Introduction Back to Top

Epistemology is the study of the nature and scope of knowledge and justified belief. It analyzes the

nature of knowledge and how it relates to similar notions such as truth, belief and justification. It also
deals with the means of production of knowledge, as well as skepticism about different knowledge
claims. It is essentailly about issues having to do with the creation and dissemination of knowledge in
particular areas of inquiry.

Epistemology asks questions like: "What is knowledge?", "How is knowledge acquired?", "What do

people know?", "What are the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge?", "What is its structure,
and what are its limits?", "What makes justified beliefs justified?", "How we are to understand the concept
of justification?", "Is justification internal or external to one's own mind?"

The kind of knowledge usually discussed in Epistemology is propositional knowledge, "knowledge-

that" as opposed to "knowledge-how" (for example, the knowledge that "2 + 2 = 4", as opposed to the
knowledge of how to go about adding two numbers).

What Is Knowledge? Back to Top

Knowledge is the awareness and understanding of particular aspects of reality. It is the clear, lucid
information gained through the process of reason applied to reality. The traditional approach is that
knowledge requires three necessary and sufficient conditions, so that knowledge can then be defined
as "justified true belief":

 truth: since false propositions cannot be known - for something to count as knowledge, it must
actually be true. As Aristotlefamously (but rather confusingly) expressed it: "To say of something
which is that it is not, or to say of something which is not that it is, is false. However, to say of
something which is that it is, or of something which is not that it is not, is true."
 belief: because one cannot know something that one doesn't even believe in, the statement "I
know x, but I don't believe that x is true" is contradictory.
 justification: as opposed to believing in something purely as a matter of luck.

The most contentious part of all this is the definition of justification, and there are several schools of
thought on the subject:

 According to Evidentialism, what makes a belief justified in this sense is the possession of

evidence - a belief is justified to the extent that it fits a person's evidence.
 Different varieties of Reliabilism suggest that either: 1) justification is not necessary for knowledge
provided it is a reliably-produced true belief; or 2) justification is required but any reliable
cognitive process (e.g. vision) is sufficient justification.
 Yet another school, Infallibilism, holds that a belief must not only be true and justified, but that the
justification of the belief must necessitate its truth, so that the justification for the belief must
be infallible.
Another debate focuses on whether justification is external or internal:

 Externalism holds that factors deemed "external" (meaning outside of the psychological states of
those who are gaining the knowledge) can be conditions of knowledge, so that if the relevant facts
justifying a proposition are external then they are acceptable.
 Internalism, on the other hand, claims that all knowledge-yielding conditions are within the
psychological states of those who gain knowledge.

As recently as 1963, the American philosopher Edmund Gettier called this traditional theory of

knowledge into question by claiming that there are certain circumstances in which one does not have
knowledge, even when all of the above conditions are met (his Gettier-cases). For example: Suppose
that the clock on campus (which keeps accurate time and is well maintained) stopped working at 11:56pm
last night, and has yet to be repaired. On my way to my noon class, exactly twelve hours later, I glance at
the clock and form the belief that the time is 11:56. My belief is true, of course, since the time is indeed
11:56. And my belief is justified, as I have no reason to doubt that the clock is working, and I cannot be
blamed for basing beliefs about the time on what the clock says. Nonetheless, it seems evident that I
do not know that the time is 11:56. After all, if I had walked past the clock a bit earlier or a bit later, I
would have ended up with a false belief rather than a true one.

How Is Knowledge Acquired? Back to Top

Propositional knowledge can be of two types, depending on its source:

 a priori (or non-empirical), where knowledge is possible independently of, or prior to, any

experience, and requires only the use of reason (e.g. knowledge of logical truths and of abstract
claims); or
 a posteriori (or empirical), where knowledge is possible only subsequent, or posterior, to certain
sense experiences, in addition to the use of reason (e.g. knowledge of the colour or shape of a
physical object, or knowledge of geographical locations).

Knowledge of empirical facts about the physical world will necessarily involve perception, in other
words, the use of the senses. But all knowledge requires some amount of reasoning, the analysis of
data and the drawing of inferences. Intuition is often believed to be a sort of direct access to knowledge
of the a priori.

Memory allows us to know something that we knew in the past, even, perhaps, if we no longer remember
the original justification. Knowledge can also be transmitted from one individual to another
via testimony (that is, my justification for a particular belief could amount to the fact that some trusted
source has told me that it is true).

There are a few main theories of knowledge acquisition:

 Empiricism, which emphasizes the role of experience, especially experience based on perceptual
observations by the five senses in the formation of ideas, while discounting the notion of innate
ideas. Refinements of this basic principle led to Phenomenalism, Positivism, Scientism and Logical
Positivism.
  Rationalism, which holds that knowledge is not derived from experience, but rather is acquired
by a priori processes or is innate (in the form of concepts) or intuitive.
 Representationalism (or Indirect Realism or Epistemological Dualism), which holds that the
world we see in conscious experience is not the real world itself, but merely a miniature virtual-
reality replica of that world in an internal representation.
 Constructivism (or Constructionism), which presupposes that all knowledge is "constructed", in
that it is contingent on convention, human perception and social experience.

What Can People Know? Back to Top

The fact that any given justification of knowledge will itself depend on another belief for its justification
appears to lead to an infinite regress.

Skepticism begins with the apparent impossibility of completing this infinite chain of reasoning, and
argues that, ultimately, no beliefs are justified and therefore no one really knows anything.

Fallibilism also claims that absolute certainty about knowledge is impossible, or at least that all claims to
knowledge could, in principle, be mistaken. Unlike Skepticism, however, Fallibilism does not imply the
need to abandon our knowledge, just to recognize that, because empirical knowledge can
be revised by further observation, any of the things we take as knowledge might possibly turn out to
be false.

In response to this regress problem, various schools of thought have arisen:

 Foundationalism claims that some beliefs that support other beliefs are foundational and do not
themselves require justification by other beliefs (self-justifying or infallible beliefs or those based
on perception or certain a priori considerations).
 Instrumentalism is the methodological view that concepts and theories are merely useful
instruments, and their worth is measured by how effective they are
in explaining and predicting phenomena. Instrumentalism therefore denies that theories
are truth-evaluable. Pragmatism is a similar concept, which holds that something is true only
insofar as it worksand has practical consequences.
 Infinitism typically takes the infinite series to be merely potential, and an individual need only
have the ability to bring forth the relevant reasons when the need arises. Therefore, unlike most
traditional theories of justification, Infinitism considers an infinite regress to be a valid justification.
 Coherentism holds that an individual belief is justified circularly by the way it fits together
(coheres) with the rest of the belief system of which it is a part, so that the regress does not
proceed according to a pattern of linear justification.
 Foundherentism is another position which is meant to be a unification
of foundationalism and coherentism.

Major Doctrines Back to Top

Under the heading of Epistemology, the major doctrines or theories include:

Constructivism Logical Positivism (Logical Empiricism)

Deconstructionism Ordinary Language Philosophy
Empiricism Phenomenalism
Externalism Positivism
Fallibilism Pragmatism
 Foundationalism Rationalism
Historicism Representationalism
Holism Scientism
Internalism Skepticism
Instrumentalism Verificationism

Back to Top of Page

General | By Branch/Doctrine | By Historical Period | By Movement/School | By Individual
Philosopher
 
© 2008 Luke Mastin
 

Epistemology
Epistemology is the study of knowledge. Epistemologists concern themselves with a
number of tasks, which we might sort into two categories.

First, we must determine the nature of knowledge; that is, what does it mean to say
that someone knows, or fails to know, something? This is a matter of understanding
what knowledge is, and how to distinguish between cases in which someone knows
something and cases in which someone does not know something. While there is
some general agreement about some aspects of this issue, we shall see that this
question is much more difficult than one might imagine.

Second, we must determine the extent of human knowledge; that is, how much do
we, or can we, know? How can we use our reason, our senses, the testimony of
others, and other resources to acquire knowledge? Are there limits to what we can
know? For instance, are some things unknowable? Is it possible that we do not know
nearly as much as we think we do? Should we have a legitimate worry about
skepticism, the view that we do not or cannot know anything at all?

Table of Contents

Kinds of Knowledge
The Nature of Propositional Knowledge
Belief
Truth
Justification
The Gettier Problem
The No-False-Belief Condition
The No-Defeaters Condition
Causal Accounts of Knowledge
The Nature of Justification
Internalism
Foundationalism
Coherentism
Externalism
The Extent of Human Knowledge
Sources of Knowledge
Skepticism
Cartesian Skepticism
Humean Skepticism
Numerical vs. Qualitative Identity
Hume's Skepticism about Induction
Conclusion
References and Further Reading
1. Kinds of Knowledge

The term “epistemology” comes from the Greek "episteme," meaning "knowledge,"
and "logos," meaning, roughly, "study, or science, of." "Logos" is the root of all terms
ending in "-ology" – such as psychology, anthropology – and of "logic," and has many
other related meanings.

The word "knowledge" and its cognates are used in a variety of ways. One common
use of the word "know" is as an expression of psychological conviction. For instance,
we might hear someone say, "I just knew it wouldn't rain, but then it did." While this
may be an appropriate usage, philosophers tend to use the word "know" in a factive
sense, so that one cannot know something that is not the case. (This point is
discussed at greater length in section 2b below.)

Even if we restrict ourselves to factive usages, there are still multiple senses of
"knowledge," and so we need to distinguish between them. One kind of knowledge
is procedural knowledge, sometimes called competence or "know-how;" for
example, one can know how to ride a bicycle, or one can know how to drive from
Washington, D.C. to New York. Another kind of knowledge is acquaintance
knowledge or familiarity; for instance, one can know the department chairperson, or
one can know Philadelphia.

Epistemologists typically do not focus on procedural or acquaintance knowledge,

however, instead preferring to focus on propositional knowledge. A proposition is
something which can be expressed by a declarative sentence, and which purports to
describe a fact or a state of affairs, such as "Dogs are mammals," "2+2=7," "It is
wrong to murder innocent people for fun." (Note that a proposition may be true or
false; that is, it need not actually express a fact.) Propositional knowledge, then, can
be called knowledge-that; statements of propositional knowledge (or the lack
thereof) are properly expressed using "that"-clauses, such as "He knows that
Houston is in Texas," or "She does not know that the square root of 81 is 9." In what
follows, we will be concerned only with propositional knowledge.

Propositional knowledge, obviously, encompasses knowledge about a wide range of

matters: scientific knowledge, geographical knowledge, mathematical knowledge,
self-knowledge, and knowledge about any field of study whatever. Any truth might,
in principle, be knowable, although there might be unknowable truths. One goal of
epistemology is to determine the criteria for knowledge so that we can know what
can or cannot be known, in other words, the study of epistemology fundamentally
includes the study of meta-epistemology (what we can know about knowledge
itself).

We can also distinguish between different types of propositional knowledge, based

on the source of that knowledge. Non-empirical or a priori knowledge is possible
independently of, or prior to, any experience, and requires only the use of reason;
examples include knowledge of logical truths such as the law of non-contradiction,
as well as knowledge of abstract claims (such as ethical claims or claims about
various conceptual matters). Empirical or a posteriori knowledge is possible only
subsequent, or posterior, to certain sense experiences (in addition to the use of
reason); examples include knowledge of the color or shape of a physical object or
knowledge of geographical locations. (Some philosophers, called rationalists, believe
that all knowledge is ultimately grounded upon reason; others, called empiricists,
believe that all knowledge is ultimately grounded upon experience.) A thorough
epistemology should, of course, address all kinds of knowledge, although there
might be different standards for a priori and a posteriori knowledge.

We can also distinguish between individual knowledge and collective knowledge.

Social epistemology is the subfield of epistemology that addresses the way that
groups, institutions, or other collective bodies might come to acquire knowledge.

2. The Nature of Propositional Knowledge

Having narrowed our focus to propositional knowledge, we must ask ourselves what,
exactly, constitutes knowledge. What does it mean for someone to know
something? What is the difference between someone who knows something and
someone else who does not know it, or between something one knows and
something one does not know? Since the scope of knowledge is so broad, we need a
general characterization of knowledge, one which is applicable to any kind of
proposition whatsoever. Epistemologists have usually undertaken this task by
seeking a correct and complete analysis of the concept of knowledge, in other words
a set of individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions which determine
whether someone knows something.

a. Belief

Let us begin with the observation that knowledge is a mental state; that is,
knowledge exists in one's mind, and unthinking things cannot know anything.
Further, knowledge is a specific kind of mental state. While "that"-clauses can also
be used to describe desires and intentions, these cannot constitute knowledge.
Rather, knowledge is a kind of belief. If one has no beliefs about a particular matter,
one cannot have knowledge about it.

For instance, suppose that I desire that I be given a raise in salary, and that I intend
to do whatever I can to earn one. Suppose further that I am doubtful as to whether I
will indeed be given a raise, due to the intricacies of the university's budget and
such. Given that I do not believe that I will be given a raise, I cannot be said to know
that I will. Only if I am inclined to believe something can I come to know it. Similarly,
thoughts that an individual has never entertained are not among his beliefs, and
thus cannot be included in his body of knowledge.

Some beliefs, those which the individual is actively entertaining, are called occurrent
beliefs. The majority of an individual's beliefs are non-occurrent; these are beliefs
that the individual has in the background but is not entertaining at a particular time.
Correspondingly, most of our knowledge is non-occurrent, or background,
knowledge; only a small amount of one's knowledge is ever actively on one's mind.

b. Truth

Knowledge, then, requires belief. Of course, not all beliefs constitute knowledge.
Belief is necessary but not sufficient for knowledge. We are all sometimes mistaken
in what we believe; in other words, while some of our beliefs are true, others are
false. As we try to acquire knowledge, then, we are trying to increase our stock of
true beliefs (while simultaneously minimizing our false beliefs).

We might say that the most typical purpose of beliefs is to describe or capture the
way things actually are; that is, when one forms a belief, one is seeking a match
between one's mind and the world. (We sometimes, of course, form beliefs for other
reasons – to create a positive attitude, to deceive ourselves, and so forth – but when
we seek knowledge, we are trying to get things right.) And, alas, we sometimes fail
to achieve such a match; some of our beliefs do not describe the way things actually
are.

Note that we are assuming here that there is such a thing as objective truth, so that
it is possible for beliefs to match or to fail to match with reality. That is, in order for
someone to know something, there must be something one knows about. Recall that
we are discussing knowledge in the factive sense; if there are no facts of the matter,
then there's nothing to know (or to fail to know). This assumption is not universally
accepted – in particular, it is not shared by some proponents of relativism – but it
will not be defended here. However, we can say that truth is a condition of
knowledge; that is, if a belief is not true, it cannot constitute knowledge.
Accordingly, if there is no such thing as truth, then there can be no knowledge. Even
if there is such a thing as truth, if there is a domain in which there are no truths, then
there can be no knowledge within that domain. (For example, if beauty is in the eye
of the beholder, then a belief that something is beautiful cannot be true or false, and
thus cannot constitute knowledge.)

c. Justification

Knowledge, then, requires factual belief. However, this does not suffice to capture
the nature of knowledge. Just as knowledge requires successfully achieving the
objective of true belief, it also requires success with regard to the formation of that
belief. In other words, not all true beliefs constitute knowledge; only true beliefs
arrived at in the right way constitute knowledge.

What, then, is the right way of arriving at beliefs? In addition to truth, what other
properties must a belief have in order to constitute knowledge? We might begin by
noting that sound reasoning and solid evidence seem to be the way to acquire
knowledge. By contrast, a lucky guess cannot constitute knowledge. Similarly,
misinformation and faulty reasoning do not seem like a recipe for knowledge, even if
they happen to lead to a true belief. A belief is said to be justified if it is obtained in
the right way. While justification seems, at first glance, to be a matter of a belief's
being based on evidence and reasoning rather than on luck or misinformation, we
shall see that there is much disagreement regarding how to spell out the details.

The requirement that knowledge involve justification does not necessarily mean that
knowledge requires absolute certainty, however. Humans are fallible beings, and
fallibilism is the view that it is possible to have knowledge even when one's true
belief might have turned out to be false. Between beliefs which were necessarily
true and those which are true solely by luck lies a spectrum of beliefs with regard to
which we had some defeasible reason to believe that they would be true. For
instance, if I heard the weatherman say that there is a 90% chance of rain, and as a
result I formed the belief that it would rain, then my true belief that it would rain
was not true purely by luck. Even though there was some chance that my belief
might have been false, there was a sufficient basis for that belief for it to constitute
knowledge. This basis is referred to as the justification for that belief. We can then
say that, to constitute knowledge, a belief must be both true and justified.

Note that because of luck, a belief can be unjustified yet true; and because of human
fallibility, a belief can be justified yet false. In other words, truth and justification are
two independent conditions of beliefs. The fact that a belief is true does not tell us
whether or not it is justified; that depends on how the belief was arrived at. So, two
people might hold the same true belief, but for different reasons, so that one of
them is justified and the other is unjustified. Similarly, the fact that a belief is
justified does not tell us whether it's true or false. Of course, a justified belief will
presumably be more likely to be true than to be false, and justified beliefs will
presumably be more likely or more probable to be true than unjustified beliefs. (As
we will see in section 3 below, the exact nature of the relationship between truth
and justification is contentious.)

d. The Gettier Problem

For some time, the justified true belief (JTB) account was widely agreed to capture
the nature of knowledge. However, in 1963, Edmund Gettier published a short but
widely influential article which has shaped much subsequent work in epistemology.
Gettier provided two examples in which someone had a true and justified belief, but
in which we seem to want to deny that the individual has knowledge, because luck
still seems to play a role in his belief having turned out to be true.
Consider an example. Suppose that the clock on campus (which keeps accurate time
and is well maintained) stopped working at 11:56pm last night, and has yet to be
repaired. On my way to my noon class, exactly twelve hours later, I glance at the
clock and form the belief that the time is 11:56. My belief is true, of course, since the
time is indeed 11:56. And my belief is justified, as I have no reason to doubt that the
clock is working, and I cannot be blamed for basing beliefs about the time on what
the clock says. Nonetheless, it seems evident that I do not know that the time is
11:56. After all, if I had walked past the clock a bit earlier or a bit later, I would have
ended up with a false belief rather than a true one.

This example and others like it, while perhaps somewhat far-fetched, seem to show
that it is possible for justified true belief to fail to constitute knowledge. To put it
another way, the justification condition was meant to ensure that knowledge was
based on solid evidence rather than on luck or misinformation, but Gettier-type
examples seem to show that justified true belief can still involve luck and thus fall
short of knowledge. This problem is referred to as "the Gettier problem." To solve
this problem, we must either show that all instances of justified true belief do indeed
constitute knowledge, or alternatively refine our analysis of knowledge.

i. The No-False-Belief Condition

We might think that there is a simple and straightforward solution to the Gettier
problem. Note that my reasoning was tacitly based on my belief that the clock is
working properly, and that this belief is false. This seems to explain what has gone
wrong in this example. Accordingly, we might revise our analysis of knowledge by
insisting that to constitute knowledge, a belief must be true and justified and must
be formed without relying on any false beliefs. In other words, we might say,
justification, truth, and belief are all necessary for knowledge, but they are not
jointly sufficient for knowledge; there is a fourth condition – namely, that no false
beliefs be essentially involved in the reasoning that led to the belief – which is also
necessary.

Unfortunately, this will not suffice; we can modify the example so that my belief is
justified and true, and is not based on any false beliefs, but still falls short of
knowledge. Suppose, for instance, that I do not have any beliefs about the clock's
current state, but merely the more general belief that the clock usually is in working
order. This belief, which is true, would suffice to justify my belief that the time is now
11:56; of course, it still seems evident that I do not know the time.

ii. The No-Defeaters Condition

However, the no-false-belief condition does not seem to be completely misguided;

perhaps we can add some other condition to justification and truth to yield a correct
characterization of knowledge. Note that, even if I didn't actively form the belief that
the clock is currently working properly, it seems to be implicit in my reasoning, and
the fact that it is false is surely relevant to the problem. After all, if I were asked, at
the time that I looked at the clock, whether it is working properly, I would have said
that it is. Conversely, if I believed that the clock wasn't working properly, I wouldn't
be justified in forming a belief about the time based on what the clock says.

In other words, the proposition that the clock is working properly right now meets
the following conditions: it is a false proposition, I do not realize that it is a false
proposition, and if I had realized that it is a false proposition, my justification for my
belief that it is 11:56 would have been undercut or defeated. If we call propositions
such as this "defeaters," then we can say that to constitute knowledge, a belief must
be true and justified, and there must not be any defeaters to the justification of that
belief. Many epistemologists believe this analysis to be correct.

iii. Causal Accounts of Knowledge

Rather than modifying the JTB account of knowledge by adding a fourth condition,
some epistemologists see the Gettier problem as reason to seek a substantially
different alternative. We have noted that knowledge should not involve luck, and
that Gettier-type examples are those in which luck plays some role in the formation
of a justified true belief. In typical instances of knowledge, the factors responsible for
the justification of a belief are also responsible for its truth. For example, when the
clock is working properly, my belief is both true and justified because it's based on
the clock, which accurately displays the time. But one feature that all Gettier-type
examples have in common is the lack of a clear connection between the truth and
the justification of the belief in question. For example, my belief that the time is
11:56 is justified because it's based on the clock, but it's true because I happened to
walk by at just the right moment. So, we might insist that to constitute knowledge, a
belief must be both true and justified, and its truth and justification must be
connected somehow.

This notion of a connection between the truth and the justification of a belief turns
out to be difficult to formulate precisely, but causal accounts of knowledge seek to
capture the spirit of this proposal by more significantly altering the analysis of
knowledge. Such accounts maintain that in order for someone to know a
proposition, there must be a causal connection between his belief in that proposition
and the fact that the proposition encapsulates. This retains the truth condition, since
a proposition must be true in order for it to encapsulate a fact. However, it appears
to be incompatible with fallibilism, since it does not allow for the possibility that a
belief be justified yet false. (Strictly speaking, causal accounts of knowledge make no
reference to justification, although we might attempt to reformulate fallibilism in
somewhat modified terms in order to state this observation.)

While causal accounts of knowledge are no longer thought to be correct, they have
engendered reliabilist theories of knowledge, which shall be discussed in section 3b
below.

3. The Nature of Justification

One reason that the Gettier problem is so problematic is that neither Gettier nor
anyone who preceded him has offered a sufficiently clear and accurate analysis of
justification. We have said that justification is a matter of a belief's having been
formed in the right way, but we have yet to say what that amounts to. We must now
consider this matter more closely.

We have noted that the goal of our belief-forming practices is to obtain truth while
avoiding error, and that justification is the feature of beliefs which are formed in
such a way as to best pursue this goal. If we think, then, of the goal of our belief-
forming practices as an attempt to establish a match between one's mind and the
world, and if we also think of the application or withholding of the justification
condition as an evaluation of whether this match was arrived at in the right way,
then there seem to be two obvious approaches to construing justification: namely, in
terms of the believer's mind, or in terms of the world.

a. Internalism

Belief is a mental state, and belief-formation is a mental process. Accordingly, one

might reason, whether or not a belief is justified – whether, that is, it is formed in
the right way – can be determined by examining the thought-processes of the
believer during its formation. Such a view, which maintains that justification depends
solely on factors internal to the believer's mind, is called internalism. (The term
"internalism" has different meanings in other contexts; here, it will be used strictly to
refer to this type of view about epistemic justification.)

According to internalism, the only factors that are relevant to the determination of
whether a belief is justified are the believer's other mental states. After all, an
internalist will argue, only an individual's mental states – her beliefs about the world,
her sensory inputs (for example, her sense data) and her beliefs about the relations
between her various beliefs – can determine what new beliefs she will form, so only
an individual's mental states can determine whether any particular belief is justified.
In particular, in order to be justified, a belief must be appropriately based upon or
supported by other mental states.

This raises the question of what constitutes the basing or support relation between a
belief and one's other mental states. We might want to say that, in order for belief A
to be appropriately based on belief B (or beliefs B1 and B2, or B1, B2, and…Bn), the
truth of B must suffice to establish the truth of A, in other words, B must entail A.
(We shall consider the relationship between beliefs and sensory inputs below.)
However, if we want to allow for our fallibility, we must instead say that the truth of
B would give one good reason to believe that A is also true (by making it likely or
probable that A is true). An elaboration of what counts as a good reason for belief,
accordingly, is an essential part of any internalist account of justification.

However, there is an additional condition that we must add: belief B must itself be
justified, since unjustified beliefs cannot confer justification on other beliefs. Because
belief B be must also be justified, must there be some justified belief C upon which B
is based? If so, C must itself be justified, and it may derive its justification from some
further justified belief, D. This chain of beliefs deriving their justification from other
beliefs may continue forever, leading us in an infinite regress. While the idea of an
infinite regress might seem troubling, the primary ways of avoiding such a regress
may have their own problems as well. This raises the "regress problem," which
begins from observing that there are only four possibilities as to the structure of
one's justified beliefs:

The series of justified beliefs, each based upon the other, continues infinitely.
The series of justified beliefs circles back to its beginning (A is based on B, B on C, C
on D, and D on A).
The series of justified beliefs begins with an unjustified belief.
The series of justified beliefs begins with a belief which is justified, but not by virtue
of being based on another justified belief.
These alternatives seem to exhaust the possibilities. That is, if one has any justified
beliefs, one of these four possibilities must describe the relationships between those
beliefs. As such, a complete internalist account of justification must decide among
the four.

i. Foundationalism

Let us, then, consider each of the four possibilities mentioned above. Alternative 1
seems unacceptable because the human mind can contain only finitely many beliefs,
and any thought-process that leads to the formation of a new belief must have some
starting point. Alternative 2 seems no better, since circular reasoning appears to be
fallacious. And alternative 3 has already been ruled out, since it renders the second
belief in the series (and, thus, all subsequent beliefs) unjustified. That leaves
alternative 4, which must, by process of elimination, be correct.

This line of reasoning, which is typically known as the regress argument, leads to the
conclusion that there are two different kinds of justified beliefs: those which begin a
series of justified beliefs, and those which are based on other justified beliefs. The
former, called basic beliefs, are able to confer justification on other, non-basic
beliefs, without themselves having their justification conferred upon them by other
beliefs. As such, there is an asymmetrical relationship between basic and non-basic
beliefs. Such a view of the structure of justified belief is known as "foundationalism."
In general, foundationalism entails that there is an asymmetrical relationship
between any two beliefs: if A is based on B, then B cannot be based on A.

Accordingly, it follows that at least some beliefs (namely basic beliefs) are justified in
some way other than by way of a relation to other beliefs. Basic beliefs must be self-
justified, or must derive their justification from some non-doxastic source such as
sensory inputs; the exact source of the justification of basic beliefs needs to be
explained by any complete foundationalist account of justification.

ii. Coherentism

Internalists might be dissatisfied with foundationalism, since it allows for the

possibility of beliefs that are justified without being based upon other beliefs. Since it
was our solution to the regress problem that led us to foundationalism, and since
none of the alternatives seem palatable, we might look for a flaw in the problem
itself. Note that the problem is based on a pivotal but hitherto unstated assumption:
namely, that justification is linear in fashion. That is, the statement of the regress
problem assumes that the basing relation parallels a logical argument, with one
belief being based on one or more other beliefs in an asymmetrical fashion.

So, an internalist who finds foundationalism to be problematic might deny this

assumption, maintaining instead that justification is the result of a holistic
relationship among beliefs. That is, one might maintain that beliefs derive their
justification by inclusion in a set of beliefs which cohere with one another as a
whole; a proponent of such a view is called a coherentist.

A coherentist, then, sees justification as a relation of mutual support among many

beliefs, rather than a series of asymmetrical beliefs. A belief derives its justification,
according to coherentism, not by being based on one or more other beliefs, but by
virtue of its membership in a set of beliefs that all fit together in the right way. (The
coherentist needs to specify what constitutes coherence, of course. It must be
something more than logical consistency, since two unrelated beliefs may be
consistent. Rather, there must be some positive support relationship – for instance,
some sort of explanatory relationship – between the members of a coherent set in
order for the beliefs to be individually justified.)

Coherentism is vulnerable to the "isolation objection". It seems possible for a set of

beliefs to be coherent, but for all of those beliefs to be isolated from reality.
Consider, for instance, a work of fiction. All of the statements in the work of fiction
might form a coherent set, but presumably believing all and only the statements in a
work of fiction will not render one justified. Indeed, any form of internalism seems
vulnerable to this objection, and thus a complete internalist account of justification
must address it. Recall that justification requires a match between one's mind and
the world, and an inordinate emphasis on the relations between the beliefs in one's
mind seems to ignore the question of whether those beliefs match up with the way
things actually are.

b. Externalism

Accordingly, one might think that focusing solely on factors internal to the believer's
mind will inevitably lead to a mistaken account of justification. The alternative, then,
is that at least some factors external to the believer's mind determine whether or
not she is justified. A proponent of such a view is called an externalist.

According to externalism, the only way to avoid the isolation objection and ensure
that knowledge does not include luck is to consider some factors other than the
individual's other beliefs. Which factors, then, should be considered? The most
prominent version of externalism, called reliabilism, suggests that we consider the
source of a belief. Beliefs can be formed as a result of many different sources, such
as sense experience, reason, testimony, memory. More precisely, we might specify
which sense was used, who provided the testimony, what sort of reasoning is used,
or how recent the relevant memory is. For every belief, we can indicate the cognitive
process that led to its formation. In its simplest and most straightforward form,
reliabilism maintains that whether or not a belief is justified depends upon whether
that process is a reliable source of true beliefs. Since we are seeking a match
between our mind and the world, justified beliefs are those which result from
processes which regularly achieve such a match. So, for example, using vision to
determine the color of an object which is well-lit and relatively near is a reliable
belief-forming process for a person with normal vision, but not for a color-blind
person. Forming beliefs on the basis of the testimony of an expert is likely to yield
true beliefs, but forming beliefs on the basis of the testimony of compulsive liars is
not. In general, if a belief is the result of a cognitive process which reliably (most of
the time – we still want to leave room for human fallibility) leads to true beliefs, then
that belief is justified.

The foregoing suggests one immediate challenge for reliabilism. The formation of a
belief is a one-time event, but the reliability of the process depends upon the long-
term performance of that process. (This can include counterfactual as well as actual
events. For instance, a coin which is flipped only once and lands on heads
nonetheless has a 50% chance of landing on tails, even though its actual
performance has yielded heads 100% of the time.) And this requires that we specify
which process is being used, so that we can evaluate its performance in other
instances. However, cognitive processes can be described in more or less general
terms: for example, the same belief-forming process might be variously described as
sense experience, vision, vision by a normally-sighted person, vision by a normally-
sighted person in daylight, vision by a normally-sighted person in daylight while
looking at a tree, vision by a normally-sighted person in daylight while looking at an
elm tree, and so forth. The "generality problem" notes that some of these
descriptions might specify a reliable process but others might specify an unreliable
process, so that we cannot know whether a belief is justified or unjustified unless we
know the appropriate level of generality to use in describing the process.

Even if the generality problem can be solved, another problem remains for
externalism. Keith Lehrer presents this problem by way of his example of Mr.
Truetemp. Truetemp has, unbeknownst to him, had a tempucomp – a device which
accurately reads the temperature and causes a spontaneous belief about that
temperature – implanted in his brain. As a result, he has many true beliefs about the
temperature, but he does not know why he has them or what their source is. Lehrer
argues that, although Truetemp's belief-forming process is reliable, his ignorance of
the tempucomp renders his temperature-beliefs unjustified, and thus that a reliable
cognitive process cannot yield justification unless the believer is aware of the fact
that the process is reliable. In other words, the mere fact that the process is reliable
does not suffice, Lehrer concludes, to justify any beliefs which are formed via that
process.

4. The Extent of Human Knowledge

a. Sources of Knowledge

Given the above characterization of knowledge, there are many ways that one might
come to know something. Knowledge of empirical facts about the physical world will
necessarily involve perception, in other words, the use of the senses. Science, with
its collection of data and conducting of experiments, is the paradigm of empirical
knowledge. However, much of our more mundane knowledge comes from the
senses, as we look, listen, smell, touch, and taste the various objects in our
environments.

But all knowledge requires some amount of reasoning. Data collected by scientists
must be analyzed before knowledge is yielded, and we draw inferences based on
what our senses tell us. And knowledge of abstract or non-empirical facts will
exclusively rely upon reasoning. In particular, intuition is often believed to be a sort
of direct access to knowledge of the a priori.

Once knowledge is obtained, it can be sustained and passed on to others. Memory

allows us to know something that we knew in the past, even, perhaps, if we no
longer remember the original justification. Knowledge can also be transmitted from
one individual to another via testimony; that is, my justification for a particular belief
could amount to the fact that some trusted source has told me that it is true.

b. Skepticism

In addition to the nature of knowledge, epistemologists concern themselves with the

question of the extent of human knowledge: how much do we, or can we, know?
Whatever turns out to be the correct account of the nature of knowledge, there
remains the matter of whether we actually have any knowledge. It has been
suggested that we do not, or cannot, know anything, or at least that we do not know
as much as we think we do. Such a view is called skepticism.

We can distinguish between a number of different varieties of skepticism. First, one

might be a skeptic only with regard to certain domains, such as mathematics,
morality, or the external world (this is the most well-known variety of skepticism).
Such a skeptic is a local skeptic, as contrasted with a global skeptic, who maintains
that we cannot know anything at all. Also, since knowledge requires that our beliefs
be both true and justified, a skeptic might maintain that none of our beliefs are true
or that none of them are justified (the latter is much more common than the
former).

While it is quite easy to challenge any claim to knowledge by glibly asking, "How do
you know?", this does not suffice to show that skepticism is an important position.
Like any philosophical stance, skepticism must be supported by an argument. Many
arguments have been offered in defense of skepticism, and many responses to those
arguments have been offered in return. Here, we shall consider two of the most
prominent arguments in support of skepticism about the external world.
c. Cartesian Skepticism

In the first of his Meditations, René Descartes offers an argument in support of

skepticism, which he then attempts to refute in the later Meditations. The argument
notes that some of our perceptions are inaccurate. Our senses can trick us; we
sometimes mistake a dream for a waking experience, and it is possible that an evil
demon is systematically deceiving us. (The modern version of the evil demon
scenario is that you are a brain-in-a-vat, because scientists have removed your brain
from your skull, connected it to a sophisticated computer, and immersed it in a vat
of preservative fluid. The computer produces what seem to be genuine sense
experiences, and also responds to your brain's output to make it seem that you are
able to move about in your environment as you did when your brain was still in your
body. While this scenario may seem far-fetched, we must admit that it is at least
possible.)

As a result, some of our beliefs will be false. In order to be justified in believing what
we do, we must have some way to distinguish between those beliefs which are true
(or, at least, are likely to be true) and those which are not. But just as there are no
signs that will allow us to distinguish between waking and dreaming, there are no
signs that will allow us to distinguish between beliefs that are accurate and beliefs
which are the result of the machinations of an evil demon. This indistinguishability
between trustworthy and untrustworthy belief, the argument goes, renders all of
our beliefs unjustified, and thus we cannot know anything. A satisfactory response to
this argument, then, must show either that we are indeed able to distinguish
between true and false beliefs, or that we need not be able to make such a
distinction.

d. Humean Skepticism

According to the indistinguishability skeptic, my senses can tell me how things

appear, but not how they actually are. We need to use reason to construct an
argument that leads us from beliefs about how things appear to (justified) beliefs
about how they are. But even if we are able to trust our perceptions, so that we
know that they are accurate, David Hume argues that the specter of skepticism
remains. Note that we only perceive a very small part of the universe at any given
moment, although we think that we have knowledge of the world beyond that which
we are currently perceiving. It follows, then, that the senses alone cannot account
for this knowledge, and that reason must supplement the senses in some way in
order to account for any such knowledge. However, Hume argues, reason is
incapable of providing justification for any belief about the external world beyond
the scope of our current sense perceptions. Let us consider two such possible
arguments and Hume's critique of them.

i. Numerical vs. Qualitative Identity

We typically believe that the external world is, for the most part, stable. For
instance, I believe that my car is parked where I left it this morning, even though I
am not currently looking at it. If I were to go peek out the window right now and see
my car, I might form the belief that my car has been in the same space all day. What
is the basis for this belief? If asked to make my reasoning explicit, I might proceed as
follows:

I have had two sense-experiences of my car: one this morning and one just now.
The two sense-experiences were (more or less) identical.
Therefore, it is likely that the objects that caused them are identical.
Therefore, a single object – my car – has been in that parking space all day.

Similar reasoning would undergird all of our beliefs about the persistence of the
external world and all of the objects we perceive. But are these beliefs justified?
Hume thinks not, since the above argument (and all arguments like it) contains an
equivocation. In particular, the first occurrence of "identical" refers to qualitative
identity. The two sense-experiences are not one and the same, but are distinct;
when we say that they are identical we mean that one is similar to the other in all of
its qualities or properties. But the second occurrence of "identical" refers to
numerical identity. When we say that the objects that caused the two sense-
experiences are identical, we mean that there is one object, rather than two, that is
responsible for both of them. This equivocation, Hume argues, renders the argument
fallacious; accordingly, we need another argument to support our belief that objects
persist even when we are not observing them.

ii. Hume's Skepticism about Induction

Suppose that a satisfactory argument could be found in support of our beliefs in the
persistence of physical objects. This would provide us with knowledge that the
objects that we have observed have persisted even when we were not observing
them. But in addition to believing that these objects have persisted up until now, we
believe that they will persist in the future; we also believe that objects we have
never observed similarly have persisted and will persist. In other words, we expect
the future to be roughly like the past, and the parts of the universe that we have not
observed to be roughly like the parts that we have observed. For example, I believe
that my car will persist into the future. What is the basis for this belief? If asked to
make my reasoning explicit, I might proceed as follows:

My car has always persisted in the past.

Nature is roughly uniform across time and space (and thus the future will be roughly
like the past).
Therefore, my car will persist in the future.

Similar reasoning would undergird all of our beliefs about the future and about the
unobserved. Are such beliefs justified? Again, Hume thinks not, since the above
argument, and all arguments like it, contain an unsupported premise, namely the
second premise, which might be called the Principle of the Uniformity of Nature
(PUN). Why should we believe this principle to be true? Hume insists that we provide
some reason in support of this belief. Because the above argument is an inductive
rather than a deductive argument, the problem of showing that it is a good
argument is typically referred to as the "problem of induction." We might think that
there is a simple and straightforward solution to the problem of induction, and that
we can indeed provide support for our belief that PUN is true. Such an argument
would proceed as follows:

PUN has always been true in the past.

Nature is roughly uniform across time and space (and thus the future will be roughly
like the past).
Therefore, PUN will be true in the future.

This argument, however, is circular; its second premise is PUN itself! Accordingly, we
need another argument to support our belief that PUN is true, and thus to justify our
inductive arguments about the future and the unobserved.

5. Conclusion

The study of knowledge is one of the most fundamental aspects of philosophical

inquiry. Any claim to knowledge must be evaluated to determine whether or not it
indeed constitutes knowledge. Such an evaluation essentially requires an
understanding of what knowledge is and how much knowledge is possible. While
this entry provides on overview of the important issues, it of course leaves the most
basic questions unanswered; epistemology will continue to be an area of
philosophical discussion as long as these questions remain.