Epistemology - Practical Applications

Practical Applications

Far from being purely academic, the study of epistemology is useful for a great many applications. It is particularly commonly employed in issues of law where proof of guilt or innocence may be required, or when it must be determined whether a person knew a particular fact before taking a specific action (e.g., whether an action was premeditated). Another practical application is to the design of user interfaces. For example, the skills, rules, and knowledge taxonomy of human behavior has been used by designers to develop systems that are compatible with multiple "ways of knowing": abstract analytic reasoning, experience-based 'gut feelings', and 'craft' sensorimotor skills.

Other common applications of epistemology include:

  • Education Theory
  • Education Technology
  • Artificial intelligence
  • Cognitive science
  • Cultural anthropology (do different cultures have different systems of knowledge?)
  • History and archaeology
  • Intelligence (information) gathering
  • Knowledge management
  • Mathematics and science
  • Medicine (diagnosis of disease)
  • Neurology
  • Behavioral neuroscience
  • Product testing (how can we know that the product will not fail?)
  • Psychology
  • Philosophy
  • Linguistics
  • Logic
  • Literature
  • Theology and apologetics
  • Sociology
  • Testimony

Read more about this topic:  Epistemology

Famous quotes containing the word practical:

    “Whatever practical people may say, this world is, after all, absolutely governed by ideas, and very often by the wildest and most hypothetical ideas. It is a matter of the very greatest importance that our theories of things that seem a long way apart from our daily lives, should be as far as possible true, and as far as possible removed from error.”
    —Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)