Epistemology asks what has to hold before something counts as known: what evidence is, what justifies a belief, who may assert without proof, and how a person without the expertise decides whom to believe. It has worked on those questions for two and a half thousand years.
Subjects in this field
Epistemic authorityWho may say what is true, and what happens when a machine takes that role.Epistemic trustThe readiness to accept what you are told, and what shapes it.EvidenceWhat counts as proof, and the machinery that decides it.CredibilityHow a listener decides a statement counts, and what rhetoric leaves unexamined.CoherenceWhether statements hold together, and whether that is a reason to believe them.VerificationWhether a statement can be shown true, and what replaced the attempt.FalsificationRefutation as the engine of knowledge, and the ways it is evaded.HermeneuticsThe theory of interpretation, applied to machines that read before people do.
A search engine answers them every second. It decides which sources count, which claims are shown, and which are not shown at all. An answer system goes further and writes the claim itself, with no warrant offered and none asked for.
The eight subjects below are the parts of that field which bear on search directly. Each one states what is settled, names what the literature leaves out, and answers the questions that follow.