THE INADEQUACY OF ANY TWO CONDITIONS… · Web view · 2018-01-042018-01-04 · A belief is a...

PROPOSITIONAL KNOWLEDGE

The term knowledge can have a wide variety of meanings, depending upon the context in which the word is used.

e.g.

1. “I know my friend Tom very well”2. “I know how to play poker”3. “ I know that Belfast is the capital of Northern Ireland”

1) is an example of acquaintance knowledge (“knowing of”)

2) is an example of ability knowledge (“knowing how”)

3) is an example of propositional knowledge (“knowing that”)

The epistemologist is almost exclusively concerned with 3) which is often referred to as knowledge-that. To know-that, is to know that something is true or false. Knowledge-that is concerned with facts. It is also called propositional knowledge because it is knowledge of the truth or falsity of propositions.

DEFINING KNOWLEDGE

So now we understand the different types of knowledge we can start to look closer at how we define the term knowledge. To do this however, we must first understand the way we define terms in general. You may initially think that all definitions are alike, but philosophy is rarely so straightforward. Definitions differ subtly in approach, and it is useful to be aware of these differences so we can be clear about the kind of definition we are seeking. The philosopher Linda Zagzebski (1947-) has articulated some of the key ways in which definitions differ, often summarising the philosopher John Locke.

Epistemology 4: Propositional Knowledge

The Status of the thing defined

Humans divide and classify the world in all sorts of ways. Some of these ways are artificial and some reflect genuine underlying differences in the nature of objects / events. For example, compare the concepts of water and weeds. There are lots of liquids in the world only some of which we define as water, similarly there are lots of plants some of which we define as weeds. The crucial thing to note here is that the two definitions do not have the same status:

- There is a genuine difference between liquids on a molecular level, such that a particular kind of liquid (H20) is called water and no other.

- There is no underlying genetic difference between weeds and non-weeds; the classification is culturally specific – a question of which plants humans like in their gardens.

Locke therefore suggests that water has a real essence, whereas weeds do not.

Zagzebski uses the term ‘natural kind’ to refer to the same difference, the category of water forms a natural kind, whereas the category of weeds does not.

For those objects that have a real essence we can seek what Locke calls a real definition. A real definition picks out the real essence of an object (I.e. the real definition of water would be H20) and it is these real definitions that Locke thinks science should be focused on finding.

Zagzebski thinks it’s not clear whether terms like knowledge can have a real definition. She is fairly sceptical about whether the term has a real essence (i.e. something independent from culture / society) because the way we use the term has changed so much throughout history. This would suggest that the concept is a cultural one rather than a natural one.

However, she suggests that we should treat knowledge as if it has a real essence, and therefore seek a real definition. It’s entirely possible our usage in the past has been outright wrong and there is some clearly definable way of using the term that we just haven’t found yet.


Finally Zagzebski outlines the things she thinks a good definition should avoid:

• Circular – It must not contain the term being defined.• Obscure – The definition should not be more complicated or

confusing than the original term, otherwise what’s the point?• Negative – You can’t define a term by what it isn’t.• Ad Hoc – Your definition can’t be tailored to counter specific

problems, it should be a general one that is usable by all.

IMPORTANT NOTE: These terms will be useful throughout your course, if an argument or definition falls under any of these then it is usually seen as a weakness.

KNOWLEDGE AS DISTINCT FROM BELIEF

A belief is a proposition that we hold to be true without conclusive proof or justification. Knowledge may be contrasted with belief by saying that beliefs can be true, probable, likely or false. I can believe that Rotherham is the capital of England but I can never know that Rotherham is the capital of England. I cannot know it because it is not true.

I can hold a false belief, but I can never hold false knowledge.

KNOWLEDGE AS JUSTIFIED, TRUE BELIEF

In contemporary philosophy the classical definition of knowledge (found in the works of Plato) is known as the tripartite definition:

S knows that p if and only if:

1. S believes that p (the belief condition)2. p is true (the

truth condition)3. S’s belief that p is justified (the

justification condition)


These three conditions constitute the necessary and sufficient conditions of the standard account of knowledge. If one of them is missing S does not know that p. If all of them are present S cannot fail to know that p. This is the tripartite analysis of knowledge as true, justified belief.

NECESSARY AND SUFFICIENT CONDITIONS

X is a necessary condition of Y if and only if Y cannot happen without X happening first.

Eg. It is a necessary condition of your passing the AS Philosophy level exam that you register to take the exam first.

X is a sufficient condition of Y if and only if X by itself is enough to bring Y about.

Eg. Just registering for the exam is not enough to bring it about that you pass. So here, though registering is a necessary condition, it is not a sufficient condition. X would have to include things like read all texts, learn notes, submit assignments and so on. All these things together would be a sufficient condition that Y.

THE INADEQUACY OF ANY TWO CONDITIONSOn the tripartite account of knowledge, all three conditions are necessary. This means that if you take one away, the other two are insufficient:

i) Belief and truth without justification

Suppose that S believes that p, and that p is true, but S has no evidence that p. In such a case, there is nothing to distinguish this from the lucky guess. Consider the punter who optimistically and groundlessly believes that the dog in trap 6 will win the race. Perhaps the punter just feels that 6 is his ‘lucky number’. Such a feeling is not evidence for the dog’s form or its potential performance. The dog wins. We would not say that S knew that the dog would win the race. A lucky feeling is not evidence.


truth belief

justification

knowledge

Evidence consists of some set of facts on which feelings might be based.

ii) Justification and belief without truth

Suppose S has evidence that p and where S believes that p, unless it is true that p, then S does not know p. Consider: Once upon a time a great many people believed that the earth was flat. Many ancient drawings and maps supported this view – there would have seemed to be overwhelming evidence for this proposition. Yet anyone then who uttered the words ‘I know that the earth is flat’ would have uttered something which was false.

iii) Justification and truth without belief

Finally, even in cases where p is true, and where there is sufficient evidence that p is true, we would still not say that S knew p if S did not believe p. Suppose it is true that S’s house is rotting away, and suppose that the evidence for this is dry rot in the walls. An expert could predict that if conditions did not alter, the house will ultimately fall down. But suppose that S, not being an expert in these matters does not see that these two states of affairs are causally related, that dry rot is a sign of house decay, then he will have no reason to believe that the one is a sign of the other. Thus, S does not know that his house is rotting simply because he does not believe it.

Issues with the tripartite definition of knowledge:The conditions are not individually necessary.

JUSTIFICATION IS NOT A NECESSARY CONDITION OF KNOWLEDGE

Why is the justification condition necessary? Why not say that knowledge is true belief? The standard answer is that to identify knowledge with true belief would be implausible because a belief might be true even though it is formed improperly.

Suppose that William flips a coin, and confidently believes on no particular basis that it will land tails. If


by chance the coin does land tails, then William's belief was true; but a lucky guess such as this one is no knowledge. For William to know, his belief must in some epistemic sense be proper or appropriate: it must be justified.

But there do seem to be cases where people seem to know something despite the fact they have no justification. Many people would claim to know that God exists or to know they will go to heaven and they may have no rational justification for this, just a very strong feeling or belief. However most people would doubt whether this would count as knowledge at all – specifically because there is no rational justification.

But consider another case:

Jill has a rare gift. If you give her any date in the future, say 15 th March 2123 she is able to tell you what day of the week this will be (for example, a Monday). She is unable to say how she does this, though she is incredibly accurate: 15th March 2123 will indeed be a Monday.

This seems to be a case of true belief but with no rational justification, that we would be happy to call knowledge.Some philosophers claim that it is knowledge, because the belief is formed by a reliable process (Reliabilism). We shall return to this later, for now it is just worth noting that if Reliabilism is true then justification, though nice, may not always be necessary for knowledge.


TRUTH IS NOT A NECESSARY CONDITION OF KNOWLEDGE

The truth condition is largely uncontroversial. Most epistemologists have found it overwhelmingly plausible that what is false cannot be known. For example, it is false that Berkeley is the author of The Problems of Philosophy. Since it is false, it is not the sort of thing anybody knows.

But what if many people, perhaps a whole society, share a particular be-lief and have good reasons for doing so? For instance, almost everybody used to believe that the Earth is flat. It does after all look that way. Some might argue that it makes sense to say that people did used to know that the Earth was flat. However when they use word ‘know’ in this way they are probably using it as a synonym for ‘was convinced’.

But the problem deepens when we consider that much of the science we rely on very successfully is not, strictly speaking, true. For instance New-tonian physics were shown to be false by Einstein’s theory of relativity. However everyday experience is very accurately described by Newto-nian physics (because we are not moving at speeds close to the speed of light) and we can still form beliefs based on these rules that we might accurately describe as knowledge.

One response is to say that the claims of Newtonian physics, and other scientific knowledge like this is roughly true, or ‘true enough’ in the con-text of everyday life. So rather than saying we don’t know them, we can say that we do know them, roughly speaking.

The important thing is that whether or not a person knows something cannot be established by internal criteria alone (i.e. internal to their mind). By examining your mind you can establish that there is a belief for which you have good justification. But for it to count as knowledge the belief must actually correspond with reality, and this is an external crite-rion. So a justified, false belief is not knowledge, and truth is considered to be a necessary condition for knowledge.


The earth is flat

FALSE: the belief doesn’t correspond with the facts.

BELIEF IS NOT A NECESSARY CONDITION OF KNOWLEDGE

Although initially it might seem obvious that knowing that p requires believing that p, some philosophers have argued that knowledge without belief is indeed possible. This is illustrated in cases of action and abilities, where people can see to have knowledge without any sort of belief. Consider the following example:

Clara can’t drive. Her friend Jared has just passed his test and is going to take them both on a trip to San Jose. Jared drives to pick up Clara. He reveals that his satnav has broken and that he has never been to San Jose. Clara goes every Saturday with her dad; however, Clara doesn’t pay much attention to the route and she claims not to know the way to San Jose. Her dad laughs and says of course she knows it. They set off and as Jared starts driving she realises, one by one, that she recognises the roads and that she directs them safely all the way to San Jose.

Before setting out Clara did not believe she knew the way to San Jose, but she was certainly able to get them there. It looks like she did know the way, without believing she did, so perhaps belief is not necessary.

There are two ways of responding to examples like this. The first is to say that Clara did really believe, but pretended not to, much like someone might say ‘I don’t believe it’ when they clearly know (and believe) they have just won the Oscar.

The second is to say that Clara had several individual beliefs about each of the specific turns they have to take, but when asked she was not able to put all these together in her mind. In this case she doesn’t believe she knows the way to San Jose, but she does believe (and know) the propositions about each individual turning. So Clara does not know the way to San Jose, precisely because she doesn’t have this belief.

So, there are strong reasons for accepting that all three conditions are necessary, but we can still question whether collectively they are sufficient…


Issues with the tripartite definition of knowledge:Gettier-style problems

The problems above all suggested that one or more of the conditions are not necessary for knowledge. Edmund Gettier created a series of examples which suggest that even if we have all three conditions, they are not sufficient for knowledge. These examples intend to show that we can have truth, belief and justification but not knowledge.

Gettier’s original example:Smith and Jones are applying for the same job. Smith has excellent reason to believe that Jones will get the job, e.g. Smith has been told this by the employer. Smith also has excellent reason to believe that Jones has ten coins in his pocket, e.g. Smith has just counted them. Therefore, both of these beliefs are justified.

Smith then puts the two beliefs together and deduces that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket. This belief is justified, because it is inferred deductively from justified beliefs.

It turns out that Jones doesn’t get the job, Smith does. It also happens that, unknown to him, Smith also has ten coins in his pocket.

So Smith’s belief that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket is true. But it doesn’t seem like knowledge.

Gettier’s second example:Gettier gives a second example in his short paper. This one involves Smith having plenty of evidence that his friend Jones owns a Ford car (imagine he has talked about it at length). On the basis of this he believes that a) Jones owns a ford.

Smith has another friend Mr Brown. He has no evidence of Brown’s whereabouts at the moment, but on the strength of his first belief he is able to form a new disjunctive belief that c) Jones owns a ford or Brown is in Barcelona (Barcelona chosen at random). This belief is justified as Smith had no reason to doubt the first part.


However, unbeknownst to Smith, Jones no longer owns the car, he wrote it off and has been driving a rental all week. Also unbeknownst to Smith, Brown really is in Barcelona. So his belief that c) Jones owns a ford or Brown is in Barcelona is true!

In cases like these, while people have a true belief that seems to be reasonably justified, many would argue that the person does not have knowledge. So something must be wrong with the tripartite definition. Gettier’s two examples convinced philosophers that knowledge as justified, true belief needed some form of modification or patching up.

Responses to Gettier-style examples

Since these cases show that justification, truth and belief are not sufficient for knowledge, the responses to them suggest an alternative or additional element that needs adding to the tripartite definition.

Response 1: strengthen the justification condition: Infallibilism


B. S believes that pT. p is trueI. S’s belief that p is INFALLIBLY justified

The tripartite definition of knowledge does not tell us what it is for a belief to be justified. Gettier assumes that Smith’s beliefs are justified, and so his deduction that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket is justified. However for some philosophers Smith’s initial beliefs are not justified, or at least not enough to count as knowledge.Descartes, for instance, did not think that having some justification was enough, but that knowledge requires infallible justification (it could not possibly be mistaken). Gettier cases are not a problem for the infallibilist, as the characters in these cases do not have infallible justification for their beliefs. It is quite possible for someone’s senses to deceive them, so they are not infallibly justified in their belief that that is a sheep in the field. Clocks do not always tell the right time, so the belief that it is midday is not infallibly justified by me looking at the clock. Smith’s employer may have


been lying about who would get the job, so Smith’s belief is not infallibly justified by being told this. Infallibilism defends the tripartite definition of knowledge and rules out Gettier cases, because in these cases I do not have justified true belief.Problem: The issue for Infallibilism is that it is rare that our evidence for believing something is so strong that it rules out the possibility of error. Infallibilism entails that we have very little knowledge at all (even if many of our beliefs are probably true).

Response 2: add a ‘no false lemmas’ condition (J+T+B+ N )


B. S believes that pT. p is trueJ. S’s belief that p is justifiedN. S’s belief that p is not based on a false lemma

A lemma is a claim made part way through an argument. So a false lemma is a false claim within an argument.

Some philosophers have suggested that we could get around some Gettier cases by adding the condition that the belief that p is not based on any other false belief.

This does get around Gettier’s original case, because Smith’s belief that the man who will get the job has 10 coins in his pocket is based on his false belief that Jones will get the job.

Problem: But it doesn’t solve other cases, such as the sheep in the field, because in this case the belief was not justified by a false belief, but by perceptual experience.


Response 3: replace ‘justified’ with ‘reliably formed’ ( R +T+B) (reliabilism)


B. S believes that pT. p is trueR. S’s belief that p is reliably formed

Goldman tries to solve Gettier cases by using reliabilism: the theory that an agent’s belief is justified if it was caused by a reliable cognitive process. That is, one that tends to produce true beliefs.

For example, perception, memory and testimony generally produce true beliefs and thus they are reliable mechanisms that can justify an agent’s belief.

Importantly, the agent does not need to be aware of the reliability of the process that caused his belief, rather, Goldman claims that a belief is sufficiently justified if it was caused by a reliable process.

Reliabilism deals well with most Gettier cases, as in examples such as Smith and Jones, Smith’s belief is only luckily true, and in general, any belief that is true because of luck is not going to be part of a reliable process.

Problem: Examples such as Boris Johnson day are trickier, because nothing about the process behind Taz’s belief forming was unreliable (it involved close up perception of the real Boris).

The reliabilist could accept that Taz does have knowledge, which may seem counter-intuitive when there is still some luck involved, given the context of it being Boris look-alike day. Or they could say that what counts as a reliable process depends on the context: so Taz’s process of belief forming would normally be reliable, but in this context, it is not.


Response 4: replace ‘justified’ with an account of epistemic virtue ( V +T+B)


B. S believes that pT. p is trueV. S’s belief that p results from S exercising intellectual

virtues

Intellectual virtues are particular skills, abilities or traits that contribute to getting to the truth, for instance the accuracy of perceptual organs, reliability of memory or rationality of thought processes. If we use these intellectual virtues to form a belief, then we can be said to have knowledge.

For example: If I have particularly good eyesight, and that helps me form a belief that the car I am looking at is red then it fulfils this criteria. If Tom has particularly bad eyesight, but happens to make a lucky guess about the colour of the car, he has not fulfilled the criteria because his belief did not stem from his intellectual virtues (in this case the accuracy of his organs).

As John Greco says, knowledge is true belief “owing to your own abilities, efforts and actions, rather than owing to dumb luck or blind chance, or something else.”

Ernest Sosa is the main proponent of a virtue-based account of knowledge. He claims that one knows that p only if one’s belief that p is formed from an epistemic virtue that reliably produces true belief. He likens these virtues to skills used in archery to hit a target.

We can assess the archer in three ways:

1. Accuracy: did the arrow hit the target?2. Adroitness: was the arrow shot well?3. Aptness: did the arrow hit the target because it was

shot well?


Only the apt shot was really a good shot.

We can apply the same criteria to beliefs:

1. Accuracy: is the belief true?2. Adroitness: did the person form their belief by using their

intellectual virtues?3. Aptness: is the belief true because they formed it by using their

intellectual virtues?

S’s belief that p can be true but not based on an epistemic virtue, just as someone with little skill in archery can sometimes hit the target. This is accurate but not adroit.

S’s belief can be true and based on an epistemic virtue (accurate and adroit) but not a case of knowledge, like the archer who shoots well, but then a gust of wind blows the arrow all over before finally blowing it into the target.

Finally, S’s belief that p can be true, based on an epistemic virtue, and true because based on that virtue. Only then is the true belief a case of knowledge. Sosa claims that knowledge is apt true belief. Final questions:

Do any of these proposals solve the problem of Gettier cases?Does the tripartite definition of knowledge succeed?


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