“Knowledge is a particular way of being connected to the world, having a specific factual connection to the world: tracking it” - Sven Bernecker
Robert Nozick in his essay “Conditions for Knowledge,” presents a reliabilist view of the conditions of knowledge by stating that causal connection is not enough and, as presented in Sven Bernecker’s commentary on the text, “for a true belief to qualify as knowledge it must not be a lucky coincidence that the belief is true…must be non-accidentally true” (Nozick, “Conditions for Knowledge,” 21). In order to provide a reliable relationship, Nozick presents two subjunctive conditionals: variation condition (“not-p not-(S believes that p)) and adherence condition (p S believes that p) (22). The variation
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The example for the variation condition is that of a grandmother visited by her grandchild who is well. When the grandchild is ill, the family will not tell the grandmother to not upset her, therefore she will continue to believe that her grandchild is well since she cannot use perception (sight) to know he is well. The grandmother would be receiving testimony, therefore it does not affect her knowledge of the proposition that her grandchild is well. An example that handles the adherence condition is that of a person glancing at a book and believing that the event he read occurred. The adherence condition would exclude this case because the subject glanced at the book leading to him to believe a certain way, but if he had glanced at it at a different section or a different way then he would believe distinctly, therefore the conditions must be changed so that if the source is different in the possible world it should not be used against the subject’s knowledge of the proposition. Robert Nozick modifies the account of knowledge in order for the conditions to state the method that is being used (perception, testimony, etc.) that leads the subject to have knowledge of the proposition. (Nozick, “Conditions for Knowledge,” p.
In order to be considered a non-evidentialist, one must believe that actual evidence is not required for all of our beliefs. Pascal believ...
Life without knowledge would be worthless. Talking about knowledge what i mean is knowledge about something. The description of the state of some object is knowledge. The object may be either abstract or physical. Some examples of abstract things include memory, feelings and time. But how we obtain knowledge? Many philosophers tried to find an adequate answer to this question. They came up with so many theories summarizing the process of knowledge. But none of them all was able to state a clear definition of pure knowledge. One of those philosophers is Plato. In this essay I am going to discuss the concept of knowledge according to Plato’s philosophic conception of knowledge. I will clarify what knowledge is not perception. And from this I will move to explain the justified true belief theory. Then I will show the lack in this theory by referring to counterexamples: the Gettier cases. To end up with a conclusion that states what is my understanding of the process of knowledge.
The philosopher, Linda Zagzebski, offers a virtue based definition of knowledge. She arrives at this definition by presenting numerous accounts of knowledge definitions that fail, explore why they fail, then shows how her theory satisfies knowledge criteria.
This paper will be covering what knowledge essentially is, the opinions and theories of J.L. Austin, Descartes, and Stroud, and how each compare to one another. Figuring out what knowledge is and how to assess it has been a discussion philosophers have been scratching their heads about for as long as philosophy has been around. These three philosophers try and describe and persuade others to look at knowledge in a different light; that light might be how a statement claiming knowledge is phrased, whether we know anything at all for we may be dreaming, or maybe you’re just a brain in a vat and don’t know anything about what you perceive the external world to be.
In his “Philosophical Explanations”, Robert Nozick produced his tracking theory of knowledge. This externalist theory is used to explain how through truth tracking we can obtain knowledge. He states that what we use to learn of the truth is the method. But Nozick denies the importance of methods in his theory, to the point were does not even believe that we have to know what the method is. Instead, Nozick allows us to use any method we wish to, so long as we only use one. But not all methods are reliable, and therefore don’t allow for us to be justified. As such Nozick’s theory fails since it does not limit the methods that can be used, which makes it so that if we follow the theory we will not necessarily gain knowledge but only a true belief.
I will argue that Unger mischaracterizes the nature of certainty as it is ordinarily used (something he says is important to his argument), and also that he has mischaracterized one of the sources he used to defend this definition. I will then present W.V.O. Quine’s psychologically based epistemology as presented in “Epistemology Naturalized” and “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”, and argue that this theory provides a more adequate account of the way knowledge and certainty are understood. I will also attempt to address the objections to Quine’s theory raised by Jaegwon Kim.
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 ...
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.
...feasibility' and 'Causal' theories, and knowledge as 'warranted true belief' require us to take a certain 'leap of faith' when considering the question of knowledge at times. In order to avoid scepticism, I hold that knowledge does not necessarily need to be infallible, but rather probable. This does not mean that a proposition does not need to be true, it means that something we hold as knowledge is not one which is beyond reasonable doubt, but one which it wouldn't make sense to doubt. Yes, we have an obligation to avoid doxastic errors by reflecting on our belief-forming processes and by adjusting them in pursuit of reliability, but we also need to make a reasonable link between reality and truth to the extent that a proposition becomes senseless to doubt. So, although Gettier problems may be inescapable, this does not mean we are starved of knowledge completely.
In the first meditation he casts doubt on the previous foundations of knowledge and everything he has learned or assumed. He stated "But reason now persuades me that I should withhold assent no less carefully from opinions that are not completely certain and indubitable than I would from those that are patently false." In order to evaluate and discern what is actually true he divides the foundations of knowledge into three sources: the senses, reality, and context.
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
"Knowledge, Truth, and Meaning." Cover: Human Knowledge: Foundations and Limits. Web. 17 Feb. 2011. .
Question No. 5 “No knowledge can be produced by a single way of knowing.” Discuss.
In the second Gettier counterexample, Smith is justified in believing Jones owns a Ford. Therefore, he’s justified in believing Jones owns a Ford or Brown is in Barcelona. Turns out, Jones doesn’t own a Ford but Brown is in fact in Barcelona. Once again, we have an example of a justified true belief that shouldn’t count as knowledge.
Truth is essentially divided into two main types of truth. There is empirical truth that is what is observed, what can be tangibly learned from observation. For an example we look at, Starbucks makes coffee and other hot beverages. This is a form of empirical truth, which is what is observed. Other than the empirical truth, there is truth. Truth is defined by us, by our beliefs, experiences, observations. This is the problem that there is with the nature of truth, because our experiences, and beliefs may differ from someone else giving them different truth. There are several theories on truth, and they are the Correspondence Theory, the Semantic Theory, the Deflationary Theory, the Coherence Theory, and the Pragmatic Theory. In this paper, we will be focusing on the Correspondence Theory and the Coherence Theory ( insert citation, IEP website).