A report on Epistemology and Truth

Knowledge of facts, also referred to as propositional knowledge, is often defined as true belief that is distinct from opinion or guesswork by virtue of justification.

It is the primary subject of the field of epistemology, which studies what we know, how we come to know it, and what it means to know something.

Metaphysics is considered one of the four main branches of philosophy, along with epistemology, logic, and ethics.

Methodologically, the Eleatics were broadly rationalist, and took logical standards of clarity and necessity to be the criteria of truth.

Just as individual tables, chairs, and cars refer to objects in this world, 'tableness', 'chairness', and 'carness', as well as e. g. justice, truth, and beauty refer to objects in another world.

Plato also discusses several aspects of epistemology.

In philosophy, rationalism is the epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification".

Much of the debate in these fields are focused on analyzing the nature of knowledge and how it relates to connected notions such as truth, belief, and justification.

Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth.

This eventually became known as epistemological or "subject-centred" reason, because it is based on the knowing subject, who perceives the rest of the world and itself as a set of objects to be studied, and successfully mastered by applying the knowledge accumulated through such study.

On the other hand, particularly in discussions of objectivity that have feet in both metaphysics and epistemology, philosophical discussions of "reality" often concern the ways in which reality is, or is not, in some way dependent upon (or, to use fashionable jargon, "constructed" out of) mental and cultural factors such as perceptions, beliefs, and other mental states, as well as cultural artifacts, such as religions and political movements, on up to the vague notion of a common cultural world view, or Weltanschauung.

George Musser, "Virtual Reality: How close can physics bring us to a truly fundamental understanding of the world?", Scientific American, vol. 321, no. 3 (September 2019), pp. 30–35. "Physics is... the bedrock of the broader search for truth.... Yet [physicists] sometimes seem to be struck by a collective impostor syndrome.... Truth can be elusive even in the best-established theories. Quantum mechanics is as well tested a theory as can be, yet its interpretation remains inscrutable. [p. 30.] The deeper physicists dive into reality, the more reality seems to evaporate." [p. 34.]

A belief is an attitude that something is the case, or that some proposition about the universe is true.

In epistemology, philosophers use the term "belief" to refer to attitudes about the world which can be either true or false.

A fact is something that is true.

In philosophy, the concept fact is considered in the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge, called epistemology and ontology, which studies concepts such as existence, being, becoming, and reality.

He wrote widely on many topics, including epistemology, education, metaphysics, psychology, religion, and mysticism.

James defined true beliefs as those that prove useful to the believer.

In epistemology, criteria of truth (or tests of truth) are standards and rules used to judge the accuracy of statements and claims.

Understanding a philosophy's criteria of truth is fundamental to a clear evaluation of that philosophy.