Terminology Tuesday: Epistemology

The branch of philosophy concerned with questions about knowledge and belief and related issues such as justification and truth. Some conceive of epistemology as an attempt to refute skepticism, the denial that knowledge is possible. One of the major debates in epistemology is that of internalism versus externalism: Must the basis or ground that warrants a belief be internally accessible to consciousness? Another major debate is foundationalism versus coherentism: Are some beliefs “properly basic”, or are all beliefs based on other beliefs in an interconnected web? Some philosophers of religion have argued that critiques of religious belief as unreasonable are grounded in faulty epistemologies, theories of knowledge that if applied to fields other than religion would make knowledge impossible in those other fields as well. 

Evans, C. Stephen, Pocket Dictionary of Apologetics & Philosophy of Religion (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002).