the.com/epistemology
The study of how you know anything, including whether you know anything at all.
means The branch of philosophy that investigates what knowledge is, how we acquire it, and how we justify believing what we believe.
from From Greek 'episteme' (knowledge, understanding) plus '-logia' (study of). 'Episteme' itself traces to the verb 'epistasthai,' roughly 'to know how,' built from 'epi-' (upon) and 'histasthai' (to stand) — so the root image is of knowledge as something you stand firmly upon. The English word 'epistemology' is a 19th-century coinage, credited to a Scottish philosopher who needed a name for this branch of inquiry as it split off from philosophy more broadly.
- core question
- what separates belief from actual knowledge
- famous answer
- justified true belief, until Gettier broke it in 1963
- dirty secret
- certainty is rarer than most textbooks admit
- practical use
- spotting why confident people are often wrong