Challenges to the JTB Flashcards
Can you have knowledge without belief? Is belief necessary?
- Some equate knowledge with successful action. You can know something without believing it.
- Some have claimed that knowledge and belief are different mental states. Knowledge involves going beyond mere belief.
- Plato argues that belief and knowledge are different faculties and are about different objects - knowledge is always true, belief is not.
- Response: Knowledge is simply true belief, and the truth of what we know doesn’t change because what we know is true at a particular time.
Example for showing how belief is necessary
- John is sitting an exam, but he’s nervous and has no confidence in his answers.
- The question is; who wrote the Meditations? He answers correctly, Descartes.
- He knows it because he remembers it. Most would say he doesn’t know it because he doesn’t believe it.
- However, Plato would say he has an unconscious or ‘tacit’ belief which equates to knowledge.
Can you have knowledge without truth? Is truth a necessary condition?
- Truth is needed.
- The correspondence theory (facts don’t change over time) and the coherence theory (a belief is true if it fits a web of beliefs held by a society) require truth.
- Because you need to have cognitive contact with reality to have knowledge, you cannot know something that is false.
- Relativism: Rejects the idea of objective truth and believes it to be relative.
Can you have knowledge without justification? Is justification necessary?
- Justification may not be always necessary for knowledge - maybe you need to replace it or need something more.
- In the practical use of knowledge, knowledge may just need to be true belief.
- However, theoretically, if you don’t have a valid reason for your true belief, it cannot be classed as knowledge.
- Even if true belief isn’t sufficient, that doesn’t mean justification is necessary - there may be some other condition that turns true belief into knowledge.
Gettier: are the conditions jointly sufficient?
- Gettier used counterexamples to argue that it is possible to have JTB without knowledge.
- Gettier case = What makes a person’s belief true is not related to what justifies it.
- Double-luck Gettier cases are inevitable with the JTB. Zagzebski - there’s a gap between truth and justification that causes this. We need to link the justification to the truth of the belief.
Gettier’s counterexamples
The job
- The job:
Smith and Jones apply for a job. Smith believes Jones will get the job (he was told by the employer). Smith believes Jones has 10 coins in his pocket (he’s just counted them). BOTH BELIEFS ARE JUSTIFIED SO FAR. He concludes that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket - this is justified. It turns out the Smith gets the job. Unknown to him, he also has 10 coins in his pocket. His belief happens to be true.
He is true and justified. He doesn’t have knowledge because it is based on a false belief - Jones to get the job. Justification has come apart from his belief.
No connection between what justifies his belief and his belief’s being true - he is lucky.
Gettier’s counterexamples
Brown Barcelona
- Brown and Barcelona:
Smith believes Jones has a ford because Jones has always had a ford and Jones has just offered him a lift whilst driving a ford.
Smith decides that either Jones owns a ford or Brown is in Barcelona. These are disjunctive beliefs (they are separate).
New belief is justified as he had no reason to doubt the first part.
Turns out Jones no longer has a car BUT Jones IS in Barcelona.
We wouldn’t class this as knowledge - anti-luck intuition.
Not a double-luck Gettier example but describe the fake barn example
John is unknowingly driving through fake barn county - there are many fake barns set up like a movie set on the roadside.
He sees a big barn and thinks it’s real - this happens to be the only real barn in the county.
Does John know that there is a big red barn there?
What is a fake barn case?
The justification isn’t false but the believer doesn’t know they are in an unusual context which makes their belief seem luckily true.
Infallibilism
- Justification is so strong it is impossible to be wrong.
- Theory that we should only count as knowledge those things you cannot rationally doubt - eg, 2+2=4.
- It isn’t open to Gettier of fake barn cases as they wouldn’t count as knowledge. There is doubt/alternative explanations with them.
Infallibilism: Knowledge and Belief
Some think we should distinguish knowledge from belief - beliefs only occur when doubt is possible.
Example:
- When in pain, you know you are - you can’t be wrong.
- No sense to claim that you believe you are in pain - you know you are. Not an issue of belief.
- Someone may infer you’re in pain - this is a belief that could be false.
- No possibility of your being wrong in your pain, so you know you’re in pain.
Criticism of infallibilism
- Goes against our intuition that we can know many things.
- Implies we have very little knowledge.
- Most of what we know would be classed as beliefs.
- Too radical and different from the use of knowledge in common usage. - Leaves behind the concept we are trying to define.
No False Lemmas - J + T + B + N
- A lemma is a premise accepted as true in an argument.
- Gettier’s scenarios: the justification involves a false belief or lemma - can’t be classed as knowledge.
- P1 - Jones has ten coins. P2 - Jones will get the job. C…
- P2 is a false belief/lemma.
- Knowledge is justified true belief where the justification is not based on a false belief.
Criticism of the No False Lemmas argument
- Deals with Gettier cases but not others.
- Fake barn: John sees a barn and believes there is a barn - no false belief here.
- Zagzebski’s case: Doctor makes diagnosis on the evidence that everyone with virus X has those symptoms. She concludes she has virus X - no false belief here.
Reliabilism - R + T + B
- Link knowledge with the reliability of the process that led to it.
- With your beliefs, only grant the status of those that have been formed by reliable cognitive processes - seeing things up close, simple arithmetic, and reading from a trustworthy source.
- A reliable cognitive process don’t necessarily involve conscious thoughts like justification does. John’s accuracy when telling the date means he is reliable.
- The RTB does no better than the JTB when it comes to Gettier cases.
