The analysis of knowledge
Kinds of
knowledge
Acquaintance knowledge. This is knowledge of someone or something such as knowing Bob or knowing Hastings. In some languages this
kind of knowing can be expressed with its own verb e.g. in French the verb connaitre is used for acquaintance or kennen in German rather
than the verb savoir (Fr) or wissen (Ger).
Ability knowledge. This is knowing how to do something. For example, you may know how to play the piano.
The classical
analysis of
propositional
knowledge
Challenges –
are the
conditions
individually
necessary?
Propositional knowledge. This is knowing that some proposition (p) is true. Roughly, a proposition is a declarative sentence which can be
true or false such as ‘Paul is a teacher’. Less roughly, a proposition is what is expressed by a declarative sentence. Propositional knowledge
is knowledge of the facts.
The tripartite definition of knowledge – S knows that p if and only if (1) S believes that p; (2) p is true; (3) the belief that p is justified. Each
condition is individually necessary (if it’s absent then one cannot have knowledge) and they are jointly sufficient (when one has a justified true
belief one is guaranteed to have knowledge).
Motivation – knowledge has an authority that surpasses mere belief. To know that p means that one has a true belief with an account,
explanation or justification grounding our confidence in its truth. Propositional knowledge aims to tell us about reality. This means we must
have belief that p to know that p as the role of a belief is to represent how things are. Beliefs aim to true as false beliefs cannot play their
representational role. One cannot know something that is false, even if one (understandably and justifiably) holds a false belief to be true. For
example, there were lots of good reasons why people believed the Earth was at the centre of the solar system and claimed that they knew.
But, it is false and they never knew. Finally, justification is required if we are to be confident in our belief being true. In particular, we need to
distinguish true beliefs held by luck from knowledge.
Justification – difficult to motivate the view that knowledge is just true belief as this collapses the distinction between knowledge and holding
a true belief. If knowledge just is true belief, then we must allow lucky or bizarrely derived true beliefs as knowledge. There is, though, a worry
in explaining what level of confidence we need from the justification of our beliefs. One influential view (held by e.g. Descartes) is that we need
a foundational set of absolutely certain beliefs immune from doubt to provide an ultimate basis for justification.
Truth – again, it is difficult to motivate the view that we can know without having a true belief if that means we could know something false. A
more promising (and plausible) claim is that we should give up the underlying notion of an absolute or universally objective truth (sometimes
referred to as Truth with a capital T). Instead, what counts as true is indexed or relativised to a particular community or context. Note, this is
not so much giving up the classic definition of knowledge as clarifying one of its terms. We should also note that relativism is a position in
need of motivation.
Belief – Radford has argued that one can know without believing. Williamson has argued that knowledge cannot be analysed in terms of
other concepts. Knowledge is a primitive concept. It is the most general factive state, not a belief plus some added conditions. We understand
what a belief is by analysing it in relation to knowledge. To believe that p is to take it that p is true. If I know that p then p is true whereas
believing that p allows for p being false.
Each of these challenges is controversial and by no means a decisive criticism of knowledge as JTB.
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Challenges –
the
conditions
are not
jointly
sufficient
Internalism
and ext
ernalism
Gettier – Gettier cases present examples where someone has a justified true belief which seems (obviously) not to count as knowledge – the
job example (Gettier); last year’s final on TV (Dancy); Russell’s watch.
The challenge is to strengthen or supplement the justification criterion or replace it in a modified theory of knowledge.
There are different approaches to the question of what converts a true belief into knowledge. Responses to Gettier (and Radford) reflect both
of these approaches.
Internalism about knowledge and justification holds that if you are justified in believing something, you have the ability to access and reflect
on the justification. Intuitively, the idea is that if you have a justified belief, you should be aware of what that justification is. You should be able
to think about it and tell other people it – about why you believe what you believe. Justification is essentially a relationship between mental
states, typically beliefs.
Externalism about knowledge and justification maintains that a true belief counts as knowledge when it has been produced in the right way.
The externalist appeals to some relation between the way the belief is formed and what the belief is about. Intuitively, the idea is that I know
that p when my true belief has been produced by a suitably reliable mechanism or causal process (e.g. my perceptual system). Someone can
know that p without knowing that they know.
Responding
to Gettier:
infallibilism
Infallibilism – belief is justified when it is absolutely certain (beyond doubt) or when there is a chain of justification ending with such an
indubitable belief. This is a foundationalist and internalist approach to justification. Some beliefs are special (foundational). They don’t need
justification. We justify any other belief by showing that it follows from the foundational beliefs. This is the approach of Descartes who
identifies a set of foundational beliefs in those ideas we grasp clearly and distinctly.
It looks like Gettier cases can be addressed by explaining that in such cases the beliefs lack the right kind of certainty to qualify as justified.
But – we might dispute the view claim that knowing that p entails that one cannot be mistaken that p is the case (as opposed to the
uncontroversial view that when I know that p I am not mistaken, which follows from the impossibility of knowing something false). One may
argue that we should agree with Descartes that there is a set of beliefs about which one cannot be mistaken. However, there is now the
problem of whether it is possible to move beyond that set of infallible beliefs to justifying our other beliefs about the world. If not, then we solve
the Gettier problem but at the cost of excluding virtually all of our true beliefs about the world as knowledge.
Responding
to Gettier: no
false lemma
The no false lemmas approach – on one knows that p when one has a justified true belief and one has not inferred the belief from anything
false. In this form, this approach deals with Gettier’s job example, which involves an inference from true justified beliefs. But it cannot deal with
Goldman’s barn county example or watching last year’s final. In these cases justified true belief does not arise as a matter of inference. I form
my true belief through my seeing the barn or the match and the normal working of my perceptual system in normal conditions justifies the
belief. Yet, in such cases it does not seem that one does know that I’m looking at a barn (it’s lucky) or that I know the result of the match
(again luck and strange circumstances). Moreover, even if one insists we do make inferences in such cases (e.g. I am watching the match.
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The BBC is a highly reliable broadcaster. So, the result is 2-0), there are no false lemmas or stages (beliefs) in the reasoning.
Responding
to Gettier:
reliabilism
There is a further worry. In excluding any false beliefs from the inferential reasoning taking us to a knowledge claim we need to specify which
beliefs are relevant. If this boils down to saying one has enough justification when one as the right relevant true beliefs, we’ve hardly provided
a response to Gettier. The challenge is to say what that kind of belief is.
Reliabilism – one knows that p when a true belief is reliably produced. This externalist approach replaces the justification criterion with one
focusing on the process giving rise to my having the true belief that p. This provides the resources to address the Gettier challenge. In
general terms, the cases will not count as instances of knowledge because the true belief is not generated in the right way. The immediate
need is to specify ‘the right way’. An influential suggestion is that knowledge is a true belief caused by a reliable cognitive process. The
fact that p causes the (true) belief that p. This causal theory of knowledge addresses some Gettier cases such as watching the match from
last year. My belief that the result is 2-0 is not caused by the fact the result is 2-0. However, the barn county case does not seem to be
addressed. My true belief that it’s a barn in front of me is caused by the fact there’s a barn via a reliable cognitive process (my perceptual
system). Yet, it’s only luck that makes the belief true. Had I been looking at any other ‘barn’ I would have had the same belief caused by the
same reliable process, but it would be false. It would have been caused by a barn façade.
The causal theory can be made more sophisticated by the addition of the requirement that one can discriminate between relevant possibilities.
In the weird circumstances of Barn County (and in the case of watching a recording of last year’s final) you cannot tell what the possibilities
are as there’s no way of discriminating the facades from the real barn. Now, though, we need some principled way of determining what counts
as a relevant possibility.
Responding
to Gettier:
tracking the
truth
This worry generalises to the problem of specifying what it means to say that belief is caused in the right way. It is easy to generate examples
of true beliefs caused by the relevant fact, which seem not to be cases of knowledge. Examples of‘deviant causal chains’ illustrate this. A
precious vase is hidden in a room with a camera trained on it that feeds an image to a computer that generates a hologram. I believe there is
a vase in the room and the vase causes my belief but I surely don’t know as I mistakenly think the vase-hologram is real.
Robert Nozick and the conditional theory of knowledge - The problem cases we have encountered arise because someone can have a
true belief connected to the fact it’s about, but they have it because of luck or bizarre circumstances. Gettier is right that JTB is not sufficient
for knowledge and externalism is on the right track. But the appeals to reliable processes and causal connections yield their own problems.
Nozick suggests that we need a test for a true belief that will determine whether it’s just a fluke or luck that one holds it. We need an analysis
of knowledge so that is sensitive to what one would believe if circumstances were changed. That is, an analysis which tracks the truth of p
through changed circumstances. The conditional test for knowing that p is that you would give up the belief when it’s false and retain it in
changed circumstances when it’s true. So, you know that p if
1
p is true;
2
you believe that p;
3
in the situation you are in, or a similar situation, if p were not true, then you would not believe that p;
4
in the situation you are in, or a similar situation, if p were true, then you would believe that p.
This seems to deal with the Gettier case because were things to be slightly different so that p were false (e.g. the result is actually 1-0), you
would still believe that p – and thus fail to satisfy condition 3.
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A couple of problems to note – we can generate cases of deviant tracking in which I qualify as knowing that p while this seems intuitively
wrong. Consider the holographic vase again. I see the hologram and believe there is a vase in the room. Suppose circumstances were slightly
different with it still being true that the vase is producing the hologram. I would still form the belief that there is a vase in room. Suppose now
that there is no vase in the room. There would be no hologram and I would not form the belief that there is a vase in the room. So, on this
account, I do know that there is a vase in the room as I have satisfied each of conditions 1-4. But, intuitively, I do not know.
Virtue
epitemology
Second (and this is trickier) this approach entails the denial of the principle of closure. This principle says that if I know the premises, and I
validly deduce the conclusion from the premises, then I know the conclusion. To deny this principle means that deduction does not always
produce knowledge, which many find an absurd conclusion. But the tracking theory does seem to deny it. Consider the following. (1) I know I
have two hands and (2) I know that if I have two hands, then I am not a brain in a vat. So, given (1) and (2) I know (3) that I am not a brain in
vat. Call (3) proposition p and apply the conditional test. If I were a brain in a vat (i.e. if I were in a situation in which p is not true) I would
continue to believe that I am not a brain in a vat. So, I don’t know I am not a brain in a vat.
A recent development of reliabilist thinking this emphasises the role of our cog Itive or intellectual virtues in the acquisition of knowledge.
These virtues are features of our cognitive capacities – our disposition or ability to exercise our perceptual systems accurately, the reliability of
memory, and the rationality of thought processes. One knows that p when
1
p is true;
2
you believe that p;
3
your true belief is a result of you exercising your intellectual virtues..
Following Ernest Sosa we can say that we aim for our beliefs to be accurate (true) and to be held because we have exercised our intellectual
capacities or virtues properly - with adroitness . We have knowledge when we have an apt belief - one has a true belief because one used
their intellectual virtues in forming it.
This approach can address Gettier cases by pointing out that in e.g. the Barn County case the true belief was not formed through the exercise
of intellectual virtue because you do not have the capacity to discriminate facades and real barns. The true belief that one is looking at a barn
does not count as knowledge.
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