文档介绍：Theory of Knowledge
(for The Encyclopaedia Britannica)
Bertrand Russell
THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE is a product of doubt. When we have asked
ourselves seriously whether we really know anything at all, we are
naturally led into an examination of knowing, in the hope of being able to
distinguish trustworthy beliefs from such as are untrustworthy. Thus Kant,
the founder of modern theory of knowledge, represents a natural reaction
against Hume's scepticism. Few philosophers nowadays would assign to
this subject quite such a fundamental importance as it had in Kant's
"critical" system; nevertheless it remains an essential part of philosophy.
It is perhaps unwise to begin with a definition of the subject, since, as
elsewhere in philosophical discussions, definitions are controversial, and
will necessarily differ for different schools; but we may at least say that
the subject is concerned with the general conditions of knowledge, in so
far as they throw light upon truth and falsehood.
It will be convenient to divide our discussion into three stages,
concerning respectively (1) the definition of knowledge, (2) data, (3)
methods of inference. It should be said, however, that in distinguishing
between data and inferences we are already taking sides on a debatable
question, since some philosophers hold that this distinction is illusory, all
knowledge being (according to them) partly immediate and partly
derivative.
I. THE DEFINITION OF KNOWLEDGE
The question how knowledge should be defined is perhaps the most
important and difficult of the three with which we shall deal. This may
seem surprising: at first sight it might be thought that knowledge might be
defined as belief which is in agreement with the facts. The trouble is that
no one knows what a belief is, no one knows what a fact is, and no one
knows what sort of agreement between them would make a belief true.
Let us begin with belief.
Belief.
Traditionally, a "