150. Term: Epistemology

Definition: The branch of philosophy that studies knowledge, justification, evidence, and rational belief.

151. Term: Knowledge

Definition: Standardly analyzed as a success condition on belief (for example, belief that is true and appropriately justified or warranted), though analyses differ.

152. Term: Epistemic justification

Definition: The normative status of a belief being supported by reasons, evidence, or reliable methods.

153. Term: Skepticism

Definition: The position (or methodological stance) that doubts or denies that certain kinds of knowledge are possible.

154. Term: Radical skepticism

Definition: Skepticism taken to an extreme, for example doubting whether one can know anything about the external world at all.

155. Term: Solipsism

Definition: The view that only one’s own mind is certain to exist or is the only thing one can know exists.

156. Term: Skeptical scenario

Definition: A thought‑experiment hypothesis designed to undercut knowledge claims (for example, deception by a simulator or an evil demon).

157. Term: Brain in a vat

Definition: A skeptical scenario in which a brain is kept alive and fed experiences by a computer, raising doubts about external‑world knowledge.

158. Term: Simulation hypothesis

Definition: The idea that our experiences could be generated by a sufficiently advanced simulation, making ordinary external‑world inferences uncertain.

159. Term: Evil demon hypothesis

Definition: A Cartesian skeptical scenario: a powerful deceiver systematically produces misleading experiences and beliefs.

160. Term: Cogito (Cogito ergo sum)

Definition: Descartes’ argument that the act of thinking guarantees the thinker’s existence, at least as a thinking thing.

161. Term: Epistemic closure (closure principle)

Definition: A principle stating that knowledge (or justification) is closed under known entailment: if S knows p and knows p entails q, then S knows q.

162. Term: Epistemic access

Definition: The degree to which an agent can, in principle, obtain evidence for, understand, or justifiably believe a proposition.

163. Term: Testimony

Definition: A source of belief or knowledge that comes from what others report, assert, or communicate.

164. Term: Hermeneutics

Definition: The theory and methodology of interpretation, especially of texts, language, and meaning in context.

165. Term: Hermeneutic circle

Definition: The interpretive structure where understanding the parts of a text depends on the whole and understanding the whole depends on the parts.

166. Term: Principle of charity

Definition: An interpretive norm: when a speaker/text is ambiguous, prefer the most rational/coherent interpretation consistent with the evidence.

167. Term: Special pleading

Definition: A fallacy where an exception is made for a favored case without principled justification, often to avoid counterevidence.

168. Term: View from nowhere

Definition: A phrase (associated with Nagel) for an idealized, maximally objective standpoint abstracted from any particular perspective.

169. Term: God’s‑eye view

Definition: An imagined perfect perspective that sees reality as it is “in itself,” without human limitations or mediation.

170. Term: Intersubjectivity

Definition: The shared structure of experience, meaning, or agreement between multiple subjects.

171. Term: Intersubjective realism

Definition: A view that treats objectivity as grounded in stable, cross‑subjective constraints (what holds across many observers) rather than a literal “view from nowhere.”

172. Term: Doxastic voluntarism

Definition: The thesis that agents can choose beliefs directly (that belief is under voluntary control).

173. Term: Doxastic involuntarism

Definition: The thesis that belief is not directly under voluntary control; beliefs form in response to perceived evidence and cognition.

174. Term: Doxastic luck

Definition: A kind of epistemic luck where it is a matter of chance that one forms true beliefs (or avoids false ones), potentially undermining knowledge.