Question

Does knowledge exist outside of, or separate from, the individual who knows? constructivists hold that human knowledge, whether the bodies of content in public disciplines (such as mathematics or sociology) or knowledge of the individual learner, is a human construction (gredler, 2001). references: gredler, m.

e. (2001). learning and instruction: theory into practice (4th ed.). upper saddle river, nj: prentice-hall.

Answer 1

The question of whether knowledge exists outside an individual pertains to the field of epistemology, exploring traditional and social perspectives. Knowledge is often gained through social constructs and testimony, with its reliability and justification being key issues. Philosophical theories like Plato's forms and Kant's categorial influence also contribute to our understanding of knowledge.

Step-by-step explanation:

The inquiry of whether knowledge exists beyond an individual stems from the epistemological question about the nature of knowledge itself. Knowledge can be seen as a social construct, substantially gained through testimony and the social means of communicating information. Traditional epistemology has focused primarily on the individual's ability to possess justified true belief. However, social epistemology acknowledges our reliance on others in the formation of beliefs and knowledge.

Our education systems are an apt illustration of knowledge as a social construct, where students rely on the testimony of teachers and books. This reliance complicates the issue of knowledge acquisition due to the potential unreliability of sources. Consequently, a recurring question in social epistemology pertains to when testimony can be considered justified.

The Gettier problem poses challenges to the classical definition of knowledge (justified true belief) by presenting situations where individuals have justified true belief without actually having knowledge. As a response, some theorists aim to refine the traditional model to adequately account for these challenges.

The philosophers' pursuit of understanding what knowledge is and how it is justified reflects the essence of epistemology. Plato's theory of forms suggests that knowledge is recollection of universal truths, while Immanuel Kant's perspective implies that our knowledge is inherently shaped by our cognitive structures and experiences.

In essence, the construction and acquisition of knowledge are deeply rooted in our interactions and communications within societal structures, as well as the philosophical interpretations of what it means to know.

Answer 2

According to a constructivist theory of knowledge, the answer is definitely no.

Step-by-step explanation:

"Does knowledge exist outside of, or separate from, the individual who knows?"

To answer this question, based on a constructivist point of view it is very important to understand that, according to this theory, knowledge (any kind of it, being mathemathics or social studies) is not found by itself in the outside world: for knowledge to exist there must be a mind (individual) producing it.

Although there are many kinds of constructivism (some more radical than others in the sense that some attribute more sense to the mind than others) all of them agree in what I told you before: there is always a game between the mind and the sorrounding world that creates knowledge, and one very powerfull argument (among many others) to support this thesis is the language one:

1. Language is the way we approach to the world :

For example, when we want to make reference to a tree, or a computer, or another person in front of us, not only we use language to describe that object, but we understand it by means of the language (that tree is a tree, that computer is a computer).... our way of undersanting the world is a linguistic one.

2. language is not essential to us, we learn it through experience

All human beings are, at the beggining of their lives, babies, and we all know babies do not "come to the world" speaking english, on the contrary, they are thought, throught the first years of their lives, to speak and use language as their tool not only to communicate with others, but to experience the world itself.

3. Language is arbitrary

Think about all the different languages in the world and the all the possible ways to name a tree: Arbol: boom: medis: treet: arbre: ツリ: درخت: мод: lingnum.... there are hundreths of different ways! yet all of them refer to what we usually know by "tree". None of them share a common rule, they simply develop their language in a specific time and space different from each other, yet they all mean the same actual tree in the world.

If language is our way to understand the world around us, and we know that language is not only non-essential to us, but an arbitrary way to name things, we can assume that what we know of the world is, in fact, not the world itself but something that we have learnt to see and name.

Knowledge does not exist outside of the individual because knwoledge is also something we created through time, and all what we know about the world that sorround us is not the world itself but the world seen through our human psique.

Note: by this I am not saying at all that all is relative, there still is a correct knowledge and an incorrect one, the first goes much closer to understand the world we live in, and it is what we understand as scientific knowledge.

This debate is actually much more complicated (and much more complete) than this. It is a very beautifull debate mankind has had for hundreths of years and I invite you to read about it because what I have just said is terribly incomplete and its simply an image of the actual problem. Hope it helps anyway.