Unit 8: Knowledge

Chris Heathwood
Office: Hellems 192
heathwood@colorado.edu

What Well Cover in Unit 8

I.

The Nature of Knowledge

A. What is a theory of knowledge?
B. Plato on Knowledge
1. Theaetetus Theory of Knowledge
2. Socrates Refutation of Theaetetus
3. Platos Theory of Knowledge
C. Gettiers Refutation of Plato
II. Humes Problem of Induction

The Three Fundamental

Questions of Philosophy
1. What is there?

(Metaphysics)

2. What should I do?

(Ethics)

3. How can I know?

(Epistemology)

Some Questions in
Epistemology
1. What is knowledge?
2. What is epistemic justification?
3. What are the fundamental sources of
knowledge?
4. What are the limits of human
knowledge?
5. What is the status of skepticism?

The Nature of Knowledge

Our First Question:

What Is Knowledge?
Putting the question this way makes the
question sound really hard. Here are two
other ways to put it:
What is it to know something?
Under what conditions is it true that a person
qualifies as knowing that something is the
case?

An answer to this question will be a

theory of knowledge.

What is a theory of
knowledge?
A theory of knowledge is a statement of
the conditions under which a person
knows that something is the case.
It is a statement of this form:

S knows that p if and only if

____S____p____ .

Theories are knowledge

are supposed to reveal the
nature of knowledge.

Further Clarification of the

Question What is Knowledge?
Three Ways the Word Knows Is Used:
Bob knows how to ride a bicycle.
Bob knows the president of the U.S.
Bob knows that the earth is round.
The theories of knowledge were looking at are
about the third kind of knowledge called
knowledge that, or propositional knowledge.

How Do We Go About
Constructing (and Evaluating)
a Theory of Knowledge?
Analogy: Bachelorhood.
What is bachelorhood?
What is it to be a bachelor?
What are the conditions under which a person
qualifies as a bachelor?
What a theory of bachelorhood looks like:
x is a bachelor if and only if _____x_____.

The Socratic Method, or the

Method of Counterexamples
A generalization is proposed
We try to come up with a counterexample
to it i.e., a concrete example that
counters, or shows false, the generalization
just proposed
If we do, we have refuted the generalization
(but we might use the counterexample to
help us improve on the generalization just
refuted)
If we cant, perhaps the generalization is
true.

What Well Cover in Unit 3

I.

The Nature of Knowledge

A. What is a theory of knowledge?
B. Plato on Knowledge
1. Theaetetus Theory of Knowledge
2. Socrates Refutation of Theaetetus
3. Platos Theory of Knowledge
C. Gettiers Refutation of Plato
II. Humes Problem of Induction

Plato on Knowledge

Plato (428-347 BC)

The best known ancient Greek
philosopher
Student of Socrates; teacher of Aristotle
Wrote about 23 philosophical dialogues
Famous doctrine: the Theory of the
Forms
Western philosophy consists of a series
of footnotes to Plato.
- A. N. Whitehead (1929)

excerpt from the

Theaetetus
by

Plato
translated by F.M. Cornford

Socrate s:

Well, that is precisely what I am puzzled about. I cannot

make out to my own satisfaction what knowledge is. Can
we answer that question. What do you think?

Socrates:

But the question you were asked, Theaetetus, was not, what
are the objects of knowledge, nor yet now many sorts of
knowledge there are. We did not want to count them, but to
find out what the thing itself knowledge is. Is there
nothing to that?

Theaetetus: No, you are quite right.

Socrates:

Then tell me, what definition can we give with the least risk
of contradicting ourselves?

Theaetetus: The one we tried before, Socrates. I have nothing else to

suggest.
Socrates:

What was that?

Theaetetus: That true belief is knowledge. Surely there can at least be

no mistake in believing what is true and the consequences
are always satisfactory.

Theaetetus Theory of
Knowledge
The True Belief Theory:
S knows that p if and only if
(i) S believes that p; and
(ii) p is true.

Socrates Argument Against

the True Belief Theory
Soc: You will find a whole profession to prove that true belief is not knowledge.

The profession of those paragons of intellect known as orators and lawyers.

There you have men who use their skill to produce conviction, not by
instruction, but by making people believe whatever they want them to
believe. You can hardly imagine teachers so clever as to be able, in the short
time allowed by the clock, to instruct their hearers thoroughly in the true
facts of a case of robbery or other violence which those hearers had not
witnessed.
when a jury is rightly convinced of facts which can be known only by an
eyewitness, then, judging by hearsay and accepting a true belief, they are
judging without knowledge, although, if they find the right verdict, their
conviction is correct?
But if true belief and knowledge were the same thing, the best of jurymen
could never have a correct belief without knowledge. It now appears that
they must be different things.

Socrates Argument Against

The True Belief Theory
The Argument
1. If the True Belief Theory is true, then the
jury knows that I committed the crime.
2. But they dont know I committed the
crime.
3. Therefore, the True Belief Theory is not
true.

Further Counterexamples to the True

Belief Theory of Knowledge:
a. My belief that our football team will
win their next game.
b. Groundhogs Day example.
Each case shows that true belief is not
sufficient for knowledge.

The Lesson:
a belief that is true
just because of luck does not
qualify as knowledge.

Platos Theory of Knowledge

Socrates: So when a man gets a hold of the true notion
of something without an account, his mind
does think truly of it, but he does not know it,
for if one cannot give and receive an account
of a thing, one has no knowledge of that
thing. But when he also has got hold of an
account, all this becomes possible to him and
he is fully equipped with knowledge. a
true notion with the addition of an account is
knowledge?

Platos Theory of Knowledge

The JTB Theory
S knows that p if and only if
(i) S believes that p;
(ii) p is true; and
(iii) S is justified in believing that p.

Comments About the JTB

Theory
a.
b.
c.

How it avoids the counterexamples to the

True Belief Theory
Theory of Justification still needed.
Some possible ways to be justified in
believing something:
i.
ii.
iii.

d.
e.

perception
introspection
memory

iv. testimony
v. induction
vi. deduction

Theory accepted for thousands of years.

Theory no longer accepted today.

What Well Cover in Unit 3

I.

The Nature of Knowledge

A. What is a theory of knowledge?

B. Plato on Knowledge
1. Theaetetus Theory of Knowledge
2. Socrates Refutation of Theaetetus
3. Platos Theory of Knowledge
C. Gettiers Refutation of Plato
II. The Problem of Induction

Gettiers Refutation of Plato

Edmund Gettier (1927- )

Not the best known contemporary American
philosopher, but pretty well know.
Student of his teachers at Cornell; teacher of
me at UMass.
Wrote just one 3-page paper.
Famous doctrine: Justified true belief aint
knowledge.
A. N. Whitehead (1929) probably didnt say
anything about Gettier.
Really good at badminton.

A Gettier-style Counterexample
STEP 1. Suppose I see your drivers
license, an Alaska drivers license.
This seems to justify me in believing
(1) You are from Alaska.
Note: this assumes that justification does
not entail truth.
(That is, that what justifies me in believing
something need not absolutely guarantee
that that thing is true.)

A Gettier-style Counterexample
STEP 2. Now suppose that on the basis of
my belief that
(1) You are from Alaska
I come to believe that
(2) Someone in my class is from Alaska.
It seems that I am justified in believing (2).
This is due to the following principle:
If S is justified in believing p, and p entails q,
and S believes q on the basis of Ss belief
that p, then S is justified in believing q.

A Gettier-style Counterexample
STEP 3. Now suppose that the drivers
license I saw was in fact a fake ID, and that
(1) You are from Alaska
is in fact false.
(Note: I have a false justified belief in (1).)
(Note also: the JTB Theory thus far implies,
correctly, that I do not know (1).)

A Gettier-style Counterexample
STEP 4. Finally, suppose that, just by
chance, someone else in the class really is
from Alaska.
In other words, my belief that
(2) Someone in my class is from Alaska
actually turns out to be true.
It is true just by luck.

A Gettier-style Counterexample
STEP 5. Lets ask some questions about
this proposition:
(2) Someone in my class is from Alaska.
FIRST QUESTION: Would you say that I
know (2)?
ANSWER: No.
SECOND SET OF QUESTIONS:
YES
Is (2) true?
YES
Do I believe (2)?
Am I justified in believing (2)? YES

A Gettier-style Counterexample
STEP 6: Thus, bringing it all together:
I have a justified true belief in (2), but I dont
know (2).

In the form of a little argument

A Gettier-style Argument Against JTB:
1. If the JTB Theory is true, then I know that
someone in our class is from Alaska.
2. But its not true that I know that someone in
our class is from Alaska.
3. Therefore, the JTB Theory is not true.

Other Gettier-style Examples

The Hallucination
Russells Clock
The Sheep in the Field

A Way to Save the JTB Theory

Note that what all the examples have in
common: the subject has highly
reliable, but not infallible, evidence for
the proposition believed.
To say that e is infallible evidence for p
is to say that e entails p.
Recall that Gettiers argument assumed
that a person can be justified in
believing something without having
infallible evidence for it.

A Way to Save the JTB Theory

But consider this thesis about
justification:
Infallibilism: S is justified in believing p
only if Ss evidence for p entails p.
If Infallibilism is true, then Gettiers
argument against JTB fails.
But is Infallibilism true?