Final answer:
According to Bloom (1956), knowledge is a hierarchical structure. The mind organizes knowledge by introducing new principles of order and through a classification system involving both a priori and a posteriori knowledge. Knowledge is not fixed but is subject to the categories and experiences through which we understand the world.
Step-by-step explanation:
According to Bloom (1956), knowledge is a hierarchical structure. Bloom's Taxonomy, developed by educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom, classifies levels of intellectual behavior important in learning. During the 1956 convention of the American Psychological Association, Bloom and others developed a classification of levels of intellectual behavior in learning. This taxonomy contains three domains: the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor, and knowledge organization pertains mainly to the cognitive domain.
Knowledge in the mind is not random nor is it fixed and unchanging; it represents a complex system where ideas, experience, and understanding are ordered. Knowledge is organized in a way that enables the mind to introduce new principles of order and arrange, store, and test the efficacy of those ideas. This embraces concepts from transcendental idealism where knowledge is not merely empirical but also formed a priori, meaning through reason alone without the need for sensory experience.
When discussing types of knowledge, philosophers distinguish between analytic a priori, such as mathematical truths, and synthetic a priori, which refers to categories, rules, and principles that structure our experience. However, a posteriori knowledge, knowledge that comes from empirical experience, is also an essential part of how we understand and navigate the world. In the mind, knowledge is always processed through the lenses of our understanding, and as Immanuel Kant suggested, we can never perceive the world without the categories that shape our experience.