Concepts: Epistemology

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Epistemology is a subdivision of philosophy that explores the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge.

It examines various types of knowledge, including propositional knowledge about facts, practical skills, and experiential familiarity.

Epistemologists investigate concepts like belief, truth, and justification to understand knowledge's nature and sources. The field studies how knowledge arises through perception, introspection, memory, reason, and testimony.

As a normative discipline, epistemology explores how people should acquire beliefs, evaluating which ones meet knowledge standards. It differs from descriptive fields like psychology and cognitive sociology, which study existing beliefs and acquisition processes.

Epistemology's relevance extends to many disciplines by exploring principles for attaining knowledge. Knowledge itself is understood as a cognitive success that establishes contact with reality, typically viewed as an individual's mental state but also applicable to social groups and stored information.