Word.ws English Dictionary

epistemic circularity

epistemic circularity noun: a circle of (foundational) epistemic arguments where the reliability of a device used within this circle is also proven within the circle.

Noun

epistemic circularity (countable and uncountable, plural epistemic circularities)

  1. (countable) A circle of (foundational) epistemic arguments where the reliability of a device used within this circle is also proven within the circle.
  2. (uncountable) The quality of being such a circle.

Forms of epistemic circularity

pluralepistemic circularities

Origin of epistemic circularity

Coined by William Alston in 1986 in his article "Epistemic Circularity".

Questions about epistemic circularity

What does epistemic circularity mean?
Epistemic circularity means a circle of (foundational) epistemic arguments where the reliability of a device used within this circle is also proven within the circle.
What part of speech is epistemic circularity?
Epistemic circularity is a noun.
What is the plural of epistemic circularity?
The plural of epistemic circularity is epistemic circularities.

Words near epistemic circularity in the dictionary

  1. epistemai
  2. episteme
  3. epistemes
  4. epistemic
  5. epistemic circularities
  6. epistemic circularity
  7. epistemic crises
  8. epistemic crisis
  9. epistemic logic
  10. epistemic marker
  11. epistemic markers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: epistemic circularity (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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