically secondary knowledge is
knowledge acquired because of specific social and cultural circumstances, such as
knowing how to read and write.[81]

Knowledge can be occurrent or dispositional. Occurrent knowledge is knowledge that is

actively involved in cognitive processes. Dispositional knowledge, by contrast, lies
dormant in the back of a person's mind and is given by the mere ability to access the
relevant information. For example, if a person knows that cats have whiskers then this
knowledge is dispositional most of the time and becomes occurrent while they are
thinking about it.[82]

Many forms of Eastern spirituality and religion distinguish between higher and lower
knowledge. They are also referred to as para vidya and apara vidya in Hinduism or
the two truths doctrine in Buddhism. Lower knowledge is based on the senses and the
intellect. It encompasses both mundane or conventional truths as well as discoveries of
the empirical sciences.[83] Higher knowledge is understood as knowledge of God, the
absolute, the true self, or the ultimate reality. It belongs neither to the external world of
physical objects nor to the internal world of the experience of emotions and concepts.
Many spiritual teachings stress the importance of higher knowledge to progress on the
spiritual path and to see reality as it truly is beyond the veil of appearances.[84]

Sources

Perception relies on the senses to acquire knowledge.

Sources of knowledge are ways in which people come to know things. They can be
understood as cognitive capacities that are exercised when a person acquires new
knowledge.[85] Various sources of knowledge are discussed in the academic literature,
often in terms of the mental faculties responsible. They include perception,
introspection, memory, inference, and testimony. However, not everyone agrees that all
of them actually lead to knowledge. Usually, perception or observation, i.e. using one of
the senses, is identified as the most important source of empirical knowledge.
[86]
Knowing that a baby is sleeping is observational knowledge if it was caused by a
perception of the snoring baby. However, this would not be the case if one learned
about this fact through a telephone conversation with one's spouse. Perception comes
in different modalities, including vision, sound, touch, smell, and taste, which
correspond to different physical stimuli.[87] It is an active process in which sensory
signals are selected, organized, and interpreted to form a representation of the
environment. This leads in some cases to illusions that misrepresent certain aspects of
reality, like the Müller-Lyer illusion and the Ponzo illusion.[88]

Introspection is often seen in analogy to perception as a source of knowledge, not of

external physical objects, but of internal mental states. A traditionally common view is
that introspection has a special epistemic status by being infallible. According to this
position, it is not possible to be mistaken about introspective facts, like whether one is in
pain, because there is no difference between appearance and reality. However, this
claim has been contested in the contemporary discourse and critics argue that it may be
possible, for example, to mistake an unpleasant itch for a pain or to confuse the
experience of a slight ellipse for the experience of a circle.[89] Perceptual and
introspective knowledge often act as a form of fundamental or basic knowledge.
According to some empiricists, they are the only sources of basic knowledge and
provide the foundation for all other knowledge.[90]

Memory differs from perception and introspection in that it is not as independent or

basic as they are since it depends on other previous experiences.[91] The faculty of
memory retains knowledge acquired in the past and makes it accessible in the present,
as when remembering a past event or a friend's phone number.[92] It is generally seen as
a reliable source of knowledge. However, it can be deceptive at times nonetheless,
either because the original experience was unreliable or because the memory degraded
and does not accurately represent the original experience anymore.[93][i]

Knowledge based on perception, introspection, and memory may give rise to inferential
knowledge, which comes about when reasoning is applied to draw inferences from
other known facts.[95] For example, the perceptual knowledge of a Czech stamp on a
postcard may give rise to the inferential knowledge that one's friend is visiting the Czech
Republic. This type of knowledge depends on other sources of knowledge responsible
for the premises. Some rationalists argue for rational intuition as a further source of
knowledge that does not rely on observation and introspection. They hold for example
that some beliefs, like the mathematical belief that 2 + 2 = 4, are justified through pure
reason alone.[96]
 Knowledge by testimony relies on statements given by
other people, like the testimony given at a trial.
Testimony is often included as an additional source of knowledge that, unlike the other
sources, is not tied to one specific cognitive faculty. Instead, it is based on the idea that
one person can come to know a fact because another person talks about this fact.
Testimony can happen in numerous ways, like regular speech, a letter, a newspaper, or
a blog. The problem of testimony consists in clarifying why and under what
circumstances testimony can lead to knowledge. A common response is that it depends
on the reliability of the person pronouncing the testimony: only testimony from reliable
sources can lead to knowledge.[97]

Limits
The problem of the limits of knowledge concerns the question of which facts
are unknowable.[98] These limits constitute a form of inevitable ignorance that can affect
both what is knowable about the external world as well as what one can know about
oneself and about what is good.[99] Some limits of knowledge only apply to particular
people in specific situations while others pertain to humanity at large.[100] A fact is
unknowable to a person if this person lacks access to the relevant information, like facts
in the past that did not leave any significant traces. For example, it may be unknowable
to people today what Caesar's breakfast was the day he was assassinated but it was
knowable to him and some contemporaries.[101] Another factor restricting knowledge is
given by the limitations of the human cognitive faculties. Some people may lack the
cognitive ability to understand highly abstract mathematical truths and some facts
cannot be known by any human because they are too complex for the human mind to
conceive.[102] A further limit of knowledge arises due to certain logical paradoxes. For
instance, there are some ideas that will never occur to anyone. It is not possible to know
them because if a person knew about such an idea then this idea would have occurred
at least to them.[103][j]

There are many disputes about what can or cannot be known in certain fields. Religious
skepticism is the view that beliefs about God or other religious doctrines do not amount
to knowledge.[105] Moral skepticism encompasses a variety of views, including the claim
that moral knowledge is impossible, meaning that one cannot know what is morally
good or whether a certain behavior is morally right.[106] An influential theory about the
limits of metaphysical knowledge was proposed by Immanuel Kant. For him, knowledge
is restricted to the field of appearances and does not reach the things in themselves,
which exist independently of humans and lie beyond the realm of appearances. Based
on the observation that metaphysics aims to characterize the things in themselves, he
concludes that no metaphysical knowledge is possible, like knowing whether the world
has a beginning or is infinite.[107]

There are also limits to knowledge in the empirical sciences, such as the uncertainty
principle, which states that it is impossible to know the exact magnitudes of certain
certain pairs of physical properties, like the position and momentum of a particle, at the
same time.[108] Other examples are physical systems studied by chaos theory, for which it
is not practically possible to predict how they will behave since they are so sensitive
to initial conditions that even the slightest of variations may produce a completely
different behavior. This phenomenon is known as the butterfly effect.[109]

Pyrrho was one of the first philosophical skeptics.

The strongest position about the limits of knowledge is radical or global skepticism,
which holds that humans lack any form of knowledge or that knowledge is impossible.
For example, the dream argument states that perceptual experience is not a source of
knowledge since dreaming provides unreliable information and a person could be
dreaming without knowing it. Because of this inability to discriminate between dream
and perception, it is argued that there is no perceptual knowledge of the external world.
[110][k]
This thought experiment is based on the problem of underdetermination, which
arises when the available evidence is not sufficient to make a rational decision between
competing theories. In such cases, a person is not justified in believing one theory
rather than the other. If this is always the case then global skepticism follows. [111] Another
skeptical argument assumes that knowledge requires absolute certainty and aims to
show that all human cognition is fallible since it fails to meet this standard. [112]

An influential argument against radical skepticism states that radical skepticism is self-
contradictory since denying the existence of knowledge is itself a knowledge-claim.
[113]
Other arguments rely on common sense[114] or deny that infallibility is required for
knowledge.[115] Very few philosophers have explicitly defended radical skepticism but this
position has been influential nonetheless, usually in a negative sense: many see it as a
serious challenge to any epistemological theory and often try to show how their
preferred theory overcomes it.[116] Another form of philosophical skepticism advocates
the suspension of judgment as a form of attaining tranquility while
remaining humble and open-minded.[117]
A less radical limit of knowledge is identified by falliblists, who argue that the possibility
of error can never be fully excluded. This means that even the best-researched
scientific theories and the most fundamental commonsense views could still be subject
to error. Further research may reduce the possibility of being wrong, but it can never
fully exclude it. Some fallibilists reach the skeptical conclusion from this observation that
there is no knowledge but the more common view is that knowledge exists but is fallible.
[118]
Pragmatists argue that one consequence of fallibilism is that inquiry should not aim
for truth or absolute certainty but for well-supported and justified beliefs while remaining
open to the possibility that one's beliefs may need to be revised later.[119]

Structure
The structure of knowledge is the way in which the mental states of a person need to be
related to each other for knowledge to arise.[120] A common view is that a person has to
have good reasons for holding a belief if this belief is to amount to knowledge. When the
belief is challenged, the person may justify it by referring to their reason for holding it. In
many cases, this reason depends itself on another belief that may as well be
challenged. An example is a person who believes that Ford cars are cheaper than
BMWs. When their belief is challenged, they may justify it by claiming that they heard it
from a reliable source. This justification depends on the assumption that their source is
reliable, which may itself be challenged. The same may apply to any subsequent reason
they cite.[121] This threatens to lead to an infinite regress since the epistemic status at
each step depends on the epistemic status of the previous step.[122] Theories of the
structure of knowledge offer responses for how to solve this problem.[121]

Foundationalism, coherentism, and

infinitism are theories of the structure of knowledge. The black arrows symbolize how
one belief supports another belief.
Three traditional theories are foundationalism, coherentism, and infinitism.
Foundationalists and coherentists deny the existence of an infinite regress, in contrast
to infinitists.[121] According to foundationalists, some basic reasons have their epistemic
status independent of other reasons and thereby constitute the endpoint of the regress.
[123]
Some foundationalists hold that certain sources of knowledge, like perception,
provide basic reasons. Another view is that this role is played by certain self-evident
truths, like the knowledge of one's own existence and the content of one's ideas.[124] The
view that basic reasons exist is not universally accepted. One criticism states that there
should be a reason why some reasons are basic while others are not. According to this
view, the putative basic reasons are not actually basic since their status would depend
on other reasons. Another criticism is based on hermeneutics and argues that
all understanding is circular and requires interpretation, which implies that knowledge
does not need a secure foundation.[125]

Coherentists and infinitists avoid these problems by denying the contrast between basic
and non-basic reasons. Coherentists argue that there is only a finite number of reasons,
which mutually support and justify one another. This is based on the intuition that beliefs
do not exist in isolation but form a complex web of interconnected ideas that is justified
by its coherence rather than by a few privileged foundational beliefs.[126] One difficulty for
this view is how to demonstrate that it does not involve the fallacy of circular reasoning.
[127]
If two beliefs mutually support each other then a person has a reason for accepting
one belief if they already have the other. However, mutual support alone is not a good
reason for newly accepting both beliefs at once. A closely related issue is that there can
be distinct sets of coherent beliefs. Coherentists face the problem of explaining why
someone should accept one coherent set rather than another.[126] For infinitists, in
contrast to foundationalists and coherentists, there is an infinite number of reasons. This
view embraces the idea that there is a regress since each reason depends on another
reason. One difficulty for this view is that the human mind is limited and may not be able
to possess an infinite number of reasons. This raises the question of whether, according
to infinitism, human knowledge is possible at all.[128]

Value

Los portadores de la antorcha (The Torch-Bearers) –

sculpture by Anna Hyatt Huntington symbolizing the transmission of knowledge from
one generation to the next (Ciudad Universitaria, Madrid, Spain)
Knowledge may be valuable either because it is useful or because it is good in itself.
Knowledge can be useful by helping a person achieve their goals. For example, if one
knows the answers to questions in an exam one is able to pass that exam or by
knowing which horse is the fastest, one can earn money from bets. In these cases,
knowledge has instrumental value.[129] Not all forms of knowledge are useful and many
beliefs about trivial matters have no instrumental value. This concerns, for example,
knowing how many grains of sand are on a specific beach or memorizing phone
numbers one never intends to call. In a few cases, knowledge may even have a
negative value. For example, if a person's life depends on gathering the courage to
jump over a ravine, then having a true belief about the involved dangers may hinder
them from doing so.[130]

The value of knowledge plays a key role in education for

deciding which knowledge to pass on to the students.
Besides having instrumental value, knowledge may also have intrinsic value. This
means that so