Essays On Epistemology

It is common to find near death experiences (NDEs) in various countries, and they are said to occur when a distinct soul or consciousness separates from the body and serenely floats towards the ceiling. When the victim reaches the ceiling, they enter an ‘out of body experience’ stage where they can see their own body […]

While perspectives on truth can vary, defining it can be difficult. One individual may consider truth to be the belief that the sun will rise tomorrow, whereas another with a scientific perspective may view truth as the earth’s ongoing orbit around a stationary sun. Both individuals make a valid argument that constitutes a justified true […]

Descartes’ starting point was simple: Empiricism is unreliable because our senses may misinform us. All beliefs or opinions based on sensory data may be mistaken. Instead of looking outward, we should look inward. However, even reason itself (if we allow for the possibility of a cosmic Deceiving Demon), may lead us astray. Thus the first […]

The origin of the word introspection is the Latin word introspicere, meaning ‘to look within’; but there has been a long history of philosophers debating whether introspection can be correctly treated as parallel to looking. I plan to defend the inner sense observational model of introspection and show how other observational, non-observational and sceptical models […]

In Descartes’ third meditation, he has already established his own existence using the concept of ‘Cogito’ and the unity of consciousness known as ‘Res Cogitans’. However, he has yet to prove the existence of external things since he only has the contents of his mind, devoid even of a body. This creates a state of […]

Immanuel Kant was a German Philosopher who was a key figure central to modern philosophy, he argued that mankind’s perceptions, classifications and concepts shape our outlook of the world, and that rationale is the source of morality. In Germany in the late 1700’s there was a newspaper called the ‘Berlinische Monatsschrift’, this newspaper put out […]

Blakemore (1988) stressed the significance of memory for human life, stating that it enables us to overcome our instinctual reactions and promote cultural advancement. Blakemore succinctly stated that “without memory, we would be servants of the moment” (p.). Quoting the importance of memory and its significance, this passage highlights the need to comprehend this intricate […]

The working memory model provides and alternative to the Multi Storm model. The MS Model provides a very simplistic view of STM where as the WM model provides a more complex view of the memory store. It contains a number of components and sub systems, which form specialist tasks in STM including Reasoning, Learning, Comprehension, […]

We rely on our past experiences when we make judgements about various uncertain events in our everyday life, but how valid these judgements actually are? Relatively ‘little is known about the psychological mechanisms by which people assess the probability of an uncertain event or the value of an uncertain quantity’ (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974: 1124). […]

Figure 1. The Kanizsa Triangle. Is there actually a triangle in this picture, or is it simply made up of three incomplete circles?The above figure is known as the Kanizsa triangle. What it actually consists of is three black circles with a segment cut out of each of them, however, what we see when we […]

Attribution theory, which analyzes the behavior of others and ourselves, was founded by Fritz Heider. Heider described people as “psychologists,” as we attempt to understand and interpret the actions of others (Heider 1958). Heider proposed a two-factor interpretation of people’s behavior. The first factor consists of internal factors, such as physiological elements like ability and […]

When sociologists conduct social investigation, they raised the questions of epistemology, which is a “branch of philosophy that investigates the nature of knowledge and truth”. (Macionis & Plummer 2002: 40) However, different sociologists use different ways to obtain the ‘truth’.Positivism and humanistic (interpretative) are two approaches of sociology, but they advocate totally different ways of […]

Around the age of four years children begin to understand that the world can be experienced in different ways by different people and may therefore have a distinctive belief about reality. This ability to attribute mental states to others is seen as evidence that children have a “theory of mind”, this enables children to explain […]

While a comprehensive answer to this question is not provided within this work, the following pages do provide a brief explanation on the functioning of human memory, the various factors impacting memory, the process involved in recalling a memory (with a particular focus on eyewitness testimony), concluding with recommendations to enhance the quality and quantity […]

In previous research (Bower 1970; Roediger III,1980) found that mnemonic systems improve recall ability, and the results of this study support these findings. The objectives of this study were to examine whether the mnemonic system of interacting mental imagery improved recall of a list of word pair associates in comparison to overt rote word repetition. […]

The objective of the experiment was to investigate the effect of age on memory strategy utilization. The focus was on comparing younger and older participants in terms of their use of memory strategies. In the experiment, participants were requested to observe a total of 20 pictures, with five pictures from each of four categories, within […]

Through the study of eyewitness testimony, we have gained insights into the processes involved in memory encoding, updating and retrieval. The purpose of this project is to explore how misleading information affects recollection of both central and peripheral details in a crime event. Our approach involves conducting a mixed design experiment where misinformation serves as […]

Sperling (1960) based his research on how much information individuals can see in a brief visual display of letters. He established that visual information is held in a temporary sensory store, which he called the visual information store (VIS). He proposed that in the VIS, individuals store the entire stimulus, which decays rapidly (Sperling, 1960). […]

Empiricism is the assumption that knowledge can only be derived from experience. It tries to oppose the early notions on knowledge that is founded on rationalism – the belief that knowledge can be achieved even by reason alone. In this principle, skepticism greatly helps the supporters of empiricism by complementing its basic premise that experience […]

This paper examines the typical part of a feminist methodological analysis in societal scientific discipline research. The Introduction outlines both the historical and future positions. The paper is so divided into two distinguishable parts ( 1 ) Feminist Research – What this means in footings of societal scientific discipline research, the methods used together with […]

This paper delves into the concept of standpoint epistemology in social science, particularly from a feminist perspective and its application in sociology. The aim is to explore whether this radical approach to understanding knowledge remains tenable by examining both its advantages and disadvantages. To understand this concept better, it is essential to delve into its […]

How do we cognize what we know? Is what we believe to be truth truly truth? A subdivision of Philosophy that seeks out to reply these inquiries and to detect the beginning of cognition is Epistemology. Much of what we believe is based on allegations and generalisations instead than established grounds. That’s manner so many […]