A document with essay plans for the most common essay-style questions that will come up in your AS level philosophy exam.
Demonstrates how the argument should be set out for each question and also the arguments that may be posited in thorough detail to write the essay.
Can confidently say, from pe...
What is propositional knowledge? (15 marks)
Model 1
Intro: In my essay I will conclude that….
Why JTB
o T VERY briefly
o Discussion re ‘diffident school boy’ (‘Tom’). Is ‘Belief a necessary condition?
o Why is J necessary / why TB by themselves are not jointly sufficient.
Why JTB isn’t sufficient.
o Smith (Sm) and Jones (Jo). JTB fails to rule out cases of epistemic luck
Why JTB+ isn’t necessary.
o Infallibilism: Adding to the original JTB account to rule out epistemic luck.
o But rules out empirical knowledge by definition.
o This is illegitimate. Doctors.
Nozick’s reliabilism:
Why reliabilism is a radical break with the tradition (replaces the j-condition).
What Nozick’s reliabilsim is (truth-tracking)
How it rules out the Gettier case of Sm and Jo.
Conclusion: Nozick’s gives an account of propositional knowledge.
,What is Propositional Knowledge?
Intro:
In my essay, I will conclude that propositional knowledge is best defined by Nozick’s counterfactual/
truth tracking account of knowledge. I will discuss:
- The JTB account of knowledge, assessing each condition
- Why the conditions of the JTB account are not jointly sufficient, using Gettier
counterexamples
- The JTB+N account (no false lemmas account) in response to Gettier and why this isn’t
sufficient
- Goldman’s causal account as a reliabilist account of knowledge (break from tradition as it
replaces the justification condition)
- And finally, Nozick’s counterfactual account and how it overcomes the fake barn
counterexample, making it a stronger reliabilist account than Goldman’s
JTB:
- We begin with JTB as this is how philosophers since Plato have defined it
- Zagzebski mentions that knowledge should be defined in terms of individually necessary and
jointly sufficient conditions
- She says: ‘knowledge is a highly valued state in which a person is in cognitive contact with
reality’
- Truth: necessary as want to distinguish between genuine cases of knowledge and false
beliefs. Knowledge connotes we have got something right (is a highly valued state) and truth
condition ensures this. Can mention flat world counterexample + response to this
- Belief: necessary as we cannot be said to know X if we don’t even accept X. Diffident
schoolboy example + response (that it is in fact a tacit belief held implicitly)
- Weighting: belief and truth are widely accepted to be necessary conditions for knowledge. It
is what follows these conditions which is mainly in question. Therefore, TB are less crucial
than what follows it.
- Justification: start by saying it is the most controversial out of the conditions. Some say it is
necessary as it distinguishes between cases of genuine knowledge and beliefs which happen
to be true i.e. irrational beliefs or lucky guesses. Therefore, it guards against epistemic luck
Why JTB isn’t sufficient:
- Explain Gettier case no.1
- Smith and Jones job example
- Conclusion: that JTB account of knowledge fails to rule out all cases of epistemic luck.
- Weighting/ integration: Gettier doesn’t show that knowledge shouldn’t be defined in terms
of justification. It is a crucial objection to the suggestion that the justification condition by
itself can rule out epistemic luck
JTB+N:
- Add no-false lemmas condition
, - Weighting: in an attempt to strengthen the original JTB account, an additional condition is
added which overcomes Gettier counterexamples and is therefore stronger than the original
JTB (important to note that this account still believes justification is a necessary condition)
- Explain how this overcomes Gettier counterexample as the conclusion is based off a false
lemma: ‘Jones will get the job’
- Response: we can rewrite the lemmas so they are no longer false: ‘My ultra-reliable boss
told me that Jones will get the job’
- Now, all the lemmas are true, yet it still seems Smith does not have knowledge
- Therefore, the conditions of the JTBN account aren’t sufficient as it fails to guard against
epistemic luck
Weighting: so far, all the accounts of knowledge have taken justification to be a crucial condition for
knowledge – BUT we have failed to define knowledge in terms of justification despite having added
to the JTB account. Therefore, we may now wonder, not only whether justification is sufficient for
knowledge, but also whether it is necessary at all. Perhaps ‘justification’ is not the right way of
thinking about knowledge.
This is where reliabilism comes in. Accounts mentioned above are all internalist accounts of
knowledge which say that what makes a true belief qualify as knowledge is essentially something
you are aware of inside your mind (e.g. justification, thought). The next two accounts of knowledge
are externalist accounts: what makes a TB qualify as knowledge is an external matter of fact.
Introduce reliabilism as an umbrella term for a number of externalist theories of knowledge. Say it is
a break from tradition as it no longer incudes justification as a necessary condition for knowledge
but replaces it with a reliabilist condition (i.e. a reliable belief forming mechanism)
Causal Account of knowledge:
- Formulated by Alvin Goldman
- Says that the crucial condition which makes TB qualify as knowledge is that: ‘S’s belief that p
is causally connected in an appropriate way with the fact that p’
- Explain how it overcomes original Gettier case as there is no causal connection between the
facts (‘Jones will get the job’ and ‘Jones has 10 coins in his pocket’) and Smith’s belief.
Therefore, it is NOT a case of knowledge – which is the correct outcome
- Weighting: therefore, it is stronger than JTB and JTBN
- However, fake barn counterexample – overcomes this reliabilist theory
- As if p had been false, he would have still believed that p
- Hence, causal account fails to rule out all cases of epistemic luck
- Conditions aren’t sufficient as you can fulfil conditions yet not have knowledge
Weighting: Although the fake-barn example shows that the causal account fails, it isn’t a strong
objection to reliabilism as such since we could explain ‘a reliable belief forming mechanism’ in other
terms. I.e. the barn-face example is not a crucial objection to reliabilism although it is a crucial
objection to the causal account version of reliabilism.
Nozick’s Subjunctive Theory:
- Another example of externalist, reliabilist account
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