Concept

Epistemology

Overview

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge. Also called the theory of knowledge, it explores different types of knowledge, such as propositional knowledge about facts, practical knowledge in the form of skills, and knowledge by acquaintance as a familiarity through experience. Epistemologists study the concepts of belief, truth, and justification to understand the nature of knowledge. To discover how knowledge arises, they investigate sources of justification, such as perception, introspection, memory, reason, and testimony.

The school of skepticism questions the human ability to attain knowledge, while fallibilism says that knowledge is never certain. Empiricists hold that all knowledge comes from sense experience, whereas rationalists believe that some knowledge does not depend on it. Coherentists argue that a belief is justified if it is consistent with other beliefs. Foundationalists, by contrast, maintain that the justification of basic beliefs does not depend on other beliefs. Internalism and externalism debate whether justification is determined solely by mental states or also by external circumstances.

Separate branches of epistemology focus on knowledge in specific fields, like scientific, mathematical, moral, and religious knowledge. Naturalized epistemology relies on empirical methods and discoveries, whereas formal epistemology uses formal tools from logic. Social epistemology investigates the communal aspect of knowledge, and historical epistemology examines its historical conditions. Epistemology is closely related to psychology, which infers the beliefs people hold from their words and actions, while epistemology studies the norms governing the evaluation of beliefs. It also intersects with fields such as decision theory, education, and anthropology.

Early reflections on the nature, sources, and scope of knowledge are found in ancient Greek, Indian, and Chinese philosophy. The relation between reason and faith was a central topic in the medieval period. The modern era was characterized by the contrasting perspectives of empiricism and rationalism. Epistemologists in the 20th century examined the components, structure, and value of knowledge while integrating insights from the natural sciences and linguistics.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Epistemology is discussed.

Hence the primary problem of epistemology is: How is knowledge _überhaupt_, knowledge at large, _possible_? Because of the incompatibility between the concrete occurrence and function of knowledge and the conditions back of it to which it must conform, a second problem arises: How is knowledge in general, knowledge…
John Dewey, The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, and other essays in contemporary thought
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The difficulties attending the discussion of epistemology are in no way attendant upon the special subject-matter of "epistemology." They are found wherever any reciprocal relation is taken to define, exclusively and exhaustively, all the connections between any pair of things.
John Dewey, Essays in Experimental Logic
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That ‘to be true’ _means_ to be thought in a certain way is, therefore, certainly false. Yet this assertion plays the most essential part in Kant’s ‘Copernican revolution’ of philosophy, and renders worthless the whole mass of modern literature, to which that revolution has given rise, and which is called Epistemology. Kant held that what was unified in a certain manner by the synthetic activity of thought was _ipso…
G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica
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But all philosophy is either cognition on the basis of pure reason, or the cognition of reason on the basis of empirical principles. The former is termed pure, the latter empirical philosophy. The philosophy of pure reason is either propædeutic, that is, an inquiry into the powers of reason in regard to pure à priori cognition, and is termed critical philosophy; or it is, secondly, the system of pure reason—a…
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason
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As against such fixity, psychology is supposed to deal with these same ideas as products—as growing out of a living process of thought—having a history behind them and perhaps a prospect of further change. The genesis so given may be either a mere chronicle-history, or it may be a philosophical development. In the former case, it would note the occasions of incident and circumstance, the reactions of mind and…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Philosophy of Mind
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Epistemology

Overview

In the original texts

Philosophers who discussed Epistemology

Related ideas

Opposing perspectives

Place in the tradition