epistemology

a posteriori:

Knowledge of propositions that can only be known to be true or false through sense experience.

a priori:

Knowledge of propositions that do not require (sense) experience to be known to be true or false.

ability knowledge:

Knowing ‘how’ to do something, e.g. ‘I know how to ride a bike’.

acquaintance knowledge:

Knowing ‘of’ someone or some place. For example, ‘I know the manager of the restaurant’, or ‘I know Oxford well’.

belief:

Affirmation of, or conviction regarding, the truth of a proposition. E.g. ‘I believe that the grass is green’.

definition:

An explanation of the meaning of a word. Philosophical definitions often attempt to give necessary and sufficient conditions for the application of the term being defined.

epistemology:

The study (-ology) of knowledge (episteme) and related concepts, including belief, justification and certainty. It looks at the possibility and sources of knowledge.

Gettier case:

A situation in which we have justified true belief, but not knowledge, because the belief is only accidentally true, given the evidence that justifies it.

infallibilism:

To be knowledge, a belief must be certain. If we can doubt a belief, then it is not certain, and so it is not knowledge.

proposition:

A declarative statement (or more accurately, what is claimed by a declarative statement), such as ‘mice are mammals’. Propositions can go after ‘that’ in ‘I believe that …’ and ‘I know that …’.

propositional knowledge:

Knowing ‘that’ some claim – a proposition – is true or false, e.g. ‘I know that Paris is the capital of France’.

tripartite view of knowledge:

Justified true belief is necessary and sufficient for propositional knowledge (S knows that p if and only if S is justified in believing that p, p is true, and S believes that p).

virtue epistemology:

S knows that p if and only if p is true, S believes that p, and S’s belief that p is the result of S exercising their epistemic/intellectual virtues; in Zagzebski’s definition, S knows that p if S believes that p and S’s belief arises from an act of intellectual virtue.