Epistemology - Subtopics

1. Accessibilism : The position that whether someone's belief is justified supervenes only on facts to which that person has some sort of access.
2. Epistemic injustice: Principle that when one is not believed for prejudicial reasons one is wronged epistemically. Primarily advanced by British philosopher Miranda Fricker.
3. Internalism and externalism: Names of two contrasting theories in several areas of philosophy, Internalism has a variety of different meanings within philosophy, and for each of these meanings there is a corresponding externalist position which is just the denial of the internalist one.
4. Knowledge: On one common account by philosophers, justified, true belief; often used in a looser way by everyone else to mean any truth or belief, and also a whole body of truth or a whole system of belief.
5. Mentalism : The position that whether someone's belief is justified supervenes only on their mental states.
6. Philosophical skepticism: Rejection of the possibility of knowledge.
7. Rating raw intelligence: The process, before intelligence analysis, in which intelligence collection managers rate individual items of "raw" collected data for plausibility and reliability
8. Reliabilism : The theory that a belief is justified, or a true belief is known, if it is the product of a reliable process.

Basic Questions

1.  What is knowledge? That is, what counts as knowledge as opposed to belief or opinion?

a)      beliefs which are true for which we can give justification

1. 2.   Can we have knowledge? Are human beings capable of knowing anything?

a)      Skepticism - "No!"

b)      Dogmatism - "Yes!"

1. 3.   How do we get knowledge? What is the process by which knowledge is obtained?

a)      Rationalism - through reason alone

b)      Empiricism - through the senses alone

1. 4.      What can we know?

a)      What ever we want to know.

1. 5.      How can we know it?

a)      Through reason

1. 6.      Why do we know some things, but not others?

a)      Because our reason or our senses, don’t perceive it

1. 7.      Is knowledge possible?

a)      Skepticism - "No!"

b)      Dogmatism - "Yes!"

1. 8.      Can knowledge be certain?

a)      Yes. It is acquired through experience.

1. 9.      How can we differentiate truth from falsehood?

a)      The truth will always provide us those beliefs that have real justification of facts.

1. 10.  Why do we believe certain claims and not others?

a)      Because we have the proof and knowledge of certain claims and according to our knowledge we can deduct which claims are truth or not.