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Kareem Khalifa Philosophy Department Middlebury College

Epistemological Preliminaries. Kareem Khalifa Philosophy Department Middlebury College. Overview. What is a theory of knowledge? The project of description The project of explanation The value problem. I. What is the theory of knowledge?.

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Kareem Khalifa Philosophy Department Middlebury College

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  1. Epistemological Preliminaries Kareem Khalifa Philosophy Department Middlebury College

  2. Overview • What is a theory of knowledge? • The project of description • The project of explanation • The value problem

  3. I. What is the theory of knowledge? • Epistemology literally means “theory of knowledge” • What do good theories do? • Describe • Explain • Predict and control

  4. II. Description What is knowledge? • Kinds of knowledge • Necessary Conditions • Sufficient Conditions • Truth • Belief • No Luck

  5. II.A. Kinds of knowledge • Propositional Knowledge • Ability Knowledge • Knowledge by Acquaintance • The target: S knows that p

  6. II.B. Necessary Conditions • Necessary condition on knowledge: something that all knowledge has. • S knows that ponly if [INSERT NEC. CONDITION HERE] • To show that X is unnecessary for knowledge, you must come up with an example in which: • S knows that p; and • X is false.

  7. II.C. Sufficient Conditions • Sufficient condition on knowledge: something that always results in knowledge. • If [INSERT SUF. CONDITION HERE], then S knows that p. • To show that X is insufficient for knowledge, you must come up with an example in which: • X is true; • S does not know that p.

  8. II.D. Truth is necessary for knowledge • S knows that p only if p is true. • What is truth? Tough question! • Key idea: thinking that p doesn’t make p true.

  9. Why truth is necessary for knowledge There is a table here. Does Barb know that there is a table here? Barb

  10. III.E. Belief is necessary for knowledge • S knows that p only if S believes that p. • Belief = taking as true. • I know that it’s raining, but I don’t believe that it’s raining.

  11. Why belief is necessary for knowledge I don’t believe that a table is here. Does John know that there is a table here? John

  12. III.F. No Luck • So far, we’ve accepted that S knows that p only if: • p is true; and • S believes that p. • But is this also sufficient? • No.

  13. III. Explanation How do you know? • Justification • Classical Account of Knowledge • Gettier Problems

  14. III.A. Justification • S knows that p if and only if: • S’s truebelief that p isn’t just a lucky guess • But what does it mean not to be a lucky guess? • To have justification (reason, evidence) for one’s belief

  15. III.B. The Classical Analysis • From Plato’s Theaetetus (c. 400 BC) until 1963 AD • A person S knows that p if and only if: • S believes that p; • It is true that p; and • S is justified in believing that p • Often called the JTB (justified true belief) account of knowledge.

  16. III.C. The Gettier Problem JTB is not always sufficient for knowledge. Nearly universally agreed to have refuted the JTB/Classical Account of Knowledge

  17. Gettier’s Recipe • Step 1: Take an agent who forms her belief in a way that would usually lead her to have a false belief. • Step 2: Add some detail to the example to ensure that the agent’s belief is justified. • Step 3: Put in some “fluke” which makes the belief true (even though usually it would be false)

  18. An interesting objection to Gettier cases • In the Gettier cases, Smith actually knows. • In this case, JTB entails knowledge. • One upshot of this: professional epistemologists have atypical intuitions about cases of knowledge. • If this interests you, then you should read some recent psychological research on this topic, as well as an interesting rebuttal to that research.

  19. IV. Value Why is knowledge valuable? • True Belief’s Value • Three Problems • Some Solutions

  20. IV.A. True Belief’s Value • Knowledge entails true belief. • True beliefs enable us to fulfill our goals (i.e. true beliefs are instrumentally valuable.) • Being able to fulfill our goals is valuable. • So, knowledge is (instrumentally) valuable.

  21. IV.B. Three Problems with this Explanation • True beliefs are generally instrumentally valuable, but not always instrumentally valuable. • Some true beliefs are about trivial matters, and are hence not valuable. • Even if true beliefs were valuable, why do we seem to prefer knowledge to merely true beliefs? (This is called the Meno Problem.)

  22. IV.C. Solution to the Meno Problem • Knowledge is true belief + the absence of luck. • True beliefs that are not merely lucky are more “stable” than true beliefs that are lucky (i.e. true beliefs can’t easily be undercut or overturned.) • Stable true beliefs are more instrumentally valuable than unstable true beliefs. • So knowledge is more instrumentally valuable than merely true beliefs.

  23. Recap • A theory of knowledge seeks to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for when an individual has propositional knowledge. • Truth, belief, and something else are needed to complete this theory. • This theory should also answer “How do you know?” questions, and tell us why knowledge is more valuable than true belief.

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