The Belief or Acceptance Condition

The basic rationale for this first general condition is quite straightforward:
someone who is in serious doubt as to whether a particular proposition is true or perhaps
even more obviously who has never so much as considered or entertained that
proposition can surely not be correctly said to have knowledge of it. If i am completely
uncertain about whether it will rain tomorrow, then i do not know that it will or that it
wont. And if it has never so much as occurred to me that my roof might be leaking then
again i plainly do not know that it s even if in fact it is leaking and even if i have what
would be good evidence for this being so if i were to recognize it as such (there are
damp spots on the rug and distinctive streaks on the walls).
The most obvious way to satisfy a condition of this general sort would be forr the person
in question to be in the conscious state of explicity considering and assenting to the
proposition in question. This might invova as the fornulation just given seems to suggest,
a two stage process for wxample my wife suggests me that perhaps the roof is leaking,
and after considering the evidencesort

it is not the only way. People can and know hos many things at a particular time that
htey do not have explixitly in mind at that time.
Occurent Belied, which is what happens when the person has the proposition explicitly
in mind and accepts or assesnts to it
dispositional belief, where the person does not have the proposition explicitly in mind
but is disposed to accept or assent to it, would accept or assent to it if the issue was
raised.
Rather then defining dispositional belief in the way suggested earlier, it should be
specified insteas as the dispositional state in wwhich a. One has previously explicitly
considered and conscioulsly accepted or assented to the oriposition in question, and b.
As a direct result of this prior acceptance or assent would accept or assent to it again if
the question were explicitly raised.
Condition one of the standard conception of knoledge shold be understood to require
that the person in question either explisitly and conciously accepts ir else belives the
roposition in question at the time in question.

A digression
on Method
there is an
important
and difficult
issue of
phoilosophiacal method pertaining to this last point, one that is indeed also relevant to
the earlierexamples and this as good a place as any to discuss it.

The apparent upshot of this discussion is that the rtraditional concepton of knowledge is
seriously problematic with regard to the strength of the reason or justification that
should be required fro knoledge (and correlatively eith regard to the proper strenght f
the belief or acceptance condition) we seem forced to choose between a a aview of
knloledge that is so demanding that few if any of our ordinary beliefs even come close to
satisfying it and b a view that leaves the required level of justification unspecified and
probably unspecifiabe, and that has other serious problems as weel in this way, the
concept of knoledge turns out to be something of a mess.
This result might seem to seriously threaten the whole enterprise of epistemology,
leaving it without any clearly defined subject matter. I bekive however that the correct
conclusion is substantially less dire. What reflection on this priblem seems to me to
suggest is instead that the comcept of knollwdge, though it provides a necessary starting
point for epistemological reflection, is much less ultimately important n relation to the
main epistemological issues than it has usually been tought to be. For whichever of the
two main candidates for an account of the concept of knolwdge should turn justification
for our beliefs of various kinds and how just srong uch reasons r jusstifications in fact
turn out to be. This will be so whether we think of our cognitive goal as apprioximating
as closely as possible to the Olympian ideal of the strong, cartesian coonceptopn or as
seeking to achieve the ill defined level pescribed by thr modified weak conception. And
if we are unable to decide firmly between those two conceptions (or even come to
suspect that there is no clearly correct choice to be made ) the ain question just
mentioned - a. Whether we have reasons or justifications in light of which our various
beliefs are likely to be true and b. How strong or compelling such justification is will
be mo less urgent or important
for this reason, most of our concern in the succeding cheters will be with issues
pernetratoing to reasons of justificationa siwth the concep of knoledge falling very mch
into the background. We
THE PROBLEM OF INDUCTION.