# Epistemology

> How we know what we claim to know, what justifies a belief, and when new evidence should change it.

- HTML version: https://robbiepalmer.me/ideas/epistemology
- Source: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/

[Epistemology](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/) is the study of
knowledge and justified belief. It asks what knowing consists of, how we acquire
knowledge, and what grounds we have for accepting a claim. These questions apply
to everyday experience as well as scientific inquiry.

## Belief, truth, and justification

Believing something does not make it true. A belief can happen to be true even
when the reasons for holding it are poor. Equally, apparently strong evidence
can lead us to a mistaken conclusion. Epistemology examines the relationships
between belief, truth, and justification, including what distinguishes knowledge
from a lucky guess.

Perception, memory, reasoning, and testimony are sources of knowledge whose
reliability and limits need examination. An observation and an explanation of
that observation are different claims. Agreement among several accounts may
provide little additional support if they all repeat the same original source.

## Knowledge without certainty

[Fallibilism](https://iep.utm.edu/fallibil/) allows that we can know something
without possessing a guarantee that we are correct. Our beliefs remain open to
correction. This does not make all explanations equally credible; the quality
of their evidence still differs.

I find this useful because it leaves room for conviction and revision together.
We can have good reasons to believe something while remaining willing to change
our minds. Doubt need not mean abandoning judgment, and confidence need not mean
refusing to consider contrary evidence.

## Revising what we believe

A useful habit is to distinguish what was observed, what was inferred, and what
was assumed. Ask how the evidence was obtained, whether sources are independent,
and what would count against the explanation. New evidence may overturn a
claim, narrow the circumstances in which it holds, or strengthen it.

For example, finding the same claim in several books might initially increase
confidence in it. Discovering that all of them cite one unreliable account
changes the weight of that evidence without changing the number of books.

Knowledge discovery includes finding better questions and recognising where an
explanation stops working. An unanswered question can be more honest and more
useful than a confident answer whose justification we cannot explain.

## Related ideas

- [Adaptive Planning](https://robbiepalmer.me/ideas/adaptive-planning.md): Hold the goal steady, treat the plan as a hypothesis, and revise the route as work produces evidence.
- [Ontology Engineering](https://robbiepalmer.me/ideas/ontology-engineering.md): The practice of defining the concepts, relationships, constraints, and shared vocabulary needed to represent a domain.

## Where it appears

- Project: [Work Graph](https://robbiepalmer.me/projects/work-graph.md)

---

Markdown index of this site: https://robbiepalmer.me/llms.txt