The tripartite view Flashcards
1
Q
The tripartite view is derived from…
A
- Plato’s Theaetetus (although in the dialogue, the character of Socrates expresses concerns that this theory leads to an infinite regress and is ‘silly’.)
2
Q
The tripartite view, as it now stands, is perhaps most famously expressed…
A
- …in the seminal paper by Edmund Gettier (although he attributes versions of the definition to Chisolm and Ayer).
3
Q
Zagzebski’s argument in support of the idea that ‘p is true’ is a necessary condition of ‘S knows p’ can be summarised as follows:
A
- P1. True propositions describe reality; false propositions do not.
- P2. Knowledge is cognitive contact with reality.
- P3. If P1 & P2, then we only know what is true
- C1. We only know what is true
- P4. If C1, then ‘p is true’ is a necessary condition for ‘S knows p’.
- C2. ‘p is true’ is a necessary condition for ‘S knows p’.
4
Q
Zagzebski’s argument in support of the idea that ‘S believes that p’ is a necessary condition of ‘S knows p’ can be summarised as follows:
A
- P1. Knowledge is cognitive contact with reality.
- P2. If P1, then Propositional knowledge involves a person taking some propositions to be true.
- C1. Propositional knowledge involves a person taking some propositions to be true.
- P3. To take a proposition to be true is to believe it.
- P4. If C1 & P3, then Believing that p is a necessary condition for knowledge that p.
- C2. Believing that p is a necessary condition for knowledge that p.
5
Q
Zagzebski’s argument in support of the idea that ‘S is justified in believing that p’is a necessary condition of ‘S knows p’ can be summarised as follows:
A
- P1. Knowledge is good and perhaps praiseworthy.
- P2. If P1, then to be good in this way, a belief must be based on reason or evidence, i.e. it must be justified.
- C1. To be good in this way, a belief must be based on reason or evidence, i.e. it must be justified.
- P3. If C1, then Justification for one’s belief that p is a necessary condition for knowledge that p.
- C2. Justification for one’s belief that p is a necessary condition for knowledge that p.
6
Q
If ‘S believes p’ were not a necessary condition of ‘S knows p’ then there must be situations when it is fair to say that ‘S knows p’ yet does not believe it.
A
- P. M. S. Hacker argues that there are ways, methods, and means of achieving, attaining or receiving knowledge, but not of believing.
- Therefore, we cannot say that belief is a subset of belief.
- And thus it follows that it is entirely conceivable that ‘S knows p’ yet does not believe p.
7
Q
If ‘p is true’ were not a necessary condition of ‘S knows p’ then there must be situations when it is conceivable that ‘S knows p’ yet pis not true.
A
- The major philosophical problem here lies in the definition of truth, and how we know whether pis true.
- Kuhn, for example, argued that we cannot even appeal to the scientific method for our definition of truth:
- P1. If paradigms were commensurable, then terms would still refer to the same things in new paradigms.
- P2. Terms do not refer to the same things in new paradigms.
- C3. (P1, P2) Paradigms are incommensurable.
- P3. If paradigms are incommensurable, then science does not more closely approximate the truth over time.
- C4. (C1, P3) Science does not more closely approximate truth over time.
- (It would also not be unreasonable to bring in the arguments concerning perception and reality here.)
8
Q
If ‘S is justified in believing that p’ were not a necessary condition of ‘S knows p’ then there must be situations when it is conceivable that ‘S knows p’ yet S is not justified in believing that p’.
A
- With regards the justification condition, the main issue is what counts as a justification? Does a justification need to be infallible, i.e. entail certainty?
- According to P. M. S Hacker, ‘I know’ is an epistemic operator, used to indicate a level of certainty (of weight) that the speaker believes ought to be given to their proposition.
- In this way certainty presupposes the possibility of doubt, and if certainty presupposes doubt, then If I cannot doubt, I cannot be certain either.
- For example, I cannot doubt that ‘I am in pain’, so it makes no sense to say I know that I am in pain, unless you are joking, or expressing anger.
- Hacker’s conclusion from this is that evidence for knowledge (i.e. justification) is necessarily defeasible, but if not defeated, it suffices for certainty – i.e. it does not need to be fully justified.
- Of course, if someone were to say, ‘I know that I am in pain’, we would fully understand what they meant and it would be foolish to ask them to justify it. (We can compare this with infallibilism.) Either way, a full justification is not necessary.
9
Q
According the tripartite conception of knowledge, the three conditions are sufficient (as well as necessary) for a definition of knowledge. It is thus inconceivable that pis true, S believes p, and S is justified in believing p yet S does not know p. Gettier offered a counter-example to suggest that this was in fact conceivable.
A
- His original case (the first of two) was as follows:
- Suppose that Smith and Jones have applied for a certain job.
- And suppose that Smith has strong evidence for the following conjunctive proposition: (d) Jones is the man who will get the job, and Jones has ten coins in his pocket.
- Smith’s evidence for (d) might be that the president of the company assured him that Jones would in the end be selected, and that he, Smith, had counted the coins in Jones’s pocket ten minutes ago.
- Proposition (d) entails: (e) The man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket.
- Let us suppose that Smith sees the entailment from (d) to (e), and accepts (e) on the grounds of (d), for which he has strong evidence. In this case, Smith is clearly justified in believing that (e) is true.
- But imagine, further, that unknown to Smith, he himself, not Jones, will get the job. And, also, unknown to Smith, he himself has ten coins in his pocket.
- Proposition (e) is then true, though proposition (d), from which Smith inferred (e), is false.
- In our example, then, all of the following are true: (i) (e) is true, (ii) Smith believes that (e) is true, and (iii) Smith is justified in believing that (e) is true.
- But it is equally clear that Smith does not KNOW that (e) is true; for (e) is true in virtue of the number of coins in Smith’s pocket, while Smith does not know how many coins are in Smith’s pocket, and bases his belief in (e) on a count of the coins in Jones’s pocket, whom he falsely believes to be the man who will get the job.
10
Q
One way to defend the tripartite view is to strengthen the justification condition.
A
- Infallibilismis the position that knowledge is, by definition, a true belief which cannot be rationally doubted.
- Other beliefs may be rationally justified, but they do not rise to the level of knowledge unless absolutely certain.
- René Descartes, a proponent of infallibilism argued, ‘my reason convinces me that I ought not the less carefully to withhold belief from what is not entirely certain and indubitable, than from what is manifestly false’.
- Infallibilism can be expressed as ‘if I know that p, then I can’t be mistaken about p’.
- This concept of knowledge is not dissimilar from the a priori conception of knowledge described by Plato or Leibniz, i.e. it is necessarily true.
11
Q
(A criticism of infallibilism using Hacker)
A
- This stands in contrast to the way in which the word know is often used – see Hacker
12
Q
(A criticism of infallibilism based on usual conceptions of the nature of science)
A
- It also stands in contrast to the conception that we have of science, which is normally construed as being probabilistically rather than necessarily true.
- For example, Popper argues that a proposition can only be considered scientific if it is, in principle at least, falsifiable.
- Similarly, Hume argues that inductive reasoning (on which science is based) cannot be logically necessarily true
- (or as Raimond Gaita describes it: our judgements are necessarily incomplete).
13
Q
(A criticism of infallibilism based on the idea of infinite regress)
A
- If we could only know facts which could not be rationally doubted and these facts also needed to be justified,
- It would then stand to reason that the justifications also needed to be beyond doubt and therefore known.
- This would lead to an infinite regress (the kind of which Socrates, in Theatetus, described as ‘silly’.)
14
Q
Another way to shore up the tripartite view is to add a ‘no false lemmas’ condition (J+T+B+N)
A
- The ‘no false lemmas’ condition adds the following to the three conditions of the tripartite theory:
- ‘P is not derived from any falsehood’
- This was suggested, by amongst others, Armstrong.
- This suggestion appears to rule out cases such as those suggested by Gettier. For example, in the first Gettier case, it is clear that Smith is deriving his knowledge from a falsehood – i.e. that Jones will get the job.
15
Q
(A criticism of the ‘no false lemmas’ condition using the toy dog)
A
- Ichikawa and Steup offer the following counter-example, however:
- Suppose, for example, that James, who is relaxing on a bench in a park, observes an apparent dog in a nearby field. So he believes
- (a) There is a dog in the field.
- Suppose further that the putative dog is actually a robot dog so perfect that it could not be distinguished from an actual dog by vision alone. James does not know that such robot dogs exist.
- Given these assumptions, (a) is of course false. But suppose further that just a few feet away from the robot dog, there is a real dog, concealed from James’s view.
- Given this further assumption, James’s belief in (a) is true. And since this belief is based on ordinary perceptual processes, most epistemologists will agree that it is justified.
- But as in Gettier’s cases, James’s belief appears to be true only as a matter of luck, in a way inconsistent with knowledge. So once again, what we have before us is a justified true belief that isn’t knowledge.
