Epistemic — relating to knowledge or to the degree of its validation.
Naivety — innocence or unsophistication.
Pitfall — a hidden or unsuspected danger or difficulty. Here is my rendition of the most common approaches to knowledge and their pitfalls. Usually, one leads to the next:
Naive realism takes things at face value believes in one's conditioning lack of introspection It's the default mode for most people and is the most naive framework. It tries to label the world accurately, but it fails to become aware of its own constructions. These people think that their view of the world is like looking through a clear glass window, and that people who disagree with their view is either stupid or insane. When you see through the naivety of naive realism, you will usually move on to skepticism, where some of the pitfalls can be described as naive skepticism:
Naive skepticism skeptical of most claims to knowledge extremely self-critical hyper-exclusive relativism The naive skeptic is skeptical of all labelling of reality and is pulled down by cynicism and unconstructive behavior. They discard everything that isn't patently self-evident. An example is a person who goes into a philosophy seminar and asks "how do you know that?" until they get kicked out. Seeing through naive skepticism will usually lead you to pragmatism, where some of the pitfalls can be described as naive pragmatism:
Naive pragmatism "everything goes" lack of criticism hyper-inclusive relativism There is an openness to all views, but there is a lack of structure or hierarchy, and it therefore struggles to prioritize different claims to knowledge. For example, it will easily place an equal sign between pseudoscience and science (e.g. "astrology = physics"). Seeing through naive pragmatism will usually lead you to metatheorism, where some of the pitfalls can be described as naive metatheorism:
Naive metatheorism takes a wide perspective has a systematic approach to knowledge becomes lost in its own grand theories subtle realism The naive metatheorist is open, critical and also realistic, and tries to synthesize a coherent system which integrates many types of knowledge. The pitfall happens when one becomes a bit too optimistic about the universality of one's theories. You start believing that because a theory is "meta" and is able to zoom out across large perspectives (cross-paradigmatic, cross-cultural etc.), it somehow escapes or transcends the limitations of your own cultural and paradigmatic conditioning (i.e. the things that made you arrive at those conclusions in the first place). An example is believing Spiral Dynamics to be the infallible word of God. That is of course a bit naive, and the way out is to counter that impulse with the earlier lessons of skepticism, and remind yourself that the better the model, the easier it is to get lost in one's own constructions.   Who is not naive in any way? One who has experienced all of these pitfalls first-hand, but who doesn't let that fact curb their ever-expanding thirst for knowledge, and who doesn't pretend that naivety is something one can ever transcend.   Did anything I just wrote sound familiar to you? Be honest