Week 1 Flashcards
What is the main focus of epistemology?
Epistemology is primarily concerned with epistemic justification rather than knowledge itself.
It seeks to answer the question, “How do you know?” by examining the justification for beliefs
How does epistemic justification differ from moral and prudential justification?
Epistemic justification: Determines whether a belief is rational based on evidence.
Moral justification: Concerned with ethical permissibility of beliefs.
Prudential justification: Based on practical benefits, even if a belief lacks evidence.
Example: Believing lobsters don’t feel pain to justify eating them
What are epistemic norms?
Rules governing when it is epistemically permissible to hold a belief.
Essential for determining valid reasoning and belief formation.
What is the traditional definition of knowledge?
Justified True Belief (JTB):
1. A person believes a proposition (P).
2. P is true.
3. The belief in P is justified
What is the Gettier Problem?
Edmund Gettier (1963) challenged JTB by showing cases where a belief is justified and true but still not knowledge.
Example:
- Smith believes “Jones owns a Ford OR Brown is in Barcelona.”
- Jones does not own a Ford, but by coincidence, Brown is in Barcelona.
- Smith’s belief is justified and true, but not knowledge
Why is the Gettier Problem significant?
- Showed that JTB is insufficient to define knowledge.
- Led to the search for a fourth condition beyond JTB.
- Shifted epistemology’s focus towards analyzing the nature of knowledge itself
could lead to a fourth condition: S doesn’t believe P on a false proposition
However, the barn example still proves this wrong
- maybe then could suggest that the fourth condition is actually that: S doesn’t believe P by chance
What are the different areas of knowledge?
Perceptual knowledge: Based on sense perception
Memory-based knowledge: Retaining past justified beliefs
Inductive knowledge: Generalizing from observations
A priori knowledge: Gained through reason (e.g., math)
Moral knowledge: Ethical truths and principles.
Knowledge of other minds: Understanding others’ thoughts
What is the problem of perception in epistemology?
How can we trust our sense perception if our experiences could be false (e.g., brain-in-a-vat scenario)?
A central issue in skepticism and epistemology.
What is procedural justification?
- A type of epistemic justification focused on guiding belief formation.
- Concerned with how we decide what to believe, rather than what constitutes knowledge.
What is the book’s focus on epistemological theories?
- More concerned with comparing different epistemological theories rather than solving specific problems.
- Uses perceptual knowledge as a key example throughout
What is the traditional definition of knowledge (JTB)?
- A person (S) knows a proposition (P) if and only if:
1. P is true.
2. S believes that P.
3. S is justified in believing P.
What does Gettier argue against in his paper?
- Gettier argues that JTB is not sufficient for knowledge.
- He presents counterexamples where a belief is justified and true but not knowledge.
What are the key assumptions in Gettier’s argument?
- A person can be justified in believing a false proposition.
- If S is justified in believing P, and P entails Q, then S is justified in believing Q.
What is Gettier’s first counterexample? (The Job and Coins Case)
- Smith has strong evidence that Jones will get the job and Jones has 10 coins.
- Smith deduces: “The man who will get the job has 10 coins in his pocket.”
- Unknown to Smith: He himself will get the job, and he also has 10 coins.
Smith’s belief is justified and true—but he does not actually know the statement.
What is Gettier’s second counterexample? (The Ford and Barcelona Case)
- Smith has strong evidence that Jones owns a Ford.
- Smith randomly infers: “Either Jones owns a Ford or Brown is in Barcelona.”
- Unknown to Smith: Jones does not own a Ford, but Brown is actually in Barcelona.
- Again, Smith’s belief is justified and true, but it is not knowledge.
Why do Gettier’s cases disprove JTB as a definition of knowledge?
- In both cases, Smith had a justified belief that turned out to be true by accident.
- This shows that justification, truth, and belief are not enough—something else is needed.
What is the Gettier Problem?
- The problem of finding a fourth condition to properly define knowledge beyond JTB.
- Many philosophers have proposed solutions, but no consensus has been reached.
What are some responses to the Gettier Problem?
- Reliabilism: Knowledge must come from a reliable method.
- No False Lemmas: The belief must not be based on a false premise.
- Causal Theory: Knowledge must be causally connected to the truth.
Why is the Gettier Problem important?
- It shook the foundation of epistemology, proving that knowledge is more complex than JTB.
- It led to new theories of knowledge and ongoing debates about what counts as knowledge.
