Epistemology is a study of knowledge.

It is a study of nature and scope of knowledge and justified belief.

It comes from the Greek Word Episteme which means knowledge and Logos which
means study/science.
It analyses nature of knowledge and how it relates to truth, belief and justification.
It also deals with means of production of knowledge as well as Skepticism.
Epistemology centers on four areas:
1. Philosophical Analysis (Truth, Belief and Justification)
2. Various problems of Skepticism
3. Sources and scope of knowledge and justified belief
4. Criteria for knowledge and justification
Knowledge is an awareness and understanding of particular aspects of reality.
Kinds of Knowledge:
1. Procedural Knowledge sometimes called competence or know-how
2. Acquaintance Knowledge familiarity, a unique form of knowledge which has a direct
access to what is known.
3. Propositional Knowledge properly expressed using that. It is also called as
knowledge that as opposed to knowledge how. Knowledge that means knowing a
concept while Knowledge how means to understand an operation.

The Nature of Propositional Knowledge

a. Belief
Knowledge is a kind of belief.
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

b. Truth
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
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.
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.
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

To constitute knowledge, a belief must be true and justified and must be formed without relying
on any false beliefs.

ii. The No-Defeaters Condition

To constitute knowledge, a belief must be true and justified, and there must not be any defeaters
to the justification of that belief.

ii. The No-Defeaters Condition

To constitute knowledge, a belief must be both true and justified, and its truth and justification
must be connected somehow.

THE NATURE OF JUSTIFICATION

a.) INTERNALISM claims that all knowledge yielding conditions are within the
psychological states of those who gain knowledge.

i.) FOUNDATIONASLISM it holds that certain propositions are known

directly and does not need to justified by further propositions.
ii.) COHERENTISM a proposition is justified by fitting it into a whole system
of beliefs.

b.) EXTERNALISM holds that factors deemed external can be conditions of knowledge,
so that if the relevant factors justifying a proposition are external then they are acceptable.

THE EXTENT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE

1. SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE
 THIS INVOLVES PERCEPTION, REASON,INTROSPECTION,MEMORY AND
TESTIMONY.
PERCEPTION - WHICH CAN BE PERCEIVED THROUGH EXPERIENCES OF
THE SENSES.
REASON - IT CAN BE CONSIDERED AS A SOURCE OF KNOWLEDGE, ITS
EITHER BY DEDUCTING TRUTH FROM EXISTING KNOWLEDGE OR BY
LEARNING THINGS
INTROSPECTION - KNOWLEDGE OF ONE'S SELF THAT CAN BE FOUND
THROUGH INTERNAL SELF EVALUATION
MEMORY - IT IS THE STORAGE OF KNOWLEDGE THAT WAS LEARNED IN
THE PAST.
TESTIMONY - RELIES ON OTHER TO ACQUIRE KNOWLEDGE AND
COMMUNICATE IT TO US.
2. SKEPTICISM
KNOWLEDGE IN A PARTICULAR AREA IS UNCERTAIN.
NO BELIEFS ARE JUSTIFIED. THEREFORE NO ONE REALLY KNOWS
ANYTHING.
EXAMPLE: THE TEACHER WAS SKEPTICAL WHEN HER STUDENT
TOLD HER THE DOG ATE HIS HOMEWORK.

3. CARTESIAN SKEPTICISM
IT TALKS ABOUT OUR PERCEPTION ARE INACCURATE THAT OUR SENSES
CAN TRICK US.
IN THIS, YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEN TRUE OR FALSE
BELIEF.
IT IS MORE SPECIFICALLY ARE SKEPTICAL ARGUMENTS THAT INVOLVE
"SKEPTICAL SCENARIOS IN WHICH:
EVERYTHING APPEARS IT ACTUALLY DOES BUT
YOUR BELIEF ARE RADICALLY MISTAKEN.

4. 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.