“We Know What We Believe”
To believe something is to know it so in order to know something, it is not enough to believe it- you have to learn it or have a good reason to believe it. Skepticism talks about two types of position: knowledge and justification. The skeptic argues that we do not know what we think we do it is only a thought. Skepticism of knowledge says there is no such thing as knowledge, and justification denies the belief of justified belief existing. These two are closely related which depends on the relationship between the factors of knowledge and justification: if knowledge entails justified belief, as theorists say, then justification skepticism entails knowledge skepticism. Gettier and Nozick broke down the subject and explain their point of views of it. To defend these views, skeptics lay out many requirements for knowledge or justified belief, and try to show that these requirements are not met. It still stand that’s why if I know something and I believe it that which I claim knowledge then why do I need a reason to believe it? Is black white?
Gettier indicates at the beginning of his selection, he is concerned with attempts to provide sufficient conditions for someone knowing that a proposition is true (Gettier, 43). He is responding to several accounts that have it that a proposition being true, a person’s believing that proposition to be true, and that persons justification in the belief of the truth of the proposition are jointly enough for the subjects of knowing the proposition. Gettier argues that these kinds, while they may initially seem plausible are in fact false. A is false in the conditions stated therein do not constitute a sufficient condition for the truth of the proposition that S knows tha...
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...he believes it; if it weren’t true, he wouldn’t believe it. To know p is to be someone who would believe it if it were true, and who wouldn’t believe it if it were false (Nozick, 49).
Knowledge is of two different kinds: what we know or where we can go find the information upon it. The face of knowing something is sometimes gained through experience. With knowledge or the thought that you know something there are many possible and equally definitions of knowledge. People saying that they know something is a justification that they believe it, but facts could be proven and shown that what they believe is not true. It shouldn’t have to be a good reason for anyone to say they know such things and believe in it. If you know something, you know something. No feedback to test my knowledge. We all don’t think or act the same so the knowledge is different upon each human.
I will show that Kelly's response to the question of epistemic significance of peer disagreement is not compelling. In my explanation of Kelly's argument, I will show that it is contradictory of him to assert the first persons perspective and the right reasons view. I will then examine the third person perspective, and show that this is more compatible with the right reasons view. Nevertheless I will propose an objection in the form of a question. Specifically, why should the difference between first person and third person change my thinking skeptically? Would this view only be attractive from the third person view? The third person perspective, the right reasons view as Kelly explains it, plus what I will call external Validation of a belief makes a more compelling argument.
...ective and previous knowledge, as well as comprehension and understanding of information are things that determine the end result. Even the definition of a concept or reality can be different. Gravity is just a word attributed to a physical law but other civilizations might use different terminology. Does the name of a physical law make it knowledge or does the law itself, being in existence, make it true, thus being true knowledge. It seems that knowledge is simply a general and unspecifically
Williamson in his book Knowledge and It’s Limits primarily seeks to support his novel perspective of “knowledge first” epistemology (v). This approach sets forth the idea that knowledge cannot be analyzed into more basic concepts, such as belief or truth. The basis for this argument is that knowledge is a mental state, and thus it cannot be broken down into the combination of external conditions – like the state of the world such that it makes a proposition true – and internal conditions – like belief in a proposition or the justification of that belief (6). Certainly, Williamson is able to illustrate in his introduction the way in which he equates belief and knowledge as mental states, and refutes the idea that belief is conceptually prior to knowledge. However, Williamson takes the assertion that knowledge is a general factive mental state and supports this claim by offering it as a new approach to epistemology that avoids the problems of trying to analyze knowledge, and instead allows for knowledge to be the central concept used to elucidate others, like justification and eviden...
that it "it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient
Nozick takes this further, however, with his “tracking theory”. Nozick adds conditions to the requirements of truth and belief. His conditions are as follows: (1) P is true (2) S believes that P (3) if it were not the case that P, S would not believe P (4) If it were the case that P, then S would believe P. Through this, Nozick means to show that knowledge is a belief that tracks the truth in a reliable fashion. Closure, the idea that we ...
Almost all epistemologists, since Edmund Gettier’s 1963 article, have agreed that he disproved the justified-true-belief conception of knowledge. He proposed two examples
At this point in Goldman's paper he begins to examine knowledge through testimony stating: "This too can be analyzed causally. p causes a person T to believe p, by perception. T's belief of p gives rise to (causes) his asserting p. T's asserting p causes S, by auditory perception, to believe that T is asserting p. S infers that T believes p, and from this in turn, he infers that p is a fact."which simply means that p causing T to believe it and T stating said belief in front of S leads S to believe that p must be a fact. After stating this Goldman points out that if miscommunication is somehow involved in this transaction, such as the accidental removal of "not" when referring to p in a newspaper article, then S will not have the correct causal chain leading to his belief therefore he would not have knowledge on p.
Consider the following situation. There are two men, Smith and Jones, who are both applying for a job. The man Smith has heard from the CEO of the company that Jones will get the job, and has also counted that Jones has ten coins in his pocket. From the statements “Jones will get the job”, and “Jones has ten coins in his pocket”, Smith creates the statement “The man with ten coins in his pocket will get the job”. Unknown to Smith, he also has ten coins in his pocket, and he ends up getting the job. It seems that in this case Smith is correct, but he does not have knowledge. By presenting this problem, Gettier has demonstrated that someone can have a justified true belief and still not have knowledge. I would like to refer to this problem as
The example he gives is that of a fire in his fireplace to which he could infer that there was smoke coming from his chimney. “I know that smoke was coming out of my chimney last night. I know this because I remember perceiving a fire in my fireplace last night, and I infer that the fire caused smoke to rise out of the chimney.” This all assumes that there is no backward causation. “The analysis requires that there be a causal connection between p and S's belief, not necessarily that p be a cause of S's belief. p and S's belief of p can also be causally connected in a way that yields knowledge if both p and S's belief of p have a common cause.” This comes down to weakening causal relations between a knowledge event and one's belief in the event so as to include examples in which an event and one's belief in the event are causally related. This is to say that there can be a causal relation between fire and smoke being produced, from past experience, the fact that if one sees a fire in a fireplace they can then use the prior causal connection of seeing smoke coming from fire and conclude that this fire is also producing smoke and in short it is venting out of the
Zagzebski defines knowledge by expressing the relationship between the subject and the truth proposition. A truth claim becomes knowledge when your state of belief makes cognitive contact with reality. What it is to know that you understand something is different from having a relationship with something. Propositional knowledge, that can be known or believed, is her focus due to simplicity. The criteria required for belief is to have a thought, followed by augmentation with experience. The minimal criteria for a definition of knowledge must incorporate two types of “good”; a moral and an ethical. These truths are implemented to develop the foundation on which Zagzebski later builds her definition.
Knowledge can be achieved either through the justification of a true belief or for the substantive externalist, through a “natural or law like connection between the truth of what is believed and the person’s belief” (P.135). Suppose a man named George was implanted with a chip at birth, which causes him to utter the time in a rare Russian dialect. His girlfriend Irina, who happens to speak the same Russian dialect, realizes that every time she taps his shoulder, he tells her the time and he is always right. She knows that he is right because she checks her watch. Because she thinks this is cute, she never tells him what it is that he is saying. One day, Irina’s watch breaks but instead of getting it fixed, she just taps George on the shoulder whenever she needs to ask for the time.
In summary he remarks that the ground of knowledge is a demonstrative syllogism and the ground of that syllogism is premises so we must know (be convinced of) the primary premises better than the conclusion. Nothing can be better known to a man who seeks knowledge through demonstration than the basic truths.
Truth and beliefs contribute in building the knowledge of a person. Cogent reasons for the beliefs convert the beliefs into knowledge. However, sometimes the beliefs are actually assumption, so they may be wrong. Truth is the facts known from different sources. Something can be considered as knowledge, only if it is true. The word epistemology refers to studying the source of knowledge. The epistemology helps in understanding the process of development of knowledge, sources of knowledge and makes distinctions between belief and actual truth. I critically examined and analyzed the origin and the process of acquiring the knowledge for the two essays I wrote earlier. One essay, an analytical one, was written on the subject of increasing prison population and improper justice system. The second essay was written on the subject of human resource management. To develop the knowledge and understanding I demonstrated in the essays, I had to search for resources, rationalize the information gained and evaluate it in conjunction with my personal beliefs.
Some of the objections, such as the ones made by Edmund Gettier, claim that three conditions are not nearly enough to justify a true belief, and that at the very least a fourth must be added. Gettier presents a very valid criticism of the JTB theory of knowledge, and his counter examples highlight flaws in the JTB theory that make it an inadequate theory of knowledge. Gettier claims takes an issue with the third part of the JTB theory, which states that proposition P must be true. Gettier makes the interesting observation that person S may very well be justified in believing in proposition P even if P is false
There have been attempts to answer the queries through the Justified-True-Belief Account of Knowledge (JTB), known to have been credited by Plato. According to the theory, knowledge is explained in some manner or way, a proposition known can’t be false, and the proposition must be accepted. The justified-true-belief account of knowledge, though, is considered to be a definition of knowledge where S, a person, knows that P, a proposition, if and only if: P is true, S believes that P is true, and S is justified in believing that P is true. However, this theory of knowledge challenges our understanding of propositional knowledge – like when people once thought they knew that the earth was flat; one could not know what was flat, only think that one knows it. The truth condition of the JTB of knowledge states that if you know that P, then P is true (Powerpoint, Lecture 4). Though P can be a claim that something else is false. Thus, the Gettier problems. In Edmund L. Gettier’s short article, “Is justified true belief knowledge?” he discusses the question about whether or not a piece of information with a faulty premise is knowledge. This innovative philosophical idea that Gettier wrote about, le...