Metaepistemology

Metaepistemology is the study of the underlying assumptions of epistemology. As the theory of knowledge, epistemology is concerned with questions about what knowledge is and how much people can know. Metaepistemology, by contrast, investigates what the aims and methods of epistemology should be, whether there are objective facts about what people know, and related issues.

There are differing views in metaepistemology about the nature and methods of epistemology. Epistemology is usually seen as a field that evaluates what the right things to believe are and prescribes how one ought to form beliefs. Traditional characterisations emphasise the use of reflective thought and intuitions rather than empirical evidence. Other views include the idea that epistemology should use methods more similar to the sciences—like experiments—or that it should focus on the practical impact of the concepts it employs. Feminist epistemology has extended alternative views like these to criticise gendered bias in epistemology.

Metaepistemology investigates epistemic facts, like facts about what people know. According to epistemic realists, facts about knowledge are objective and depend on the way the world is rather than subjective opinion. Anti-realists deny that there are such facts, either by denying their existence altogether or by denying that they are objective. For example, expressivists argue that statements about knowledge do not represent facts, but express attitudes like "this belief is good enough". Views that attempt to find a middle-ground between realism and anti-realism include quasi-realism and constitutivism. Metaepistemology also investigates how it is possible to know about epistemic facts, an area called the epistemology of epistemology.

As a discipline, epistemology does not describe what people actually do believe, it shows what people should believe or what they have justification to believe. Some epistemologists, for instance, assert that everyone has an obligation to only hold beliefs based on evidence. This is a feature known as normativity and it leads to a number of questions in metaepistemology. For example, it is disputed whether people can choose what to believe and whether judgements about evidence can motivate people to believe the right things. Other questions include why and how true beliefs are valuable. Since these problems resemble some issues discussed in the field of metaethics, metaepistemologists examine the similarities and differences between the two disciplines.