Tripartite Definition Of Knowledge Flashcards
What is the claim of JTB and what does it mean the conditions are necessary and sufficient?
- It claims that you know some proposition, p, if and only if:
- The proposition p is true
- You believe that p
- Your belief that p is justified - Each condition is necessary for knowledge. You can’t have knowledge without each condition being true
- The 3 conditions together are sufficient for knowledge. You don’t need anything more for knowledge than each condition being true
What are the 2 objections to the Tripartite Theory of knowledge? Briefly explain each
1) Are the conditions necessary for knowledge?
- It may be that one of the conditions is not necessary. Can we have knowledge without justified true belief?
2) Are the conditions sufficient for knowledge?
- It may be that all the conditions together are still not sufficient for knowledge. Can we have justified true belief without knowledge?
Outline the claim that justification isn’t a necessary condition of knowledge.
- Could it simply be ‘true belief’. We sometimes use the word ‘know’ to mean ‘believe truly’, so why do we need to justify it?
- If I were to ask you, ‘Do you know who wrote the meditations?’, I’m only interested in whether you have the true belief that it was Descartes. I don’t need further justification, do I?
Outline Zagzebski’s response to the issue that ‘justification isn’t necessary for knowledge’, based on practical and theoretical knowledge.
And the response to her
- She accepts that knowledge as TB fulfils the practical purpose of knowledge. It doesn’t suit the theoretical purpose though, since true belief can be formed and held in both good ways and bad.
- If you don’t have a good reason for believing that Descartes wrote the meditations, then the mere fact that your belief is true doesn’t make it knowledge.
-Response: Even if belief is not is not sufficient for knowledge, this doesn’t prove that justification is a necessary condition. There may be some other condition that turns true belief into knowledge.
Outline the claim that truth is not a necessary condition of knowledge.
- Zagzebski outlines knowledge as ‘cognitive contact with reality’. Therefore It would seem hard to say knowledge=JB
- JBs can be true or false, people can obviously believe propositions they aren’t true and some of these propositions could even be justified.
- But knowledge involves cognitive contact with reality, a false belief is not knowledge.
- You can’t know something false, or so it seems.
Outline the claim that belief is not a necessary condition of knowledge. (Weak and Strong)
-Weak: It is possible to know something without believing that you know it. What if you are just unconfident? You can know the answer to a Q but believe that you don’t.
- Strong: Knowledge is never a form of belief. Plato presents this argument. What is a matter of belief is not known, and what is a matter of knowledge is not believed.
- Instead, belief and knowledge involve different ‘faculties’ and take different ‘objects’.
How can we apply certainty to the relationship between knowledge and belief? What is the problem and how can we resolve it?
- Belief doesn’t require certainty. We can only really know something if we are certain of it. But how certain must we be?
- If knowledge has to be impossible to doubt then that leaves us in a very tricky situation. There is philosophical grounds to doubt everything.
-Resolving this: The tripartite
Outline zagzebskis view of knowledge
- Zagzebski says knowledge is ‘good’. Accidentally true belief (lucky guesses) doesn’t meet our need for knowledge.
- Whatever the reason, we seek our knowledge and support others who do.
- We need justfication for knowledge because if we don’t all we have is true belief, we needed to have formed this belief rationally on the basis of reasons and evidence for us to have knowledge.
Outline the claim of virtue epistemology and a strength of it in relation to animals and children
- Alternate view of tripartite explanation. It changes justification to intellectual virtue.
- S knows that p if and only if:
- P is true
- S believes that p
- S’s belief that p is the result of s exercising their epistemic/intellectual virtues
Strength: -It argues that they can have knowledge as the desire to ‘find the truth’ doesn’t need to be obvious, one simply needs to know what is in one’s environment for example. Therefore children and animals can have good knowledge.
Outline the claim of reliabalism and a strength of it in relation to children and animals
- You can know that p if and only if
1) p is true
2) you believe that p
3) your belief is produced by a reliable cognitive process - Reliable cognitive process- is just one that produces a high percentage of true beliefs. E.g. perception and memory.
- An advantage of is that it allows children and animals to have knowledge. Animals don’t have reason of evidence for their beliefs, however they get around the W world very well indeed so it seems incorrect to say they don’t have knowledge. Reliabilism argues that children and animals have knowledge because their true beliefs are caused by reliable processes, whether they have justification for their beliefs is irrelevant.
Outline the Gettier case against reliabilism
- Henry and Barn County
- Sees loads of barns and says ‘there are a lot of barns’
- However, they are fake barns
- So he is wrong every time he says they are barns
- He then passes the only real barn and says ‘that’s a barn’
- He then makes the statement ‘there are barns in barn county’
- While this is true, he doesn’t have knowledge of this as his reliable cognitive process (Perception) was looking at false barns
Outline the gettier case against JTB
- Smith and Jones (Job)
- Smith and Jones are both applying for the same job.
- Smith has excellent reason to believe that jones will get the job e.g. he’s been told by his employer.
- Smith also has excellent reason to believe that Jones has 10 coins in his pocket e.g. he counted them.
- Smith then puts the 2 beliefs together and deduces that the man who will get the job has 10 coins in his pocket.
- Rhis belief is justified, because it is inferred deductively from justified beliefs. However, if turns out that Jones doesn’t get the job, Smith does.
- It also so happens that, unknown to him, Smith has 10 coins in his pocket.
- So Smith’s belied that the man who will get the job has 10 coins in his pocket happens to be true.
- It is only by luck that his belief is true as Smith has inferred this belief from a false belief.
To deal with the gettier case, all we need to do is add an extra condition to the definition of knowledge. Outline this new No False Lemmas definition of knowledge
- You know that p if and only if:
1) p is true
2) you believe that p
3) your belief that p is justified
4) you did not infer that p from a false belief
Whilst condition 4 (you did not infer that p from a false belief) deals with the gettier examples, it doesn’t deal with the underlying worry about truth and justification ‘coming apart’. Outline zagzebskis example of this.
- Dr Jones
- Dr Jones has very good evidence that her patient, Smith, is suffering from virus X, e.g. the symptoms and the lab tests are all consistent with smith having this virus and no other known virus produces these results.
- Jones therefore believes that smith has this virus x, and this belief is justified.
- However Smiths symptoms and lab results are caused by Smith having this unknown virus y.
- But, by chance, Smith has just caught virus x, so recently that it has not caused any symptoms are shown in the test results.
- So Dr Jones’ belief that Smith has virus x is true, so her belief is both true and justified.
- But she does not know that Smith has virus x because the evidence from which she infers her belief has nothing to do with the fact that Smith has virus x as it is all caused by y.
Outline the claim of infallibilism and a problem against it
- Knowledge must be certain.
- Resolved Gettier cases as he’s not certain in justification. There are grounds to doubt Smiths justification e.g. he may have misheard the employer!
Problem: Too strict. It argues that pretty much everything fails to qualify as knowledge. The tripartite definition sets the bar too low for knowledge; infallibilism sets it way too high!
