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:

    The city is always recruited from the country. The men in cities who are the centres of energy, the driving-wheels of trade, politics or practical arts, and the women of beauty and genius, are the children or grandchildren of farmers, and are spending the energies which their fathers’ hardy, silent life accumulated in frosty furrows in poverty, necessity and darkness.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)