Epistemology
JTB
INFALLIBILISM
NO FALSE LEMMAS
RELIABILISM
VIRTUE EPISTEMOLOGY
Perception as a source of knowledge
DIRECT REALISM-2020
INDIRECT REALISM
IDEALISM-2021
Reason as a source of knowledge
INTUITION AND DEDUCTION-2022
INNATE KNOWLEDGE-2019
TABULA RASA
Is JTB a successful way of defining propositional knowledge? (25)
Intro:
In this essay I will argue that it’s not a successful way to define propositional knowledge
Plato defined propositional knowledge with three criteria to be met: justification, truth and belief.
Tripartite definition of knowledge: ‘S knows that p iff: S is justified in believing that p, p is true and S
believes that p
Individually necessary and jointly sufficient- batchelor example- both ‘unmarried’ and ‘man’ are both
necessary to be a ‘bachelor’. Further, being an ‘unmarried man’ is sufficient to be a ‘bachelor’.
Therefore, in the JTB account, ‘unmarried man’ is a good definition of ‘bachelor’ because it provides
both the necessary and sufficient conditions of that term.
A: problems with each condition being necessary- knowledge without belief, knowledge without
justification, knowledge without truth.
Justification is not necessary- we can still have true belief which counts as knowledge. For example,
John the calendar man has a rare gift, allowing him to tell you what day of the week it will be far into
the future. He is unable to say how he does this, though he is incredibly accurate. Here, we have a
case of true belief, but with no rational justification.
Belief is not necessary- Beyond asserting, belief may not be needed for knowledge. Some equate
knowledge with more successful action. For example, Clara knows the directions to San Jose, despite
not believing that she knows the way.
Truth not necessary- Raquel, a cavewoman believes the world is flat, based on evidence available at
the time (10000BC), it is a belief that is supported with justification- coherence theory of truth would
claim that truth is not needed as it internally coheres to the web of beliefs held by society at that time.
As such, a belief is true if it is one of the web of beliefs held by society to be true. Therefore,
JTB is unsuccessful as its three components encounter problems.
R: why each condition was thought to be necessary
A true belief has no stability- it’s inconsistent as based on luck- Gettier’s counter examples- Smith
believing ‘the man who gets the job has 10 coins in his pocket’ is justified- testimony and visual
evidence and true, but luckily true. In Theaetetus, Plato suggests that sometimes a jury may find a
man guilty correctly, but for poor reasons (perhaps by guessing)- true beliefs must be tethered to
reality (Plato, Meno)- evidence and reason required- a rational account is necessary to knowledge-
Zagzebski argued that knowledge is ‘cognitive contact with reality’.
A justified truth is incoherent without belief. It seems plausible that a necessary condition for your
knowledge that p is that you belief that p. After all, there is an apparent incoherence in claiming ‘I
know it is raining, but I do not believe it’ which stems from the fact that belief is a necessary condition
to honestly assert anything. No one would assert that it is raining, without believing it- propositional
knowledge is a relation between the person and a proposition- a person must take the proposition to
be true. Belief must correspond to reality or cohere with a general set of beliefs for it to be true-
propositional knowledge (truth is external criterion, belief and justification are introspectively
accessible, internal criteria)
A justified belief- the correspondence theory of truth claims that truth consists in a correspondence
between the claim and the relevant fact- therefore, it claims facts don’t change over time- it was never
,true that the world was flat and Raquel never knew it was- truth is necessary for a propositional
knowledge claim.
C: each condition is not necessary
Counter justification: reliabilism (justification not required- replaces justification with reliably formed)-
only a reliably generated true belief is required- conscious justification not needed- dice example (alex
predicts the outcome of roll of fair, six-sided die. Without cheating, extra-sensory perception, he
guesses die will land on four. The die does, in fact, roll a four. His belief was true, produced by a
reliable process (understanding and applying probabilistic thinking and statistical regularity). Supports
reliabilism by showing knowledge doesn’t require infallibility.
Counter belief: some equate knowledge with more successful action- e.g hesitantly getting the answer
correct to a quiz question (having been taught it correctly, but not remembering being taught)-
arguably, you knew it, even though you didn’t believe it- not incoherent.
Counter truth: science is constantly evolving, without asserting that a belief is true if it internally
coheres with the web of beliefs within society at that time, we end up knowing nothing. Coherence
theory of truth- more inclined to allow people to have known things in the past- correspondence- facts
do not change over time- doesn’t align with evolving scientific/ social landscape.
A: Problems with conditions being sufficient: Gettier-style counterexamples
Zagzebski argued that any attempt to define knowledge as ‘true belief plus some third condition’ is
doomed to fail because, for any proposed third condition (be it J, reliably formed), it’s possible to
construct a gettier-style scenario where that condition is met, yet we would hesitate to say the person
has knowledge (doesn’t feel like knowledge in the intuitive sense).
Smith and Jones are interviewing for the same job, Smith hears the interviewer say ‘I’m going to give
jones the job’ and Smith, seeing Jones count 10 coins from his pocket, forms the (justified) belief that
‘the man who will get the job has 10 coins in his pocket’. However, Smith gets the job, not Jones, and
Smith looks in his pocket and by coincidence, sees he has 10 coins in his pocket.
This meets all conditions of JTB but clearly, isn’t knowledge, as it involves an element of luck, it’s
unjustly justified.
Contradicts Plato’s purpose for JTB as a definition of knowledge, because according to Plato,
knowledge is acquired by reason (true belief is tethered by reasons) and not luck.
R: Gettier examples are highly contrived and do not typically transpose in real-life scenarios- these
examples are ‘hard cases’- unusual, extreme- not representative of situations encountered when
acquiring knowledge.
JTB is still successful as situations like gettier cases are rare, so JTB formula still works well for
defining knowledge under normal circumstances. Gettier cases are more philosophical puzzles than
reflections of common experiences (gettier examples don’t represent reality effectively).
Gettier cases don’t undermine practical utility of JTB theory for understanding what knowledge is in
most real-life situations.
C: there’s possibility that JTB faces gettier style problems therefore showing it to be unsuccessful
definition of knowledge (fallible to weakness). JTB doesn’t fully encapsulate what we intuitively
understand as knowledge, cannot always distinguish knowledge and lucky guesses.
better ways to generate definitions that don’t face problems when met with gettier examples such as
VE- shifts from properties of belief itself (ie justification) to qualities/ virtues of the believer.
Virtue epistemology- S’s true belief formed as a result of S’s intellectual virtues operating in a suitable
way/ brought about by a virtuous disposition. Sosa- knowledge is apt belief (accurate because it was
adroit/ skilful).
VE succeeds in dealing with gettier because beliefs must be accurate because of intellectual virtue,
not because of luck. Belief must not only be true and believed but a product of the agent’s intellectual
virtues. Gettier cases of luckily true belief won’t count as knowledge because they lack agent’s
virtuous intellectual engagement.
A: better ways of defining knowledge that provides more security- infallibilism
JTB doesn’t ensure truth (luckily true belief) but infallibilism does (we should only count as knowledge
those things which we cannot rationally doubt)
It avoids gettier style problems and link between knowledge and certainty/ not being able to be wrong.
Gettier- none of the cases would count as knowledge. All gettier counter examples are open to doubt/
, alternative explanation. Once knowledge is restricted to things which cannot be doubted, there is no
room for gettier cases to thrive.
Infallibilism accords with intuition that knowledge involves level of certainty (absolute certainty).
Propositional knowledge can still be defined as a result of the infallibilist’s ability to counteract the
‘smith and jones’ counter example due to the fact that if the justification condition was strengthened by
required certainty; gettier’s counter examples would crumble, as smith’s knowledge that ‘the man who
gets the job has 10 coins in his pocket’ is contingently true, not necessarily true because one can
logically doubt that Jones, via smith’s methodology, will get the job.
R:
Infallibilism is too reductive, could end up able to make almost no knowledge claims, leading to
scepticism.
Knowledge doesn’t require certainty- fallibilism acknowledges human fallibility- we can make mistakes
yet still possess knowledge- disparity between theoretical demand of infallibilism and everyday
understanding of knowledge (common sense understanding of knowledge doesn’t align with stringent
requirements of infallibilism).
Infallibilism leads to scepticism about the existence of knowledge which contradicts our intuition e.g
the sun will rise tomorrow. There’s a remote possibility that it may not (extraordinary cosmic event),
we still consider belief in its rising a form of knowledge- which infallibilism challenges.
Therefore, infallibilism is not a coherent definition of propositional knowledge and thus, is no stronger
than JTB, despite ability to counteract gettier cases.
C:
Extreme doubt is needed to avoid a disconnect between truth and justification- by applying extreme
doubt, the aim is to strip away beliefs which are not absolutely certain.
Justification must be so strong that truth is guaranteed.
Infallibilism is successful as it successfully avoids gettier counterexamples unlike JTB.
CONC:
JTB fails through its individual conditions not being individually necessary or jointly sufficient (shown
through gettier).
Other ways to better define knowledge e.g infallibilism- although perhaps, this still isn’t a perfect
definition- but still an improvement- granting certainty and adjoining gap between justification and
truth.
Is infallibilism a successful account of knowledge? (25)
Intro: Infallibilism is the theory that we should only count as knowledge those things which cannot be
rationally doubted. This essay will argue that infallibilism works because of its stringent requirements
for a claim to be accepted as knowledge, allowing for our pool of certain, indubitable knowledge to
remain untainted. Under the infallibilist lens, we can conditionally accept propositional knowledge
claims which come from a reliable source, as propounded by the reliabilist, but only as useful beliefs,
not as knowledge.
A: deals well with gettier cases because knowledge is restricted to that which cannot be doubted. This
stringent requirement means that gettier cases cannot cause instances of LTB as in such cases,
doubt/ alternative explanations would arise.
R: we end up being left with= little knowledge claims at all (breaching scepticism). We may have
certain analytic propositions such as the truths of mathematics or the cogito, but we cannot claim
anything else, which is excessively reductive, and ignorant of the fallibilist lens we adopt in everyday
situations. The infallibilist lens fails to accommodate to the intuitive notion that knowledge may not
always be infallible. As hume opines, this is unreasonable and impractical.
C: reductive, demanding conditions for knowledge in line with the correspondence theory of truth
(truth consists in a correspondence between claim and the relevant fact) are not problems but, rather,
a solution. This approach prevents dubious and imperfect propositional knowledge claims from being
considered as knowledge. For example, we can imagine a scenario wherein a scientist, conducting
research on a new drug to test a certain disease, deduces that ‘the drug is effective in treating the
disease in 90% of cases’. According to the infallibilist, her claim must involve robust empirical
evidence and thorough testing. According to CTOT, her claim is true iff it accurately corresponds to
reality (must indeed be effective). In this way, dubious claims like ‘this drug works based on a
revolutionary principle that defies current scientific understanding’ are avoided.
