Theory of Knowledge and Psychology
I often ask myself this question. Is psychology a natural science, social science, or pseudo science? Is it concerned with humans or just animals in general? If it is a social science like most classify psychology as, then is it even important? Could humans not already understand how others feel, read facial expressions, or know when others are feeling down...? Why don't we focus on more concrete things like rocket science?
When we talk about theory of knowledge (TOK), we usually classify knowledge as the combined characteristics of truth, belief, and justification. According to the Tripartite Theory of Knowledge, knowledge is a “justified, true belief”. The truth condition states that information that is known must be the truth, or at least in the perspective of the knower. This is reasonably uncontroversial, after all, what is false cannot be known. Take the example of “J.K. Rowling wrote The Lord of the Rings”: although this is a plausible knowledge claim, it is simply untrue, and therefore no one would know this to be the truth. The absence of truth in this scenario therefore prohibits this claim to be a piece of knowledge. The belief condition states that to form knowledge, one must believe in the truth. Although this condition intuitively seems obvious, that knowing must consist of believing, there are relatively controversial examples that support the idea of knowledge needing belief. There are cases where knowing does not need believing, for example, if a smoker knew that cigarettes were unhealthy, they may still choose not to believe it. They would still continue to smoke. This leads to the justification condition, wherein a knowledge claim has to be justified to be considered true knowledge. Plato believed this was an important component because of the probability of knowledge being true due to chance. For example, suppose a person flips a coin, and confidently believes that it would land on heads. If by chance, it does land on heads, this belief would be true. However, it is argued that this true belief is in fact not justified, and therefore cannot be labelled as knowledge.
So, I guess what psychology really does is provide the justification bit to knowledge. Considering what we know and believe could very well be true, the only thing that hinders the credibility of our knowledge is our inability to show evidence and empirical facts. As such, the study of psychology is imperative in giving psychological work reputability and credibility. This brings it closer in line with the credible, tangible natural sciences, instead of just another pseudo scientific area of knowledge.
I often ask myself this question. Is psychology a natural science, social science, or pseudo science? Is it concerned with humans or just animals in general? If it is a social science like most classify psychology as, then is it even important? Could humans not already understand how others feel, read facial expressions, or know when others are feeling down...? Why don't we focus on more concrete things like rocket science?
When we talk about theory of knowledge (TOK), we usually classify knowledge as the combined characteristics of truth, belief, and justification. According to the Tripartite Theory of Knowledge, knowledge is a “justified, true belief”. The truth condition states that information that is known must be the truth, or at least in the perspective of the knower. This is reasonably uncontroversial, after all, what is false cannot be known. Take the example of “J.K. Rowling wrote The Lord of the Rings”: although this is a plausible knowledge claim, it is simply untrue, and therefore no one would know this to be the truth. The absence of truth in this scenario therefore prohibits this claim to be a piece of knowledge. The belief condition states that to form knowledge, one must believe in the truth. Although this condition intuitively seems obvious, that knowing must consist of believing, there are relatively controversial examples that support the idea of knowledge needing belief. There are cases where knowing does not need believing, for example, if a smoker knew that cigarettes were unhealthy, they may still choose not to believe it. They would still continue to smoke. This leads to the justification condition, wherein a knowledge claim has to be justified to be considered true knowledge. Plato believed this was an important component because of the probability of knowledge being true due to chance. For example, suppose a person flips a coin, and confidently believes that it would land on heads. If by chance, it does land on heads, this belief would be true. However, it is argued that this true belief is in fact not justified, and therefore cannot be labelled as knowledge.
So, I guess what psychology really does is provide the justification bit to knowledge. Considering what we know and believe could very well be true, the only thing that hinders the credibility of our knowledge is our inability to show evidence and empirical facts. As such, the study of psychology is imperative in giving psychological work reputability and credibility. This brings it closer in line with the credible, tangible natural sciences, instead of just another pseudo scientific area of knowledge.