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Research on epistemological beliefs has become widespread, but in recent years has opened the doors to a debate on how these beliefs should be characterized and assessed. It is within this context that this study seeks to characterize these beliefs as component premises of epistemological perspectives. The study evaluated 55 first-year university students from four academic disciplines by means of the Egyptian pyramid-building dilemma. Two epistemological perspectives were identified. One was empirical and supported by the premise that knowledge is an objective systematization of observations of an unequivocal reality embodied by just one possible explanation, and the other was an individual relativist perspective supported by the premise that knowledge is a subjective systematization of facts that gives rise to multiple but equally valid explanations. The paper discusses the nature of these premises, the utility of a dilemma-based methodology and the implications for educational practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]