What is knowledge?

Knowledge is at the centre of the TOK course, yet we need to have an understanding of what lies behind the concept.
Defining knowledge is not easily done but in TOK the quest for knowledge is more important that knowldege itself..

The definition offered by Plato in Theaetetus dialog as 'justified, true belief' incites us to consider three main aspects of knowledge:

• we want knowledge to be true: it should match what the world is
• we want knowledge to be justified: it should be consistent with our personal and shared knowledge
• we want knowledge to be useful: if we believe in our knowledge we can take action

We should, however, bear in mind that there may be different types of knowledge. For speakers of some languages, there is a distinction between 'knowing that' and 'knowing how'. Knowledge could also refer to specific or general knowledge, explicit or implicit, concrete or abstract, innate or acquired, etc.

Finally, let's have a look at what the TOK guide says about knowledge, by integrating the key concepts of the course:

'Knowledge can be viewed as the production of one or more human beings. It can be the work of a single individual arrived at as a result of a number of factors including the ways of knowing. Such individual knowledge is called personal knowledge in this guide. But knowledge can also be the work of a group of people working together either in concert or, more likely, separated by time or geography. Areas of knowledge such as the arts and ethics are of this form. These are examples of shared knowledge. There are socially established methods for producing knowledge of this sort, norms for what counts as a fact or a good explanation, concepts and language appropriate to each area and standards of rationality. These aspects of areas of knowledge can be organized into a knowledge framework.'