What is knowledge? Flashcards
What are the types of knowledge?
Ability knowledge - knowledge of HOW to do something, e.g. ‘I know how to ride a bike’
Acquaintance knowledge - knowledge OF something, e.g. ‘I know Fred well’. knowledge is obtained through experience
Propositional knowledge - knowledge THAT, facts of the world, e.g. ‘I know that London is the capitol of England’.
What is the nature of definition?
How can propositional knowledge be defined?
Real definitions have a real essence. They refer to an objective reality. e.g. water = H20 is a necessary truth because if water was not H20 then it would not be water so water MUST be H20.
Some things only have conceptual definitions, e.g. a bachelor is an unmarried man is a necessary truth, but has no real essence because a bachelor is a social construct. Conceptual truths are culturally specific.
We should treat knowledge as if it does have a real essence.
What is the role of cause in definition in propositional knowledge?
Some definitions emphasise the cause of the thing being defined, others do not.
E.g. definition of a sunburn emphasises the symptoms and the cause, however definition of a bike does not say how it is made.
What are some pitfalls to avoid when giving a definition?
A ad hoc: coming up with a definition that is specific to meeting a particular problem
C circular: should not include the term being defined
O obscure: should not be more obscure than the original term
N negative: shouldn’t define a term by what it is not.
What is the tripartite view of knowledge?
- The JTB definition of knowledge says knowledge is a justified, true, belief.
- a true belief secured by reasons
- e.g. if a jury found a man guilty for the wrong reasons (racism, guessing) we would not say the juror had knowledge
- these conditions are all individually necessary; you cannot have knowledge without one of them
- they are also jointly sufficient; if you have all of these conditions you are gauranteed to have knowledge
What are necessary and sufficient conditions?
- a NECESSARY CONDITION is something you need in order to have the thing in question, but the condition by itself won’t lead to the thing. e.g. water is a necessary condition of rain - you can’t have rain without water, BUT water alone cannot guarantee rain (a lake does not count as rain) so water is not a sufficient condition of rain
- SUFFICIENT CONDITIONS: when this condition/s are met you WILL/are gauranteed to have the thing in question, e.g being an aunt is a sufficient condition for having relatives, however it is not a necessary condition as you can have relatives without being an aunt
-some conditions are both necessary and jointly sufficient, e.g. being ‘unmarried’ and a ‘man’ are both necessary conditions to be a bachelor, as you cannot be a bachelor without them. Being an ‘unmarried man’ is sufficient to be a bachelor, so these conditions are necessary and jointly sufficient for the definition of a bachelor
What are necessary and sufficient conditions in relation to the Tripartite view of knowledge?
- the tripartite definition of knowledge says that belief, truth, and justification are all individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for knowledge.
- individually necessary:
truth, you can’t know something if it isn’t TRUE, e.g. if someone says ‘the moon is made of cheese’ that is not knowledge because it isn’t true
you can’t know something you don’t BELIEVE, e.g. it would be nonsensical to say ‘I know it is raining but I don’t believe it is raining’.
and you have to have JUSTIFICATION, e.g. racist juror case
The tripartite view of knowledge says these conditions are JOINTLY SUFFICIENT for knowledge, so whenever you have a justified true belief, you WILL/are gauranteed to have knowledge.
Explain the issue for the tripartite view that the conditions are not individually necessary.
Is BELIEF a necessary condition?
- some say it is because saying ‘I know it is raining but I do not believe it’ seems incoherent
- however, in a test you may think you don’t know the answer and put one down at random, but it turns out you had it at the very back of your memory, so maybe you did know it even though you did not really believe it
- knowledge and belief are different mental states; knowledge is infallible and belief is fallible, so they are fundamentally different
Is TRUTH a necessary condition?
- imagine it is 10,000 BC, a cavewoman believes the earth is flat because of evidence at the time. Did she have knowledge or not?
- the correspondence theory of truth would say that she did not have a JTB as the claim does not correspond to the facts of the world, it is NOT TRUE
- the coherence theory of truth would say that she did have a JTB because at that time the web of beliefs held by society would have included the belief that the earth is flat, so she did have a JTB, the concept of truth was bound to the belief system of that time.
Is JUSTIFICATION a necessary condition?
- John has a rare gift, he can tell you what day of the week any date in the future will be. for example, he is able to say that 15th March 2123 will be a Monday. he is unable to say how he does this, though he is incredibly accurate.
- Does John KNOW what day it will be? he has a true belief, but with no rational justification
- how he gets the answers right is a mystery, but he is extremely reliable
- so is justification always necessary for knowledge?
What is the first Gettier counter-example with Smith and Jones and how does it prove that JTB conditions are NOT sufficient to be knowledge?
- There are two men, Smith and Jones, applying for a job
- Smith has strong reason to believe Jones will get the job (the boss told him)
- He also has strong evidence that Jones has 10 coins in his pocket, (he saw him counting them out at the vending machine)
- Smith forms the belief that ‘the man who will get the job has 10 coins in his pocket’
- Smith ends up getting the job, and, unbeknownst to Smith, he also had 10 coins in his pocket
- smith’s belief was a)true b)a belief and c) justified
- however, most would say smith did NOT have knowledge because luck was involved+ we don’t want to award knowledge on the basis of luck
- so this shows that all the conditions are not sufficient
Explain Gettier’s second example; Brown in Barcelona
- Smith sees his friend jones driving a ford, so he believes jones owns a ford
- he has another friend called mr brown, he has no idea of mr browns whereabouts
- on the strength of the first belief, he forms a new belief that ‘jones owns a ford or brown is in barcelona’
- Barcelona is chosen at random and this new belief is justified as smith had no reason to think that jones didn’t own a ford
- it turns out jones was renting a hire car, but by coincidence, brown was in barcelona
- his belief was true and justified, but most of us would say he did not know it as it was a case of luck and pure coincidence
- all conditions are individually met, but not jointly sufficient for knowledge
Explain the infallibilism response to the Gettier cases
- Gettier cases rely on luck
- one way to remove the element of luck is to require the justification to be so strong that the truth is guaranteed
- infallibilism is the theory that we should only count things that we cannot rationally doubt as knowledge e.g. 2+2=4, I exist
- infallibilism is not open to gettier cases as none of them would count as knowledge
- even though smith has justification, it is not good enough to provide certainty; smith might have misheard the interviewer, or miscounted the coins
- so there is a possibility of doubt
-some infallibilists say that we should distinguish belief from knowledge; beliefs occur when doubt is possible and knowledge occurs when doubt is impossible, e.g. the knowledge that you are in pain is just a belief to someone else as they can only infer you are in pain
explain a response to infallibilism
-infallibilism is too strict!
- EVERYTHING can be doubted with infallibilism
- ‘water boils at 100c’ can this be doubted? YES; your teachers might have been lying to you, you might have misread the thermometer, you might be a brain in a vat!
- whilst gettier cases show that the tripartite definition set the bar too low, infallibilism sets the bar too high!
- so certainty is not a necessary condition of knowledge
explain the no false lemmas argument against the gettier cases
- a lemma is a premise that is accepted as true in an argument
- gettiers examples involve the use of false lemmas in the justification, so should not be considered examples of knowledge
e.g. in the first case, Smiths belief was based on the false lemma that jones will get the job, the premise is FALSE
e.g. in the second case, smith’s belief that jones owns a ford is also false - this theory adds an extra condition to the tripartite definition; it says knowledge is J+T+B+N (no false lemmas)
- the false lemma theory avoids saying gettier cases count as knowledge
explain a response to the false lemma theory
- fake barn county
- barney is driving through fake barn county, but does not know it is full of 2d barns
- he often thinks he is looking a real barns when he is looking at fake barns - these beliefs are not knowledge because they are not true
- however on one occasion Barney looks at the ONE real barn and thinks ‘theres a barn’.
- in this case his belief is true + is justified from his visual perception + is not inferred from anything false
- according to the no false lemmas definition, barneys belief counts as knowledge
- but this shows no false lemmas must be false, as barney was just lucky in this instance
explain the reliabilism response to the gettier cases
- we trust quality newspapers over gossip columns because it is a more reliable source of information
- we should only award knowledge to beliefs that have been formed by reliable cognitive processes e.g. seeing things up close, reading from trustworthy source
- reliabilism says that knowledge is a true belief formed by a RELIABLE process
- reliable REPLACES the justified condition
- according to reliabilism, smiths belief that jones has 10 coins in his pocket was not formed by a reliable conscious process, his eyes may have misled him
- according to relibilism, John does know what the date will be as his belief is formed by a reliable conscious process
+ reliabilism acknowledges that children and animals can have knowledge e.g. a child knows who its mother is, a seagull knows where to find food - however, most other definitions imply that children + animals cannot have knowledge
- children and animals are capable of forming beliefs via reliable processes e.g. their eyesight, memory, so according to reliabilism are capable of having knowledge
