Epistemology

Epistemology asks what knowledge is, what makes a belief justified, and how far either one extends. The beginner tier separates knowledge from belief and opinion, surveys the standard sources, states the justified true belief analysis, and sets out the regress that every theory of justification is answering. The intermediate tier covers Gettier and the repairs, the structural theories, the modal conditions, and the move from belief to credence. The advanced tier is the specialist end: accuracy-first arguments for probabilism, the new evil demon problem, Fitch's paradox, self-locating belief, and the norms that govern inquiry rather than belief.

Beginner

No prior exposure assumed. Every term is defined where it first appears.

Knowledge, Belief, and Opinion
Three things people run together, and what separates them
7 min
What Justification Is
What turns a true belief into something better than a lucky guess
8 min
Needs firstKnowledge, Belief, and Opinion
Sources: Perception, Memory, Testimony, Reason
Where beliefs actually come from, and the way each source can fail
9 min
Needs firstWhat Justification Is
Skepticism, First Encounter
Dreams, deceiving demons, and why ordinary beliefs are hard to defend
8 min
Needs firstSources: Perception, Memory, Testimony, Reason
The JTB Analysis
Knowledge as justified true belief, stated as three separate conditions
10 min
Needs firstSkepticism, First Encounter
The Regress Problem
Agrippa's trilemma, and why the structural theories of justification are all answers to it
11 min
Needs firstThe JTB Analysis

Intermediate

Undergraduate level. Formal machinery, standard results, and the objections that stuck.

Gettier Cases and Post-Gettier Repairs
Justified true belief that falls short, and the patches that were tried
14 min
Needs firstThe Regress Problem
Foundationalism, Coherentism, Infinitism
Three structures for justified belief: bedrock, web, or endless chain, each taking one horn of the trilemma
16 min
Needs firstGettier Cases and Post-Gettier Repairs
Internalism versus Externalism
Whether what justifies you has to be something you can reflect on
14 min
Needs firstFoundationalism, Coherentism, Infinitism
Reliabilism and Virtue Epistemology
Justification from truth-conducive processes, or from good intellectual character
16 min
Needs firstInternalism versus Externalism
Safety and Sensitivity Conditions
Two modal conditions on knowledge, and the cases that pull them apart
17 min
Needs firstReliabilism and Virtue Epistemology
Epistemic Closure and Its Denial
Whether knowledge survives known entailment, and the price of saying no
16 min
Needs firstSafety and Sensitivity Conditions
A Priori and A Posteriori
Knowledge whose justification does not rest on experience, and whether any exists
15 min
Needs firstEpistemic Closure and Its Denial
The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction and Quine's Attack
Truth by meaning alone, and Quine's argument that the notion runs in a circle
16 min
Needs firstA Priori and A Posteriori
The Problem of Induction
Hume's argument that past regularities give no reason to expect future ones
15 min
Needs firstThe Analytic/Synthetic Distinction and Quine's Attack
Bayesian Confidence and Credence, Introduced
Belief as a matter of degree, and updating those degrees on new evidence
18 min
Needs firstThe Problem of Induction
Testimony and Disagreement
When to trust what others tell you, and what to do when an equal disagrees
16 min
Needs firstBayesian Confidence and Credence, Introduced
Epistemic Injustice
The wrongs done to someone specifically as a giver or a subject of knowledge
17 min
Needs firstTestimony and Disagreement

Advanced

Graduate level. Metatheory, technical variants, and disputes that are still open.

Contextualism, Invariantism, and Pragmatic Encroachment
Whether 'knows' shifts with the speaker's context, with the subject's stakes, or not at all
24 min
Knowledge-First Epistemology and Anti-Luminosity
Treating knowledge as primitive, defining evidence from it, and the margin-for-error argument that no condition is luminous
26 min
Needs firstContextualism, Invariantism, and Pragmatic Encroachment
Epistemological Disjunctivism and the New Evil Demon
A reason that is both reflectively accessible and factive, offered against the demand to choose between internalism and externalism
25 min
Needs firstKnowledge-First Epistemology and Anti-Luminosity
Epistemic Value and the Swamping Problem
Why knowledge is worth more than mere true belief, and why reliability alone cannot say so
21 min
Needs firstEpistemological Disjunctivism and the New Evil Demon
Formal Epistemology: Probabilism and Updating
Probability axioms as coherence constraints, and the rules for revising credences
28 min
Needs firstEpistemic Value and the Swamping Problem
Accuracy-First Epistemology
Deriving the probability axioms from accuracy alone, with no bets and no bookie in sight
27 min
Needs firstFormal Epistemology: Probabilism and Updating
Confirmation Theory, Ravens, and Grue
Why a white shoe appears to confirm that all ravens are black, and what grue breaks
24 min
Needs firstAccuracy-First Epistemology
Lottery, Preface, and the Threshold View of Belief
If believing is having a high enough credence, rational belief is not closed under conjunction. Something has to give
22 min
Needs firstConfirmation Theory, Ravens, and Grue
Self-Locating Belief and Sleeping BeautyPlanned
What conditionalization says when the new information is about which person, or which time, you are
25 min
Higher-Order Evidence and Peer DisagreementPlanned
Evidence about the reliability of your own reasoning, and whether the levels can come apart
24 min
Fitch's Paradox and the Knowability PrinciplePlanned
A short proof that if every truth can be known, then every truth already is known
23 min
The Epistemology of ModalityPlanned
How anyone comes to know what is possible or necessary, with no experience of it
22 min
Transformative ExperiencePlanned
Choices whose outcomes you cannot assess until after you have made them, and what that does to expected utility
19 min
Zetetic Epistemology and the Norms of InquiryPlanned
Norms governing what to look into rather than what to believe, and the tension between the two
21 min