Determinism, Empiricism, Epistemology.

Determinism.

Determinism is the philosophical proposition that every event, including human cognition and behavior, decision and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences. Determinism may also be defined as the thesis that there is at any instant exactly one physically possible future.

Empiricism.

In philosophy generally, empiricism is a theory of knowledge emphasizing the role of experience, especially sensory perception, in the formation of ideas, while discounting the notion of innate ideas.

In the philosophy of science, empiricism is a theory of knowledge which emphasizes those aspects of scientific knowledge that are closely related to experience, especially as formed through deliberate experimental arrangements. It is a fundamental requirement of scientific method that all hypotheses and theories must be tested against observations of the natural world, rather than resting solely on a priori reasoning, intuition, or revelation. Hence, science is considered to be methodologically empirical in nature.

The term "empiricism" has a dual etymology. It derives from a more specific classical Greek and Roman usage of empiric, referring to a physician whose skill derives from practical experience as opposed to instruction in theory.

Epistemology.

Epistemology or theory of knowledge is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature, methods, limitations, and validity of knowledge and belief.

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. It also deals with the means of production of knowledge, as well as skepticism about different knowledge claims. In other words, epistemology primarily addresses the following questions:
"What is knowledge?", "How is knowledge acquired?", and "What do people know?".

Sometimes, when people say that they believe in something, what they mean is that they predict that it will prove to be useful or successful in some sense — perhaps someone might "believe in" his or her favorite football team. This is not the kind of belief usually addressed within epistemology. The kind that is dealt with, as such, is where "to believe something" simply means any cognitive content held as true — e.g., to believe that the sky is blue is to think that the proposition, "The sky is blue," is true.

Knowledge implies belief. Consider the statement, "I know P, but I don't believe that P is true." This statement is contradictory. To know P is, among other things, to believe that P is true.

If someone believes something, he or she thinks that it is true, but he or she may be mistaken. This is not the case with knowledge. For example, suppose that Jeff thinks that a particular bridge is safe, and attempts to cross it; unfortunately, the bridge collapses under his weight. We might say that Jeff believed that the bridge was safe, but that his belief was mistaken. It would not be accurate to say that he knew that the bridge was safe, because plainly it was not. For something to count as knowledge, it must actually be true.