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Question of the Month

What Are The Limits of Knowledge?

Each answer below receives a book. Apologies to the entrants not included.

To answer this question, first ‘knowledge’ must be defined. It is difficult to determine exactly what constitutes knowledge, so even this presents a limit to knowledge.

We might identify various forms of knowledge, such as declarative knowledge (knowing that), procedural knowledge (knowing how), personal knowledge (of experience, emotions) and shared knowledge (true ideas widely accepted in communities and cultures). Sir Karl Popper developed a theory of three worlds, in which World 2 is all subjective (personal) knowledge, while World 3 is all knowledge existing independent of individual minds, such as stories, theories, mathematical constructs, scientific concepts, cultural beliefs, and intellectual creations.

However, categorising knowledge into types does not tell us what it means to know something.

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