Epistemology

Epistemology, from the Greek epistēmē, “knowledge”, is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature, sources and limits of knowledge. It asks what knowledge is, how it differs from true belief, what justifies a belief, and whether, and how, we can know anything at all.

Plato defined knowledge as true belief with an account; Edmund Gettier’s short paper of 1963 showed that justified true belief may fall short of knowledge, and launched a large debate. Indian philosophy developed a theory of the valid means of knowledge (pramāṇa), such as perception, inference and testimony, and the schools disputed which are reliable and how many there are; for the Vedānta, scripture is a means of knowing what perception and inference cannot reach.

For the contemplative traditions, epistemology has a further question: whether there is a direct, non-conceptual knowing of the ultimate, as mystics claim, and how such claims could be tested or communicated.