KNOWLEDGE AND CONDITIONAL ARTICULATION
Ted Everett
SUNY Geneseo
draft 3/29/13
abstract. This paper offers a simple analysis of knowledge statements that vindicates both
infallibilist and contextualist intuitions. When we say "s knows that p" in any context,
we mean that s believes "p" and that it is completely impossible for s to be wrong in this
belief. But when we say "p" in ordinary discourse, we really mean something of the
logical form (A → p), where A represents a conjunction of background assumptions that
varies with context. On this analysis, ordinary knowledge claims are fallible with respect
to their apparent objects, but infallible (if true) with respect to their actual objects.
Here is a very attractive analysis of knowledge: you know something just in case you
believe it and you can’t be wrong. This analysis is attractive for two main reasons. First, it
appeals to our desire for an account of the central concept in epistemology that is intuitive,
simple, and clear. Second, this analysis seems impossible to contradict. Try to find a case in
which someone can reasonably say: "I know it but I could be wrong", "She knows it but it might
be false", or anything of the sort. There aren’t any such cases, which is persuasive evidence that
the infallible-belief analysis is right. As David Lewis puts it in a familiar passage:
If you claim that S knows that P, and yet you grant that S cannot eliminate a certain
possibility in which not-P, it certainly seems as if you have granted that S does not after all
know that P. To speak of fallible knowledge, of knowledge despite uneliminated possibility
of error, just sounds contradictory.1
On the attractive analysis of knowledge, this apparent contradiction is accepted as a
contradiction, not left as a puzzle, since, on this analysis, S knowing that P entails that every
alternative possibility has in fact been eliminated.2
Despite its obvious appeal, most philosophers reject this infallibilism on the grounds that if
it were true, then there couldn't be any knowledge – at least, any knowledge of empirical facts.
For even when we have the best imaginable evidence for what we think we know, it is always at
least conceivable to us that we are brains in vats or in some other way being undetectably
deceived. So, since we can never rule out absolutely every possibility of error, it looks like
knowledge can never be attained. And this skeptical conclusion is not just undesirable; it also
strikes us, on reflection, as highly implausible. For we attribute knowledge successfully to
people all the time, despite known possibilities of error. It seems to follow that we must mean
something by "knowledge", at least in ordinary discourse, that is less strict than infallible belief.
We have been trying for decades to produce a criterion of knowledge that is weaker than
infallibility, but that will still suffice intuitively. No consensus has emerged on how this can be
done. The traditional "justified true belief" analysis won’t work, because, as Gettier cases
demonstrate, we can be well justified in believing things that turn out to be true, but when we
discover that our means of justification fails to rule out possibilities of error, we no longer wish
1
Lewis (1996), p. 549.
Unger (1971) is the probably best known current philosopher to have held the view that knowledge is infallible
belief. Panayot Butchvarov (1970) makes the most sustained and rigorous argument available for this position.
2
1
to say that we have knowledge. And it won’t work for us to accept any probabilistic degree of
justification short of total certainty, because, as lottery cases demonstrate, once any positive
probability of error is admitted, claims to knowledge also fail to satisfy our intuitions. Further
analyses offered in terms of appropriate belief causation, the absence of defeaters, or the
conclusiveness of reasons all seem to work intuitively when they imply that the believer
absolutely must be right, and all seem to fail when they allow for possible mistakes.
Lewis and others take the view that whether someone has knowledge (that is, whether
"knowledge" and its cognates are being truthfully applied) depends on the linguistic context in
which the claim is being made. This contextualist approach to reconciling our infallibilist
intuitions about knowledge with our evidently fallibilist usage of the word "knowledge" has
found a considerable following among epistemologists.3 What happens on this view is that
within the most inclusive linguistic context, that of philosophical discussions about knowledge,
knowledge does entail infallibility, because all logically possible opportunities for error are
pertinent to such discussions. But in the more restricted contexts of ordinary discourse,
knowledge can still be attributed truthfully in the presence of whatever possible mistakes those
contexts rule out as irrelevant or inappropriate. So, when I tell my daughter that I know I left a
six-pack of beer in the refrigerator last night, I am speaking truthfully despite irrelevant
possibilities of error, such as that the beer I bought was actually mislabeled root beer, or that I
only dreamt that I had put it in the fridge. But when I say the same thing to a skeptical
philosopher, such odd uneliminated alternatives have to be taken into account, and this higher,
more inclusive standard makes the negation of my statement true. The main problem with
theories along these lines is that they do not tell us which of two such mutually contradictory
statements is the actual truth. Do I know that I left some beer in the refrigerator last night, or do
I not? It seems wrong to say there is just no answer to this question outside of one or another
context of discussion. This would mean that there is no such thing as knowledge simpliciter, and
surely, we all desire to have knowledge as a matter of objective fact, not just to make true
statements using the term.
I suggest that we shift our attention from the meaning of the word "knowledge" to the
question of what it is that we are really claiming to know. Perhaps we do mean different things
by the same knowledge statement made in different contexts, but the source of that ambiguity
lies among the objects of our knowledge attributions, not in our criteria for knowledge itself. If
this is right, then we can perhaps preserve as univocal the meaning of "knowledge" that our
intuitions seem to demand, while still accepting something like weaker standards of truth for
some whole knowledge statements. Here is a theory with four principles:
(1) infallibility. The attractive analysis of knowledge is correct: knowledge is simply
belief plus the total impossibility of error.
(2) qualification. When we assert something of the form "s knows that p" in ordinary
discourse, we do not mean that s knows that p categorically, that is, entirely without
qualification. The same is true for "s believes that p", and, in most cases, "p" itself.
(3) conditional articulation. What we do ordinarily mean by "p" when we assert that "p",
or that someone believes or knows that "p", is instead something of the conditional form
3
Unger (1984) himself changed from his earlier view to a position neutral between infallibilism and contextualism.
2
(A → p), where A represents a conjunction of background assumptions that varies with
context.
(4) anti-skepticism. Skeptical arguments with respect to ordinary statements like "p" will
appear to be sound only if we insist that "p" means p categorically, and will clearly be
unsound when we accept that "p" means the appropriate conditional qualification of p.4
I grant that it is not intuitively obvious that the objects of all ordinary knowledge claims ought to
be seen as conditionals. But I think that this is because the conditionality of ordinary statements
is so familiar as to be almost invisible to us, like water is to fish. Here is the simplest sort of
case:
A: What are you going to do if you ever get out of prison?
B: I'm going to become a tobacconist.
It should be clear immediately that B's statement, though articulated categorically, is equivalent
in speaker's meaning to the conditional statement:
B: If I ever get out of prison, I'm going to become a tobacconist.
The antecedent of this conditional has just been explicitly posited by A as a question, which
obviously changes the context of discussion to one in which B's response will properly be taken
as conditional on that assumption. But the assumption could have been supplied at any point
earlier in the same conversation, viz.:
A: Suppose you're going to get out of prison at some point.
B. All right.
…
A. What are you going to do for a living?
B: I'm going to become a tobacconist.
Alternatively, A and B, who are long-time cellmates, may have been conversing for years about
what they'll do if and when they get out of prison, to the extent that this has now become a
thoughtless presupposition to all of their discussions of the future. Under these circumstances,
even if it is spoken entirely without preamble, the statement:
B: I'm going to become a tobacconist.
still really means the same thing as:
B: If I ever get out of prison, I'm going to become a tobacconist.
4
This theory follows Yourgrau (1983) and Sanford (1991) in claiming that even if our ordinary knowledge claims
can be interpreted only relative to some sort of context, our "absolute" (Yourgrau) or "proper" (Sanford) knowledge,
such as it is, can always be expressed non-contextually, in the form of appropriate conditionals. Both philosophers
deny, though, that this helps us with skeptical arguments against the knowledge claims we care about. A more
elaborate exposition of the theory can be found in Everett (2006).
3
The situation is no different for propositional attitudes other than simple assertion. Thus, given
the same conditions of discussion,
B: I believe that I'm going to become a tobacconist.
really means the same as:
B: I believe that if I ever get out of prison, I'm going to become a tobacconist.
and:
B: I know that I'm going to become a tobacconist.
really means the same as:
B: I know that if I ever get out of prison, I'm going to become a tobacconist.
The background assumptions to a speaker's statement are not always clear to everyone involved
in the discussion. If any confusion arises, the normal way to expose it is by probing the speaker,
either directly with questions or by challenging some of his apparent assumptions. Thus with the
skeptical prison guard C who pauses on his rounds before the cell of A and B and interrupts their
conversation:
B: I know that I'm going to become a tobacconist.
C: Oh, yeah? How do you know that you'll ever even get out of prison? Hiding a file in
there?
B: No, I just mean that if I ever do get out of prison, then I'm going to become a
tobacconist. That's all I'm claiming to know.
Here, C brings one of the background assumptions to A and B's conversation to the foreground
as a question, and B unproblematically responds by rearticulating his initial claim to knowledge
in explicitly conditional form.
We cannot just assume anything we like, of course, and get away with it. For our
discussions to be useful, there must always be a logical gap between the assumptions that we
share in a discursive context and the statements that we make within that context. Thus, if other,
more interesting alternative possibilities are presented to B, for example that he might not be able
to pass the rigorous tobacconist's examination, or that as a convict he might fail to secure the
proper license from the government, he can always claim to have assumed that these things won't
present a problem for him. But such contingencies are plainly relevant to any claim he makes to
know what he will do if he gets out of jail, and are presumably not being taken for granted by his
listeners.5 In light of such backtracking, B's initial claim to knowledge would quickly lose its
interest, even by the low standards of prison conversation. Therefore, if he seriously claims to
5
It is also possible that B is simply lying, and fully intends to return to his earlier life of crime should he get out of
prison. This would make his claim to knowledge just as false on the conditional analysis as on the categorical
interpretation.
4
know that he'll become a tobacconist, he must also claim to know that he will meet the usual
requirements.6
Lewis says famously that knowledge is "elusive", in that ordinary claims to knowledge
tend to lose their credibility whenever certain uneliminated possibilities of error are explicitly or
implicitly brought into the discussion. This is because it is not always clear even to ourselves
which of our normal assumptions qualify our claims to knowledge, and which do not. And the
deeper in the background our assumptions lie, the harder it is even to call them to mind without
reflection or discussion. So, we are sometimes confused about what we really know, really
believe, or really intend to convey by ordinary statements when we are unexpectedly confronted
with skeptical questions. Thus with B and C:
C: Then what if you get crushed by a meteor on the very day you get released? There's
not much point in tobacconizing if you're dead.
B: Sure, of course. If I get killed before I get the chance, then I obviously can't become a
tobacconist.
C: So, you don't really know that you'll become one, even if you do get out of prison.
B: Well…okay, I guess I don't.
Here, B's knowledge about his future plans "eludes" him, at least momentarily, when C suddenly
raises a possibility of error that B hadn't been contemplating, and B feels forced to withdraw his
claim to knowledge in light of that uneliminated possibility. But if B gives the matter further
thought, he may well conclude that he was in fact only relying on a reasonable assumption that
we all make when we talk about our plans, and continue:
B: Actually, all I was claiming to know is that if I ever get out of prison, and if I am not
prevented from doing so by sudden death or other unpredictable interruptions, then I'll
become a tobacconist. That's how you should have understood my statement.
What can C say to this? Perhaps he can keep looking for deeper challenges to B's background
assumptions:
C: Then what if you're only a brain in a vat, and some evil genius not less powerful than
deceitful has employed his whole energies in deceiving you?
But then B, now conscious of the role of background assumptions in meaning, can readily
respond:
B: Okay. Here is what I really think I know, and all that I actually meant to convey by
my initial statement: If I am not a brain in a vat or otherwise undetectably deceived,
and if I ever get out of prison, and if I am not crushed by a meteor or otherwise
unpredictably interrupted, then I will become a tobacconist.
What is happening in this discussion is that B is being led, one step at a time, to rearticulate his
original statement about knowing he'll become a tobacconist as an explicit conditional, with
6
Some such assumptions might be acceptable in a less serious discussion, for example if the prisoners were only
daydreaming about what they would choose to do if nothing at all got in their way.
5
more and more of his background assumptions explicated into its conjunctive antecedent – all the
while bringing him closer and closer to expressing what he really believes he knows, and what
he really meant for his listeners to understand in the first place. Ultimately, under conscientious
skeptical questioning, B's fully analyzed claim to knowledge will be one that he intends to be
infallible.7 He may be mistaken about this, but he will mean that he cannot be mistaken.
Among philosophers, skeptical challenges are not typically presented in the gradual,
assumption-by-assumption way that C presented them to B. With us, it's usually more like:
D:
E:
D:
E:
I know that I have hands.
How do you know that you are not just a brain in a vat?
I don't.
So how can you know that you have hands, given that you might have nothing but a
brain?
D: (pause) Let me get back to you on this.
But I should think that once it has been brought to our attention, we professional philosophers
can learn the proper technique just as easily as a convicted felon.
Consider what we actually mean when we claim to know such things as that we have
hands. Are we really claiming to know things like this absolutely without qualification, so that
we know we have hands even if we are just brains in vats? For if that is what we really mean,
then we are obviously wrong. In light of the standard skeptical hypotheses, such things simply
cannot be known in categorical form. But, as the discussion above is meant to show, this is not
the way that we mean such knowledge claims in ordinary discourse – and, in any case, nothing
forces us to mean them that way in philosophy. What is wrong with our asserting that in
claiming to know that we have hands, we really only mean to claim to know that if we are not
undetectably deceived, then we have hands? Surely, it makes more sense to say that we mean
knowledge of the qualified proposition, while letting knowledge be infallible belief, than to insist
that we mean knowledge of the unqualified propositions, and to view knowledge itself as either
unattainable or an elusive mystery.
Some philosophers may still insist that they really intend their ordinary knowledge claims
to be absolutely unconditional – in which case they can only be making false claims. But any
philosopher who chooses to mean what I believe that most of us already mean is free to do so,
and to make this meaning clear to interlocutors. In fact, if you would like a rigorous defense
against all future skeptical attacks on your ordinary claims to knowledge, you need only to say
this once:
From now on, everything I state, believe, or claim to know shall be conditional on the
assumption that I am not being undetectably deceived.8
7
It might be thought that, on this analysis, any claim to knowledge that depends on false assumptions is infallible
automatically, since (A → p) together with ~A logically entails p, for any A and p. But this problem arises only if
we understand (A → p) as a material conditional, and this is not what people usually mean when they employ
indicative conditionals in ordinary speech, and not what I intend by (A → p). What we actually do mean in our
ordinary usage of conditionals has not been settled, but one reasonable interpretation is offered by Robert Stalnaker
(1968). On Stalnaker's subjunctive analysis, (A → p) in its ordinary usage means that p is true in the closest
possible world (i.e. the one most like our own) in which A is true. This allows conditionals with false antecedents to
come out either true or false.
8
[Acknowledgements]
6
REFERENCES
Butchvarov, P. 1970. The Concept of Knowledge. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Everett, T. 2006. Antiskeptical Conditionals. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 73:
505-536.
Lewis, D. 1996. Elusive knowledge. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 74: 549-567.
Sanford, D. 1991. Proper knowledge, Dretske and his Critics, ed. B. McLaughlin. Oxford:
Oxford University Press: 38-51.
Stalnaker, R. 1968. A theory of conditionals. In Rescher, N., editor, Studies in Logical Theory.
Oxford: Blackwell.
Unger, P. 1971. A defense of skepticism. Philosophical Review 80: 198-211.
Unger, P. 1984. Philosophical Relativity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Yourgrau, P. 1983. Knowledge and relevant alternatives. Synthese 55: 55-70.
7