Knowledge acquisition (philosophy)

Knowledge acquisition is the process of absorbing and storing new knowledge in memory. Knowledge acquisition first proposed by Aristotle in his seminal work Organon. Aristotle proposed that the mind at birth is a blank slate, or tabula rasa. As a blank slate it contains no knowledge of the objective, empirical universe, nor of itself.

Knowledge acquisition as a method, it is opposed to the concept of "a priori" knowledge, and to "intuition" when conceived as religious revelation.

It has been suggested [1][2] that the mind is "hard wired" to begin operating at birth, beginning a lifetime process of acquisition through abstraction, induction, and conception.

The "five senses" referred to by the word sensation are metaphorically the interface between empirical (sensate) reality and the consciousness of the knowing subject. A knowing subject for the purpose of this discussion of knowledge acquisition may be defined as any conscious creature capable of deriving direct and immediate sensate data from its environment.

Sensate data, or sensation, are distinct from perception. Perception is the recognition within the knowing subject of the event of having had a sensation. The tabula rasa and must learn the nature of sensation as the awareness of something which is outside itself. Commonly recognized sensory systems are those for vision, hearing, somatic sensation (touch), taste and olfaction (smell).

Perception is the retention of a group of sensations transmitted through the sensory system(s), which gives the knowing subject the ability to be aware, not only of the singularity of stimuli presented by sensation itself, but of an entity, a thing, an existent.

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