The famous philosopher, Socrates, once said, “To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.” Various philosophers and intellectuals have disputed over the ambiguous, yet interesting topic of knowledge. Although they don’t always agree on the answers, many philosophers seem to ponder the same types of questions. What do we actually know? And how do we know it? In my eyes, the world doesn’t run based on knowledge, but on accepted beliefs. Almost everything in the world has an underlying question, and not many things are as simple as two plus two. Because of this curiosity we all seem to possess, the answers to most questions are blurry. In response to this natural human quality, philosophers have spent much …show more content…
Linda Zagzebski’s definition of knowledge is something that occurs within the basis of truth, with no form of coincidence, or a “nonaccidentally true belief” (Zagzebski). She begins her talk about knowledge by comparing both a justified true belief and the word knowledge itself. A justified true belief is a cognitive understanding of one’s reality, while “knowledge is a form believing a true proposition” (Zagzebski). A justified true belief can be interpreted as true, but doesn’t always qualify as complete knowledge. Zagzebski’s definition includes the premise that the person must be fully aware and in touch with his or her reality in order to truly believe. This means that the person must be cognitively in tune with his or her own thoughts and actions. Unlike a true belief, Zagzebski defines knowledge as “a highly valued state in which a person is in cognitive contact with reality” (Zagzebski). Not only does knowledge require someone to be cognitively stable, but also requires previous knowledge and observation in order to be certain about the subject. The main difference that Zagzebski points out between the two is not in the actual event itself, but the factual evidence behind it that makes it completely …show more content…
It is not vulnerable because of the mere fact that the Gettier cases are only true due to an element of luck. For example, a specific Gettier case that explains this is the “Fake Barn Country” example we discussed in class. This example has to do with a man driving through a barn country. The barn country is only really a façade of fake barns, but with one real barn in the whole country. The man happens to stop right in front of the only real barn in the whole country. Because of the fact that he sees a real barn in front of him, he believes the entire country consists of real barns. The man arriving at the only real barn is completely due to chance, and knowledge of the barn country being real is also only due to chance. This element of luck, again, makes the belief true, but does not satisfy Zagzebski’s definition of
We as humans tend to have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. We look for knowledge about everybody and everything that surrounds us in our day-to-day life. Sadly though, we must accept that in the grand scheme of life we (as a society) tend to put pleasure above our quest for knowledge. The pursuit of knowledge tends to take time and energy, two things we call invaluable, and it also shows us things that might depress us. Contrastingly, ignorance takes no time and energy.
...finition is not guaranteed to fail,” we must understand that saying a definition is not guaranteed to fail is different from saying it satisfies the criteria for always working. Given a situation where the agent utilizes double luck to acquire knowledge when a virtue-based act replaces justification makes us dissect the aspect of arrival. If the agent arrived to the truth and the motivation for doing so was not virtuous, then the same double-luck example could occur, the truth could be arrived and the knowledge acquired could not be good true knowledge. This is because the component of arrival does not entail the virtue. Therefore, there is no truth involved, but just luck. In this account her definition seems incomplete. If the truth of knowledge is virtue-based and all people are not virtuous agents, then how to we account for the knowledge of the non-virtuous?
There is no concrete definition of knowledge, but there is a definition that is widely agreed upon, or a standard definition. This definition may be widely accepted, but just like most things in philosophy, it is controversial and many disagree with it. The definition involves three conditions that must be met in order for one to truly say that they know something to be true. If one were to state: “The Seattle Mariners have never won a world series,” using the standard definition would look like this: first, the person believes the statement to be true. Second, the statement is in fact true. Third, the person is justified in believing the statement to be true. The three conditions are belief, truth, and justification. There are the “necessary and sufficient conditions” for knowledge. Necessary and sufficient conditions are linked to conditional statements, ‘if x, then y’ statements.
...bras, can deduce that he is not seeing disguised donkeys, and still fail to know that he is “is not seeing donkeys disguised to look like zebras.” Dretske’s anti-skeptical strategy is open to challenge, however. Consider a man believes that his friend, James, is the President of the United States of America at 9:00am on Friday. He holds evidence, such as the fact that he witnessed James’ inauguration ceremony, has spent time with James in the oval office, and sees vast media coverage on James’ presidency. As it turns out, James dies from a heart attack at 9:05am on Friday. It is questionable whether or not this man knows that James was president at 9:00am, 5 minutes before his death. This man would have the same reasons at 9:00am, 8:55am, and 9:05am to believe that James is president. This means that this man does not actually know that James is president at 9:00am.
Epistemology is purposed with discovering and studying what knowledge is and how we can classify what we know, how we know it, and provide some type of framework for how we arrived at this conclusion. In the journey to identify what knowledge is the certainty principle was one of the first concepts that I learned that explained how we, as humans, consider ourselves to know something. The certainty concept suggests that knowledge requires evidence that is sufficient to rule out the possibility of error. This concept is exemplified in cases like The Gettier problem in the instance that we suppose (S) someone to know (P) a particular proposition. As Gettier established the Justified True Belief as a conceptual formula for knowledge, certainty can be understood with the proper perspective and background. The certainty principle explains that knowledge requires evidence to be “sufficient” to rule out the possibility of error. This means that what we determine to be acknowledged as “knowledge” must present justification in order to be accepted believed as knowledge. This is important because Skepticism doubts the validation of knowledge and how we come to any such conclusion of justifying what we “know” indubitably as knowledge. This is the overarching problem with skepticism. Instead of having a solid stance on how to define knowledge, skeptics simply doubt that a reason or proposition offered is correct and suppose it to be false or flawed in some manner. See the examples below as identifiers of the skeptic way of life.
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
How do we know what we know? Ideas reside in the minds of intelligent beings, but a clear perception of where these ideas come from is often the point of debate. It is with this in mind that René Descartes set forth on the daunting task to determine where clear and distinct ideas come from. A particular passage written in Meditations on First Philosophy known as the wax passage shall be examined. Descartes' thought process shall be followed, and the central point of his argument discussed.
Some may have a belief that they are strongly agreeing with but they do not necessarily comprehend the correspondence of the argument when there is one; a theory that states the criterion of truth with right propositions. In the beginning of the text, Manuel Velasquez opens with an assumption of a male having a female mate and the likelihood of the male partner understanding whether or not his so called soul-mate truly loves him or not. This situation is very crucial in terms of the perplexity that one side is battling while the other side is neutral in such circumstances; obviously, all actions are done in a practical manner, but going in depth about justification of truth, one person cannot become convinced because of mental insecurity. So, can knowledge be considered a justified belief?
Before getting into the specifics of Gettier’s criticisms of the JTB theory, it is important to first understand the context of the understanding of knowledge itself, and why it is related to belief. True Belief theory of knowledge is a straightforward concept that only requires that two criteria, relating to belief and truth respectively, be met. To stick with my
Can we truly know when something can be considered true or false. The truth can be something that appeals to a person, or that it can reason with a person's knowledge that they have already develop. The knowledge we possess can shape the way we think, so does this also change the in the truth that a person sees. Our knowledge also limits us to what we considered to be true. In our century every year we discover something new so our truth is constantly changing. One of the conflicts that also comes to mind when talking about true and false is whether a true belief counts as knowledge depends on inherently imprecise judgments concerning whether the believer is accidentally right. To analyze the claim I am going to look at the three different theories of truth and how in everything true there is a false aspect to it. The theories are first, the correspondence theory. Second, coherence theory, and lastly pragmatic theory.
What is the source of knowledge? What can we know? Questions like these dominated western philosophy during the 17th and 18th century. This philosophical period was known as the epistemological turn. The quest for the source of knowledge was not an easy one. This question had led to many disagreements about the nature of knowledge, and a philosophical war was waged which would last two centuries. It began with the 17th century with a french philosopher by the name of Rene Descartes. The answer to his epistemological quest was rationalism. For Descartes rationalism was the key to keeping our reality in check. Descartes had undergone a process of purging all that he thought he knew to find the sole source of knowledge . After much examination Descartes came to the realization that there were few things that could be considered pure knowledge. Since most of the things we know come from the senses, and the senses were falliable. He made a crucial discovery that would forever change the face of philosophy. The mind he regarded is the tool and the that could lead to a pure source of knowledge unbridled by the senses. He believed that we can only trust our minds that which we can intuit or “deduce” on our own. Descartes called these ideas of knowledge a priori. A priori are ideas that are innate, and that we can only arrive at through a special kind of reasoning known as deductive reasoning.Descartes famously declares the statement “cogito ergo sum “to answer the question of our existence. Because if the senses are decieving who is to say that this world we live in is a lie created by a wicked genius we call god.”Descartes believed that if he existed it was because his mind was engaged in the process of thinking. In other words only ...
In my perspective, there are two reasons why knowledge is produced – Communication & Understanding. And to solve a problem, we need to communicate our ideas and understandings too. Everything comes under these two words. Knowledge is created by observation and deduction of what works and doesn't work in life. We try to understand the world around us and why it works the way it does, and create theories to explain our observations. When we think our theories have been sufficiently tried and tested against observed reality, we take that as knowledge. Sometimes it turns out that our knowledge, or what we think we know, is
Whether someone's belief is true is not a prerequisite for belief. On the other hand, if something is actually known, then it categorically cannot be false. For example, if a person believes that a bridge is safe enough to support him, and attempts to cross it, but the bridge then collapses under his weight, it could be said that he believed that the bridge was safe but that his belief was mistaken. It would not be accurate to say that he knew that the bridge was safe, because plainly it was not. By contrast, if the bridge actually supported his weight, then he might say that he had believed that the bridge was safe, whereas now, after proving it to himself, he knows it was
In my Theory of Knowledge class, I learned that belief and truth can be very contrasting ideas. In my opinion, I can believe something that may not necessarily be true. However, there can also be truth that is impossible for me to believe. Belief is a mental state in which someone is confident in the existence of something, but may not necessarily have objective proof to support their claim. Truth is objective and public; it is eternal and unchanging without biast. People can believe in something different and can also all believe in the same idea. The overlap between truth and belief creates knowledge; therefore, an acquisition of knowledge will bring us further to what we believe to be a ‘truth’. Knowledge can be acquired in several ways, such as using emotion, reason and sense perception. These ways of knowing affect how we perceive reality, and help us create our beliefs.
Knowledge produced with difficulty triggers our emotion and reason, allowing for the knowledge to hold greater value. Do we truly only value knowledge when it is produced with difficulty? Knowledge is information we gain through experiences. Value is how important something is to us, how we receive and utilize this knowledge. The target Way of Knowings I chose are Emotion and Reason. The first Way of Knowing is Emotion. Emotion works in conjunction with our ethics and how our personal experiences are influenced by emotional attachments. Emotion also affects the way we take in information The second Way of Knowing is Reason. We reason with our knowledge in different ways based on the type of information being taken in. Reason affects our intake