Nigel Warburton writes in Thinking from A to Z that "[c]ircular arguments are not invalid; in other words, from a logical point of view there is nothing intrinsically wrong with them. The question of justification arises only at the second level, when one considers the knowledge-hood of the acquired belief. Russell, G.: Truth in Virtue of Meaning: A Defence of the Analytic/Synthetic Distinction. One less common response to the Gettier problem is defended by Richard Kirkham, who has argued that the only definition of knowledge that could ever be immune to all counterexamples is the infallibilist definition. From this Smith infers: "The man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket." The conclusion often drawn from evil demon skepticism is that even if we are not completely deceived, all of the information provided by our senses is still compatible with skeptical scenarios in which we are completely deceived, and that we must therefore either be able to exclude the possibility of deception or else must deny the possibility of infallible knowledge (that is, knowledge which is completely certain) beyond our immediate sensory impressions. That is, to be illuminating, arguments must operate with information from multiple premises, not simply conclude by reiterating a premise. Add to cart. [27] The extent to which this is true is highly contentious, since Plato himself disavowed the "justified true belief" view at the end of the Theaetetus. a person actively thinking "snow is white"), or they can be dispositional (e.g. They include empiricism, l ogical positivism, and apriorism. Questions you may have include: What is epistemology about? Central is a focus on occurrent knowledge coupled with atheory of “mental dispositions” calledsaṃskāra. "Only small parts of the brain resemble a tabula rasa; this is true even for human beings. How can knowledge be made more reliable? It is essentially about issues having to do with the creation and dissemination of knowledge in particular areas of inquiry. In 2011, she was Most notable among the Medievals for their contributions to epistemology were Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham.[1]. What are the criteria of truth that allow us to identify it and to distinguish it from falsity? Robert Nozick has offered a definition of knowledge according to which S knows that P if and only if: Nozick argues that the third of these conditions serves to address cases of the sort described by Gettier. The word "epistemology" first appeared in 1847, in a review in New York's Eclectic Magazine. [1]Much of the debate in this field has focused on analyzing the nature of knowledge and how it relates to similar notions such as truth, belief, and justification. "Contextualism, Skepticism, and Reasons", in Tomberlin 1999. 1632-1704. [32] In just two and a half pages, Gettier argued that there are situations in which one's belief may be justified and true, yet fail to count as knowledge. Even if some "evil genius" were deceiving him, he would have to exist to be deceived. [1] A number of important epistemological concerns also appeared in the works of Aristotle. "I know" might mean something different in everyday contexts and skeptical contexts). When the patient wakes up, the surgeon hears him groaning and contorting his face in certain ways. Ajñana was a Śramaṇa movement and a major rival of early Buddhism, Jainism and the Ājīvika school. Raskin & S.K. It analyzes the nature of knowledge and how it relates to similar notions such as truth, belief and justification. [30], The dictum "Cogito ergo sum" (I think, therefore I am) is also commonly associated with Descartes' theory. The truth of this view would entail that in order to know that a given proposition is true, one must not only believe the relevant true proposition, but must also have a good reason for doing so. For the alternative name for cognitive science, see, Branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge, Causal theory and naturalized epistemology, John Bengson (Editor), Marc A. Moffett (Editor): Essays on Knowledge, Mind, and Action. Gilbert Ryle is similarly credited with bringing more attention to the distinction between knowing how and knowing that in The Concept of Mind. D. Long, Jeffery; Jainism: An Introduction 125. There are a few main theories of knowledge acquisition: The fact that any given justification of knowledge will itself depend on another belief for its justification appears to lead to an infinite regress. Quine. Epistemology has many branches that include essentialism, historical perspective, perennialsm, progressivism, empiricism, idealism, rationalism, constructivism etc. Learn more about our activities in this area. [28], Reliabilism has been a significant line of response to the Gettier problem among philosophers, originating with work by Alvin Goldman in the 1960s. Which then leaves open the question how do we know that all born from humans are human? [36] To qualify as an item of knowledge, goes the theory, a belief must not only be true and justified, the justification of the belief must necessitate its truth. some Gettier-like cases, I am wrong in my inference about the knowledge-hood of the given occurrent belief (for the evidence may be pseudo-evidence), then I am mistaken about the truth of my belief—and this is in accordance with Nyaya fallibilism: not all knowledge-claims can be sustained."[39]. Notable debates include: "What is the rational way to revise one's beliefs when presented with various sorts of evidence? [51] To the contrary, they argue that a reliable process for acquiring a true belief adds value to the mere true belief by making it more likely that future beliefs of a similar kind will be true. In modern philosophy, René Descartes' famous inquiry into mind and body began as an exercise in skepticism, in which he started by trying to doubt all purported cases of knowledge in order to search for something that was known with absolute certainty. In J.D. But at the very next moment, when the hearer is about to embark upon the venture of knowing whether he knows p, doubts may arise. David Hume. The value problem is important to assessing the adequacy of theories of knowledge that conceive of knowledge as consisting of true belief and other components. The New York University Department of Philosophy is ranked 1st in the US and 1st in the English-speaking world in the 2017-18 ranking of philosophy departments by The Philosophical Gourmet Report (as well as in the 2014, 2011, 2009, and 2006 rankings). Epistemology is the study of the nature and scope of knowledge and justified belief. Nonetheless, it seems evident that I do not know that the time is 11:56. How is knowledge attained? Foundherentism is meant to unify foundationalism and coherentism. Most forms of empiricism give epistemologically privileged status to sensory impressions or sense data, although this plays out very differently in different cases. Epistemology asks questions like: "What is knowledge? The initial development of epistemic externalism is often attributed to Alvin Goldman, although numerous other philosophers have worked on the topic in the time since.[28]. Skeptics argue that belief in something does not justify whether or not it is necessarily true. ]: Vanderbilt Univ. Epistemology in Greek literally means 'the theory of knowledge', although it has become to be defined in modern times as 'the study of knowledge.… Thus, according to Williamson, justification, truth, and belief are necessary but not sufficient for knowledge. William James suggests that through a pragmatist epistemology, theories "become instruments, not answers to enigmas in which we can rest."[73]. Edmund Gettier is best known for his 1963 paper entitled "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? Ancient Greek skepticism began during the Hellenistic period in philosophy, which featured both Pyrrhonism (notably defended by Pyrrho and Sextus Empiricus) and Academic skepticism (notably defended by Arcesilaus and Carneades). An intermediate position, known as "foundherentism", is advanced by Susan Haack. Since the belief "There is a dog in the park" does not involve a faulty inference, but is instead formed as the result of misleading perceptual information, there is no inference made from a false premise. Instead, epistemologists ought to focus on other mental states, such as understanding. Matilal "Perception. This article is one of several chapters produced for the book Teaching High School Physics, and … [note 4] Peirce formulates the maxim: 'Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Do we really know what we think we know? The epistemological positions of specific rationalists including Rene Descartes and Gottfried Leibniz and empiricists including John Locke and David Hume. Schommer, (1990, 1994a, 1994b) has argued that a counter position is that epistemological beliefs should be conceived as a multidimensional system of more or less independent beliefs. [79], Constructivism is a view in philosophy according to which all "knowledge is a compilation of human-made constructions",[80] "not the neutral discovery of an objective truth". Option B: All crows are black. Synthetic propositions, on the other hand, have distinct subjects and predicates. [82] Constructivism proposes new definitions for knowledge and truth, which emphasize intersubjectivity rather than objectivity, and viability rather than truth. [47] The value problem re-emerged in the philosophical literature on epistemology in the twenty-first century following the rise of virtue epistemology in the 1980s, partly because of the obvious link to the concept of value in ethics.[48]. Socrates responds that knowledge is more valuable than mere true belief because it is tethered or justified. ", "What makes justified beliefs justified? A formulation of the value problem in epistemology first occurs in Plato's Meno. Most notably, this reply was defended by David Malet Armstrong in his 1973 book, Belief, Truth, and Knowledge. "Jones will get the job"). Other common suggestions for things that can bear the property of being true include propositions, sentences, thoughts, utterances, and judgments. Rationalists claim that the mind, through the use of reason, can directly grasp certain truths in various domains, including logic, mathematics, ethics, and metaphysics. how reasoning and experience characterize main schools of epistemology Rationalism, empiricism, and intuitionism. They were specialized in refutation without propagating any positive doctrine of their own. Generally speaking, skeptics argue that knowledge requires certainty, and that most or all of our beliefs are fallible (meaning that our grounds for holding them always, or almost always, fall short of certainty), which would together entail that knowledge is always or almost always impossible for us. Gettier proposed two thought experiments, which have become known as Gettier cases, as counterexamples to the classical account of knowledge. [12] According to Brett Warren, the character Epistemon in King James VI of Scotland's Daemonologie (1591) "was meant to be a personification of [what would later come to be] known as 'epistemology': the investigation into the differences of a justified belief versus its opinion. While some contemporary philosophers take themselves to have offered more sustainable accounts of the distinction that are not vulnerable to Quine's objections, there is no consensus about whether or not these succeed.[57]. [21] For instance, to believe that snow is white is comparable to accepting the truth of the proposition "snow is white". Certain forms exempt disciplines such as mathematics and logic from these requirements. The issue here is not who was right, but that we all have Intuition is often believed to be a sort of direct access to knowledge of the a priori. One of the oldest forms of epistemic skepticism can be found in Agrippa's trilemma (named after the Pyrrhonist philosopher Agrippa the Skeptic) which demonstrates that certainty can not be achieved with regard to beliefs. (3) Going back to the crow example, by Laurence BonJour's definition the reason you would believe in option A is because you have an immediate knowledge that a crow is a bird, without ever experiencing one. Many idealists believe that knowledge is primarily (at least in some areas) acquired by a priori processes, or that it is innate—for example, in the form of concepts not derived from experience. According to the challenge, Henry does not know that he has seen a barn, despite his belief being true, and despite his belief having been formed on the basis of a reliable process (i.e. ", "What does it mean to say that we know something? Jayatilleke, K.N. The British philosopher Simon Blackburn has criticized this formulation by suggesting that we do not want to accept as knowledge beliefs which, while they "track the truth" (as Nozick's account requires), are not held for appropriate reasons. [17] Epistemology is primarily concerned with the first of these forms of knowledge, propositional knowledge. ", "Is justification internal or external to one's own mind?". Formal epistemology uses formal tools and methods from decision theory, logic, probability theory and computability theory to model and reason about issues of epistemological interest. Steup, Matthias. Laurence BonJour says in his article "The Structure of Empirical Knowledge",[54] that a "rational insight is an immediate, non-inferential grasp, apprehension or 'seeing' that some proposition is necessarily true." It focuses on sources of people’s consciousness, cognitive ability, cognitive form, cognitive nature, the structure of cognition, the relationship between objective truth … Feminist epistemology has also played a significant role in the development of many debates in social epistemology. This reply to the Gettier problem is simple, direct, and appears to isolate what goes wrong in forming the relevant beliefs in Gettier cases. They point out that Zagzebski's conclusion rests on the assumption of veritism: all that matters is the acquisition of true belief. Each school of Indian philosophy had their own theories about which pramanas were valid means to knowledge and which were unreliable (and why). Foreword by Seyyed Hossein Nasr and a new Author’s Preface. Importantly however, a belief being justified does not guarantee that the belief is true, since a person could be justified in forming beliefs based on very convincing evidence that was nonetheless deceiving. As a result, we would never be able to know anything about the world, since we would be systematically deceived about everything. Epistemology - Epistemology - The other-minds problem: Suppose a surgeon tells a patient who is about to undergo a knee operation that when he wakes up he will feel a sharp pain. Externalists hold that factors deemed "external", meaning outside of the psychological states of those who gain knowledge, can be conditions of justification. Views that emphasize the importance of a posteriori knowledge are generally classified as empiricist. London: Curzon, 136–154. Rationalism is one of the two classical views in epistemology, the other being empiricism. Beliefs can be occurrent (e.g. [47], There are many proposed sources of knowledge and justified belief which we take to be actual sources of knowledge in our everyday lives. After all, if I had walked past the clock a bit earlier or a bit later, I would have ended up with a false belief rather than a true one. On such views, something being known implies that it is true. It suggests a more empirical approach to the subject as a whole, leaving behind philosophical definitions and consistency arguments, and instead using psychological methods to study and understand how "knowledge" is actually formed and is used in the natural world. There are a number of different methods that scholars use when trying to understand the relationship between historical epistemology and contemporary epistemology. [3][6], As mentioned above, epistemologists draw a distinction between what can be known a priori (independently of experience) and what can only be known a posteriori (through experience). Views of both the Nozick variety and the Dretske variety have faced serious problems suggested by Saul Kripke. Epistemology (/ɪˌpɪstɪˈmɒlədʒi/ (listen); from Greek ἐπιστήμη, epistēmē 'knowledge', and -logy) is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. The only way to find anything that could be described as "indubitably true", he advocates, would be to see things "clearly and distinctly". The value problem has been presented as an argument against epistemic reliabilism by Linda Zagzebski, Wayne Riggs, and Richard Swinburne, among others. ; Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge, p. 356. [28] One of the cases involves two men, Smith and Jones, who are awaiting the results of their applications for the same job. [clarification needed] Option A: All crows are birds. Epistemology, the philosophical study of the nature, origin, and limits of human knowledge.The term is derived from the Greek epistēmē (“knowledge”) and logos (“reason”), and accordingly the field is sometimes referred to as the theory of knowledge. Epistemic evaluation ofmemory, and indeed of all standing belief, is seen to depend upon theepistemic status of the occurrent cognition or awareness or awarenessesthat formed the memory, i.e., the mental disposition, in the firstplace. After the ancient philosophical era but before the modern philosophical era, a number of Medieval philosophers also engaged with epistemological questions at length. As an epistemological doctrine, idealism shares a great deal with both empiricism and rationalism. 1999. The Graduate Center, The City University of New York Established in 1961, the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY) is devoted primarily to doctoral studies and awards most of CUNY's doctoral degrees. In his own methodological doubt—doubting everything he previously knew so he could start from a blank slate—the first thing that he could not logically bring himself to doubt was his own existence: "I do not exist" would be a contradiction in terms. He says that "we do not want to award the title of knowing something to someone who is only meeting the conditions through a defect, flaw, or failure, compared with someone else who is not meeting the conditions. "The person who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket") from a false belief (e.g. "Knowledge and Skepticism", This page was last edited on 29 November 2020, at 03:20. '[11], The concept of "epistemology" as a distinct field of inquiry predates the introduction of the term into the lexicon of philosophy. The constructivist point of view is in many ways comparable to certain forms of pragmatism.[83]. Skepticism is a position that questions the possibility of human knowledge, either in particular domains or on a general level. In certain respects an intellectual descendant of pragmatism, naturalized epistemology considers the evolutionary role of knowledge for agents living and evolving in the world. A belief is an attitude that a person holds regarding anything that they take to be true. Epistemology is considered one of the four main branches of philosophy, along with ethics, logic, and metaphysics. [28] However, even if justification fails as a condition for knowledge as some philosophers claim, the question of whether or not a person has good reasons for holding a particular belief in a particular set of circumstances remains a topic of interest to contemporary epistemology, and is unavoidably linked to questions about rationality. Pragmatism and other essays. This position is motivated in part by the desire to avoid what is seen as the arbitrariness and circularity of its chief competitors, foundationalism and coherentism. However, the general consensus is that it fails. It began to emerge as a distinct subfield in the 20th century. [78], Epistemic relativism is the view that what is true, rational, or justified for one person need not be true, rational, or justified for another person. The traditional approach is that knowledge requires three necessary and sufficient conditions, so that knowledge can then be defined as "justified true belief": The most contentious part of all this is the definition of justification, and there are several schools of thought on the subject: Another debate focuses on whether justification is external or internal: As recently as 1963, the American philosopher Edmund Gettier called this traditional theory of knowledge into question by claiming that there are certain circumstances in which one does not have knowledge, even when all of the above conditions are met (his Gettier-cases). Is it even possible to give an informative definition of truth? Pyrrhonists do not dogmatically deny the possibility of knowledge, but instead point out that beliefs about non-evident matters cannot be substantiated. PHIL101_Week4_1_Empiricism. To avoid the charge of circularity, coherentists hold that an individual belief is justified circularly by the way it fits together (coheres) with the rest of the belief system of which it is a part. The kind of knowledge usually discussed in Epistemology is propositional knowledge, "knowledge-that" as opposed to "knowledge-how" (for example, the knowledge that "2 + 2 = 4", as opposed to the knowledge of how to go about adding two numbers). In other words, this theory states that a true belief counts as knowledge only if it is produced by a reliable belief-forming process. Nashville [u.a. [note 1] The theoretical interpretation and significance of these linguistic issues remains controversial. First and foremost, "idealism" is a metaphysical doctrine. The first school of thought, structuralism, was advocated by the founder of the first psychology lab, Wilhelm Wundt. [65] Pyrrhonism dates back to Pyrrho of Elis from the 4th century BCE, although most of what we know about Pyrrhonism today is from the surviving works of Sextus Empiricus. [38] While it is indeed possible to bite the bullet and accept this conclusion, most philosophers find it implausible to suggest that we know nothing or almost nothing, and therefore reject the infallibilist response as collapsing into radical skepticism.[37]. 2005. [21] There are various different ways that contemporary philosophers have tried to describe beliefs, including as representations of ways that the world could be (Jerry Fodor), as dispositions to act as if certain things are true (Roderick Chisholm), as interpretive schemes for making sense of someone's actions (Daniel Dennett and Donald Davidson), or as mental states that fill a particular function (Hilary Putnam). Idealism is a broad term referring to both an ontological view about the world being in some sense mind-dependent and a corresponding epistemological view that everything we know can be reduced to mental phenomena. For example, an externalist response to the Gettier problem is to say that for a justified true belief to count as knowledge, there must be a link or dependency between the belief and the state of the external world. In his paper On Denoting and his later book Problems of Philosophy, Bertrand Russell brought a great deal of attention to the distinction between "knowledge by description" and "knowledge by acquaintance". his vision), since he only acquired his reliably formed true belief by accident. Meno then wonders why knowledge is valued more than true belief and why knowledge and true belief are different. [84] The relevant theoretical concepts may purportedly be part of the structure of the human mind (as in Kant's theory of transcendental idealism), or they may be said to exist independently of the mind (as in Plato's theory of Forms). Consequently, if a belief must be infallibly justified in order to constitute knowledge, then it must be the case that we are mistaken in most (if not all) instances in which we claim to have knowledge in everyday situations. In other words, the justification for the belief must be infallible. For an example, see Weber, Eric Thomas. Add to Wishlist [clarification needed] This is in contrast to any correspondence theory of truth that holds that what is true is what corresponds to an external reality. "[13], While it was not until the modern era that epistemology was first recognized as a distinct philosophical discipline which addresses a well-defined set of questions, almost every major historical philosopher has considered questions about what we know and how we know it. This means that one of two things can be the case. Plato, in his Gorgias, argues that belief is the most commonly invoked truth-bearer. We generally assume that knowledge is more valuable than mere true belief. All three senses of "knowing" can be seen in our ordinary use of the word. New York: Oxford University Press. However, this does not mean that man's ability to know is perfect. "Theory of knowledge" redirects here. [45] Kornblith, in turn, takes himself to be elaborating on the naturalized epistemology framework first suggested by W.V.O. 2005. Philosophers tend to draw an important distinction between three different senses of "knowing" something: "knowing that" (knowing the truth of propositions), "knowing how" (understanding how to perform certain actions), and "knowing by acquaintance" (directly perceiving an object, being familiar with it, or otherwise coming into contact with it). We have a logical rule that says All humans are mortal and an assertion that Socrates is human and we deduce that Socrates is mortal. [52], One of the more influential responses to the problem is that knowledge is not particularly valuable and is not what ought to be the main focus of epistemology. Should a theory of knowledge fail to do so, it would prove inadequate. Perception, memory, and a priori intuition are often considered possible examples of basic beliefs. [23] Some contemporary debates regarding truth include: How do we define truth? In Personal Knowledge, Michael Polanyi argues for the epistemological relevance of knowledge how and knowledge that; using the example of the act of balance involved in riding a bicycle, he suggests that the theoretical knowledge of the physics involved in maintaining a state of balance cannot substitute for the practical knowledge of how to ride, and that it is important to understand how both are established and grounded. Epistemic skepticism questions whether knowledge is possible at all. [91] Likewise, the Buddhist philosopher Dharmakirti has been interpreted both as holding a form of pragmatism or correspondence theory for his view that what is true is what has effective power (arthakriya). Occurrent knowledg… [24][clarification needed], Many of the debates regarding truth are at the crossroads of epistemology and logic. Knowledge is the awareness and understanding of particular aspects of reality. [96][97] According to Jain epistemology, none of the pramanas gives absolute or perfect knowledge since they are each limited points of view. [28] This is because while the original formulation by Gettier includes a person who infers a true belief from a false belief, there are many alternate formulations in which this is not the case. It analyzes the nature of knowledge and how it relates to similar notions such as truth, belief and justification. Yet, since a system can be coherent while also being wrong, coherentists face the difficulty of ensuring that the whole system corresponds to reality. Propositional knowledge can be of two types, depending on its source: Knowledge of empirical facts about the physical world will necessarily involve perception, in other words, the use of the senses. And is truth absolute, or is it merely relative to one's perspective?[23]. Loosely speaking, justification is the reason that someone holds a rationally admissible belief, on the assumption that it is a good reason for holding it. Epistemology largely came to the fore in philosophy during the early modern period, which historians of philosophy traditionally divide up into a dispute between empiricists (including John Locke, David Hume, and George Berkeley) and rationalists (including René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, and Gottfried Leibniz). [64] Skepticism does not refer to any one specific school of philosophy, but is rather a thread that runs through many epistemological debates. While the Nyaya school (beginning with the Nyāya Sūtras of Gotama, between 6th-century BCE and 2nd-century CE[88][89]) were a proponent of realism and supported four pramanas (perception, inference, comparison/analogy and testimony), the Buddhist epistemologists (Dignaga and Dharmakirti) generally accepted only perception and inference. [21] Some have also attempted to offer significant revisions to our notion of belief, including eliminativists about belief who argue that there is no phenomenon in the natural world which corresponds to our folk psychological concept of belief (Paul Churchland) and formal epistemologists who aim to replace our bivalent notion of belief ("either I have a belief or I don't have a belief") with the more permissive, probabilistic notion of credence ("there is an entire spectrum of degrees of belief, not a simple dichotomy between belief and non-belief"). One of the earliest suggested replies to Gettier, and perhaps the most intuitive ways to respond to the Gettier problem, is the "no false premises" response, sometimes also called the "no false lemmas" response. There are several schools of thought on how that knowledge is gathered. Raskin, J.D. Epistemology is the investigation of the nature of knowledge itself. The Carvaka school of materialists only accepted the pramana of perception, and hence were among the first empiricists in the Indian traditions. epistemology and avoids such statements as “the transcendental deduction of the synthetic a priori” more typical of philosophers. [30][37] The typical conclusion to draw from this is that it is possible to doubt most (if not all) of my everyday beliefs, meaning that if I am indeed justified in holding those beliefs, that justification is not infallible. This is the regress problem: how can we eventually terminate a logical argument with some statement(s) that do not require further justification but can still be considered rational and justified? Bruce Russell gives two propositions in which the reader decides which one he believes more. 2: N–Z, Rosen Publishing. In his book Knowledge and its Limits, Williamson argues that the concept of knowledge cannot be broken down into a set of other concepts through analysis—instead, it is sui generis. While epistemic externalism first arose in attempts to overcome the Gettier problem, it has flourished in the time since as an alternative way of conceiving of epistemic justification. Feminist epistemology is a subfield of epistemology which applies feminist theory to epistemological questions. School: American Public University Course: PHIL 101 Philosophy 101 - Week 4 Epistemology & Metaphysics 2 Modern Philosophy: Locke, Empiricism, and Kant. [28] In this thought experiment, a man, Henry, is driving along and sees a number of buildings that resemble barns. According to Edmund Gettier, the view that Plato is describing here is that knowledge is justified true belief. Indian schools of philosophy, such as the Hindu Nyaya and Carvaka schools, and the Jain and Buddhist philosophical schools, developed an epistemological tradition independently of the Western philosophical tradition called "pramana". Cohen, Stewart. This might also include a non-rational faculty of intuition, as defended by proponents of innatism. John Locke, for instance, described his efforts in Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) as an inquiry "into the original, certainty, and extent of human knowledge, together with the grounds and degrees of belief, opinion, and assent". Pragmatists often treat "truth" as the final outcome of ideal scientific inquiry, meaning that something cannot be true unless it is potentially observable. [62] Thus, Haack's view leaves room for both chains of beliefs that are "vertical" (terminating in foundational beliefs) and chains that are "horizontal" (deriving their justification from coherence with beliefs that are also members of foundationalist chains of belief). The word epistemology is derived from the ancient Greek epistēmē, meaning "knowledge", and the suffix -logia, meaning "logical discourse" (derived from the Greek word logos meaning "discourse").