When you look up philosophy in a German dictionary, for example wiktionary, you will come across the word “Erkenntnis”. Epistemology, the “theory of knowledge”, is one of the mayor branches of philosophy and my primary interest. The German translation is “Erkenntnistheorie”. When you look up philosophy in an English dictionary, you will find, among others, the word “knowledge”. But I do not translate Erkenntnis with knowledge on this website. Google does translate Erkenntnis like that, but only in one direction. If you start with knowledge and ask the German word, you will get the more common translation: “Wissen”.
Why does the German language have two words for knowledge, Erkenntnis and Wissen? And why do I value this difference enough to bother you with the German word Erkenntnis? Let’s have a closer look at the concepts behind those two words. For Erkenntnis I already wrote an article, which you will find when clicking on the left side below this article. So what is “Wissen”, the more common translation for knowledge? Well, in short, “Wissen” describes the concept that the word knowledge is also most commonly used for.
Knowledge is a true conviction or belief that is also justified. This definition of knowledge is not without controversy when it comes to the justification. Truth on the other hand is essential for the concept of knowledge. This brings us to a fundamental difference, because an Erkenntnis can be wrong. So it does not necessarily result in knowledge, because knowledge is true by definition. Erkenntnis can, when a mistake is made, when the experience is insufficient, or when we fail to find the matching concept, result in an incorrect conviction. This is called a fallacy. Erkenntnis leaves room for mistakes, knowledge does not. Epistemology is both interested in how we recognize (Erkenntnis) and if we have a way to know or justify that the result represents reality. Only then can we produce knowledge (Wissen).
Erkenntnis is the method or process to (potentially) attain knowledge, “Wissen” is the knowledge itself. A valid question would be how many ways there are to attain knowledge. One point of view is that there is one way through reasoning and another through empiricism. Wikipedia lists many ways to produce knowledge, such as introspection, rational intuition, inference and more. Some philosophers question the possibility of knowledge altogether. This thesis is known as skepticism. There will be more articles around this matter.