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Introduction
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
essentially 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).
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What Is Knowledge?
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 Aristotle famously
(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.
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How Is Knowledge Acquired?
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 sensory experiences, in addition
to the use of reason (e.g. knowledge of the color 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.
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What Can People Know?
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 works and 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.
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Major Doctrines
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