Life Skills as Epistemic Practices: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Boundaries of Scientific Knowledge

This article offers a philosophical and conceptual analysis of life skills as epistemic practices. Its central claim is not that scientific knowledge is deficient or that contemporary philosophy of science is necessarily committed to a narrow conception of knowledge. Rather, the article criticizes scientistic and reductionist tendencies that treat only formalized, propositional, or methodologically standardized knowledge as epistemically legitimate. Drawing on Aristotle's phronesis, Ryle's distinction between knowing how and knowing that, Polanyi's account of tacit knowledge, and Dewey's pragmatist theory of inquiry, the article argues that some life skills function as epistemic practices when they involve reason-responsive judgment, situated interpretation, tacit and explicit knowledge integration, reflective improvability, and responsible action. The proposed concept of epistemic life skills is distinguished from phronesis, knowing-how, tacit knowledge, epistemic virtue, and epistemic agency by identifying a specifically educational and practical category in which learners use knowledge to interpret complex situations and act responsibly. The article further illustrates the framework through decision-making, emotional regulation, communication, conflict resolution, and critical thinking, and discusses implications for curriculum design, assessment, teacher education, civic education, and epistemic justice.