from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
- n. The branch of philosophy that studies the nature of knowledge, its presuppositions and foundations, and its extent and validity.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- n. The branch of philosophy dealing with the study of knowledge; theory of knowledge, asking such questions as "What is knowledge?", "How is knowledge acquired?", "What do people know?", "How do we know what we know?".
- n. A particular theory of knowledge.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
- n. The theory or science of the method or grounds of knowledge.
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The theory of cognition; that branch of logic which undertakes to explain how knowledge is possible. Probably first used by Ferrier.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- n. the philosophical theory of knowledge
What they recognized was that embedded in epistemology is a fundamental metaphysical component whose ultimate function is to provide a framework and strategies for creating well-being in society.
What seems to be happening in "The Paper" is that Sunstein and Vermeule are confusing the term epistemology with "belief system" which is a subject similar to "ideology" and is way beyond the scope of epistemology.
For this reason, it seems desirable to abandon the old distinction between formal and material, to designate as logic what was formerly called formal logic, and to reserve the term epistemology for that portion of philosophy which, while inquiring into the value of human knowledge in general, covers the ground which was the domain of material logic.
Only the revolution of Descartes in epistemology and the revolution of Nietzsche in ethics might be thought to rival that of Kant in being radical.
But for that reason I know there were various Dinosaurs and Things books before, one of which gave me my first lesson in epistemology (rather, my father did), which eventually was useful.
The central concept of stupidist epistemology is that of a situated knower, and hence of situated knowledge: knowledge that reflects the particular perspectives of the subject.
If you'd like to say that epistemology is unsolved, I will agree.
Let me just say that it's a * major* question in epistemology whether you have to have reasons for believing that certain things in exist.
Judge Posner and I do not think that pragmatist epistemology is up to the jobs that Misak and Westbrook think it can perform.
In practice, the weight of the entire theory threatens to undermine its political purpose. 31 Other notable “restrictionists,” such as Richard Rorty, show evidence of expansive moves under the philosophical pressure of recent work in epistemology (Rorty 2003; Wolterstorff 2003).