The ways in which we know can be empirical or non-empirical1 both methods can be effective and needed in everyday

Apuntes

The ways in which we know can be empirical or non-empirical, both methods can be effective and needed in everyday life. For instance, science is an empirical method but it is not needed for every single question one may face, sometimes one may rely on logic (often automatically) or use reasoning to connect the data one has (like every other method, logic can be wrongly used and lead to false knowledge); another frequently used, non-empirical method is authority, that we use for example when we ask someone that has authority or expertise that makes them reliable for answering us (ex: trusting medical staff, believing what we read in a manual, trusting the forecast app to give reliable informations, or the google algorithm). It is always fundamental, though, to verify and evaluate the sources of the information. On the other hand, empirical methods are usually based on observation which gives one direct experience of phenomena/data (the methods based on informal observation are personal as one’s experience may differ from someone else’s); science is part of this category as the scientific method is based on observation; however, there is difference between informal observation and sc...