Epistemology - What is knowledge? Flashcards
define practical (ability), acquaintance and propositional (factual) knowledge.
PraK - knowledge ‘how’ AcqK - knowledge ‘of’ ProK - knowledge ‘that’.
Plato’s definition of proportional knowledge
‘True belief accompanied by a rational account is knowledge’ theaetetus
What is truth?
- when a proposition correlates to the relevant fact.
- correspondence theory of truth: when a claim and the relevant fact correlate there is truth.
- coherence theory of truth: a belief is true if it is part of the web of beliefs within a society as it is coherent with that web.
- truth is necessary for knowledge with either definition.
Zagzebski’s pitfalls to avoid
ACON: Ad hoc (shouldn’t be specifically to solve a problem), Circular (shouldn’t include the term being defined), Obscure (shouldn’t use language more obscure than the original term), Negative (shouldn’t say what it is not)
What are necessary and sufficient conditions?
Necessary condition: a condition needed in order to have the thing in question.
Sufficient condition: a condition/ group of conditions where if all are met you will always have the thing in question.
Both individually necessary and jointly sufficient.
Is belief necessary for knowledge?
- Seems intuitive.
- A student remembering/guessing in class example. Forgets being taught guesses right.
-In ‘The Republic’ Plato contradicts ‘Meno’ and develops an incompatiblist view of it and believes that they must be fundamentally different ways of comprehending the world as belief is dalliance and knowledge is not.
Is justification necessary for knowledge?
-Example of John with a rare gift.
-Reliabilism instead of justification.
Define deduction, induction and abduction.
Deduction: if all premises are true then the conclusion is true.
Induction: argument based on evidence around observations.
Abduction: backwards from a cause to effect.
Zagzebski counter example.
Example of double luck, justification unluckily wrong but belief is luckily true.
- Doctor beloved patient was Virus X based on tests and the patient shows all symptoms
- The symptoms were actually caused by Virus Y
- This illness was unknown to the doctor so he believed the patient had VX
- The patient actually also had VX but it was not what was causing the symptoms
Fake barn cases
Unusual situation makes a belief seem luckily true.
- Barney is unknowingly driving through ‘Fake Barn County’ which is filled with lots of fake barns.
- Barney looks to the side and luckily sees the only real barn in the area.
- He forms the proposition that there is a big red barn there.
What is infallibalism?
Infallibalism argues that the justification condition needs to be so strong that it can’t be rationally doubted (the belief is infallible). For example physical feelings as they exist in our mind, but beliefs about the eternal world beyond the mind need to correspond with an external realist which can always be doubted which is the approach of Descartes.
Some infallibalists claim that knowledge and belief are different from each other as belief uses inference, for example if you heard an engine revving outside your knowledge that you hear the sound is infallible but the venice you form that there is a vehicle outside is not infallible and therefore cannot be knowledge.
Gettier counterexamples
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Pros of infallibilism
- Overcomes the Gettier counter-examples as it strengthens the justification condition and removes the possibility of luck.
- Overcomes fake barn cases.
Weaknesses of infallibilism
- We can’t be said to know a lot of things using infallibilism which contradicts our intuition that we can know a lot, the only thing we can know are some logical truths such as tautologies and things in our mind.
- Infallibilism is too far from the concept and common use of the term knowledge so we can’t be deceiving it, this makes it seem to prescriptive.
What is NFL
- A lemma means a belief/proposition/assumption that is held to be true and is used to justify a piece of knowledge.
- K = J + T + B + N
- JTB where the justification is not based on or relies on a false belief or assumption.
