What is it to have knowledge?
 

What is it to have knowledge? When does belief become truth? What are the requirements to say that someone knows such and such? They seem like simple questions but they really aren't. Often times we'll say something like "I know that I'll get a raise at work" or "I'll know that the cowboys will win tomorrow" but do we really?

Here's an intereting case. Let's say you want to know the time. You look at your watch, and the watch reads 3:15. In reality, it really is 3:15. But... the watch is broken. It's been stuck on 3:15 for days, you just don't know. Can we say that you knew it was 3:15. Sure the watch said 3:15 so you believed it to be 3:15 and it was 3:15, but the watch wa broken. I think most people would contend that you didn't know the time.

The clock case is a good example of the traditional view of justified true belief (jtb). It goes like this
For S to know P
1. S must believe P (It makes no sense to say: "I know it's raining but I don't believe it"

2. P must be true (I think no further explanation is needed here)

3. S must be justified in believe P (Otherwise the clock case would be knowledge, or any wild belief that we have that HAPPENS to be true would also be knowledge)

There are many problems with jtb that many philosphers have shown and tried to solve. I personsally think that justification is a vague term. Many philosophers believe that a 4th requierment is needed. What do you SMP'ers think?

If anyone likes, I can further discuss some problems and solutions some philosophers have presented regarding jtb.

Re: What is it to have knowledge?
 

I don't have a solution, I just accept that actually knowing anything is beyond my abilities. It's fun to pretend, though. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

Re: What is it to have knowledge?
 

There is an entire field of philosophy called epistemology that addresses this question.

One thing that I will actually add though, is that the latter portions of modernity stopped putting the question in terms of knowledge and started putting it in terms of "understanding." And not to quote any, but some of your examples simply employed different uses of the word "know" in different gramatical forms and, in light of this, would be simply considered semantic differences.

Re: What is it to have knowledge?
 

[ QUOTE ]
What are the requirements to say that someone knows such and such? They seem like simple questions but they really aren't. Often times we'll say something like "I know that I'll get a raise at work" or "I'll know that the cowboys will win tomorrow" but do we really?


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I would say that ‘knowing’ in this sense is an emotional reaction to available evidence plus over factors. At a certain point a mental trigger flicks inside you and you ‘know’ something is true.

This is a tool to streamline thinking along paths where what you ‘know’ to be true, is assumed to be true. A trick the mind plays to reduce unnecessary processing. A useful mechanism that nevertheless has an obvious flaw.

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Here's an intereting case. Let's say you want to know the time. You look at your watch, and the watch reads 3:15. In reality, it really is 3:15. But... the watch is broken. It's been stuck on 3:15 for days, you just don't know. Can we say that you knew it was 3:15. Sure the watch said 3:15 so you believed it to be 3:15 and it was 3:15, but the watch wa broken. I think most people would contend that you didn't know the time.

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If you believe the watch is accurate, then it is possible you will know the time is 3:15 after looking at the watch. The actual time has only an indirect effect on this process.

Equally if the watch showed an incorrect but plausible time, say 3:12, you might know the time is 3:12 after looking at the watch. Just this time you would be wrong in this instance.


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The clock case is a good example of the traditional view of justified true belief (jtb). It goes like this
For S to know P
1. S must believe P (It makes no sense to say: "I know it's raining but I don't believe it"

2. P must be true (I think no further explanation is needed here)

3. S must be justified in believe P (Otherwise the clock case would be knowledge, or any wild belief that we have that HAPPENS to be true would also be knowledge)

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So what with this equating ‘knowing’ with ‘true belief’?

I think it is clear that humans can never satisfy all 1,2 and 3. If knowing was a synonym of true belief as defined here, then the verb ‘to know’ would be practically unusable.

Re: What is it to have knowledge?
 

One way I think of knowledge is as the aim of beliefs that can never be reached.

Suppose I believe P and have two reasons R1 and R2.

If R1 is a better reason for thinking P is true than R2 is then (R1,P) is closer to knowledge than (R2,P) is.

If I had a perfect reason, R to believe P i.e. R->P then I would know P.

I don't believe this perfect reason can ever exist about truths of the world. I'm not even sure the idea of better reasons for beliefs about the external world is coherent.

I also think Nozick is on to something important
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Nozick offers a review of the suggests his own solution, called the Truth-Tracking view. P is an instance of knowledge when:

p is true
S believes that p
if p weren't true, S wouldn't believe that p
if p were true, S would believe that p


[/ QUOTE ]

chez

Re: What is it to have knowledge?
 

Equating knowledge with true belief--think about the difference between someone who believes it is 3:12 when it is actually 3:15, and someone who justifiably believes it is 3:15 when it actually 3:15. According to what you are saying they can both *know* what time it is. Do you see how odd it is to think they can both know the correct time when only one of them is actually right?

Re: What is it to have knowledge?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Equating knowledge with true belief--think about the difference between someone who believes it is 3:12 when it is actually 3:15, and someone who justifiably believes it is 3:15 when it actually 3:15. According to what you are saying they can both *know* what time it is. Do you see how odd it is to think they can both know the correct time when only one of them is actually right?

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They can't both know the time. Only one time is the correct time so only one person can know the time. Look at the requirements again for justified true belief.

Re: What is it to have knowledge?
 

There is no information/knowledge that is absolute. If I look at my watch and it says it's 3:15, but some omnipotent observer "knows" that my watch loses X minutes for every Y unit of time, then my "knowledge" is not true in the absolute sense.

However, information and knowedge work just like poker. It's all probability and how we use the available information.

Yes my watch may be 4 minutes slow becuase it's old and I haven't checked it, but I am still not in serious trouble. I may be a few minutes late to a meeting, but I will never ever miss the entirety of the new episode of my favorite half hour TV show because of the misinformation of my watch. And once either of these events happen I will gather new information which will lead me to believe my old information was 4 minutes inacurate.

Likewise, I can be almost 100% sure that it is raining if I am standing outside and indeed feel what I have come to believe is rain falling on me from the sky. That near-perfect knowledge is much more useful to me than this morning's knowledge, when the wheatherman told me there was only a 75% chance of rain. It's all percentages, but you can still use what information you have to create the most accurate "knowledge" you can.

Knowledge is generally considered true because we do not attain knowledge until we receive information which leads us to believe to a high degree of certainty that something is true, and at that point we have "knowledge" of that subject.


Einstien and some of his buddies were driving in a car, when the driver stopped for a sheep standing in the middle of the road. "There's a sheep in the road!" exclaimed the surprised driver. "Yes," Albert replied. "From this angle there does indeed appear to be a sheep standing on the road in front of us."

Re: What is it to have knowledge?
 

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Equating knowledge with true belief--think about the difference between someone who believes it is 3:12 when it is actually 3:15, and someone who justifiably believes it is 3:15 when it actually 3:15. According to what you are saying they can both *know* what time it is. Do you see how odd it is to think they can both know the correct time when only one of them is actually right?

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I don’t equate knowledge with true belief. Or rather I think to do so is to get an unhelpful definition of knowledge.

Two people look at their watches. One sees 3:12 one sees 3:15. One person knows its is 3:12 and the other one knows it is 3:15. The both have identical reasons for establish their belief. Why should the real time have any bearing on their state of knowing?

I think your definition of knowledge, which you equate with true belief, is too strong for every day use.

Re: What is it to have knowledge?
 

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Equating knowledge with true belief--think about the difference between someone who believes it is 3:12 when it is actually 3:15, and someone who justifiably believes it is 3:15 when it actually 3:15. According to what you are saying they can both *know* what time it is. Do you see how odd it is to think they can both know the correct time when only one of them is actually right?

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They can't both know the time. Only one time is the correct time so only one person can know the time. Look at the requirements again for justified true belief.

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That was my reply to Piers. I was making the same point you are, since he was asking why knowledge was tied to true belief.

Re: What is it to have knowledge?
 

My problem with Nozick:

Condition (4) of Nozick seems potentially problematic in that it is too stringent of a restriction. I am thinking of cases in which condition (4) is not satisfied, but I still want to maintain that X knows something.

This will happen in cases where P is still true at the nearest possible world, but X no longer believes that P. An example will hopefully illuminate what I mean by this.

P is the proposition that “Emily cooked eggs this morning”.

In the actual world this is true (satisfies condition (1).

Sam believes that P. (satisfies condition (2).

If P weren’t true, then Sam would not believe that P. (satisfies condition (3).

When Emily was getting out of bed this morning, Sam groggily asked her what she was doing to which she replied, “ I’m going to make some eggs”. She then proceeded to cook eggs and Sam got out of bed in time to eat half of the eggs with her.

n the nearest possible world that Emily did not cook eggs this morning, she decided that a few minutes more of sleep were better than making breakfast and had cereal instead of eggs. So Sam has no reason to believe that P, if Emily did not actually cook eggs this morning. So the counterfactual necessary for condition (3) holds true.

But, in some cases the counterfactual:

If P were true, then Sam would believe that P.

Might be false, but I still want to maintain that Sam knows P.

In the nearest possible world at which P is still true, instead of groggily asking Emily what she is doing, Sam does not wake up. Emily then gets the idea that she will surprise Sam with breakfast in bed. So she cooks eggs, making P true, but because she is so excited about surprising Sam, she clumsily spills the eggs on the floor. She cleans up the mess so there is no evidence of eggs having been made, so she won’t be embarrassed. Sam now does not believe that P, even though P is true. This example shows that condition (4) is false for this case.

It seems to me to be too strict and limiting to have a definition of knowledge that precludes us from saying that Sam knows P, because condition (4) fails in this manner. I think I want a proper account of knowledge to include that Sam knows that P. There also is an issue of accessibility, in that we might not know when X knows P because we do not have proper information about the nearest possible world at which P is true. Not knowing when X knows may be problematic.

Re: What is it to have knowledge?
 

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In the nearest possible world at which P is still true, instead of groggily asking Emily what she is doing, Sam does not wake up. Emily then gets the idea that she will surprise Sam with breakfast in bed. So she cooks eggs, making P true, but because she is so excited about surprising Sam, she clumsily spills the eggs on the floor. She cleans up the mess so there is no evidence of eggs having been made, so she won’t be embarrassed. Sam now does not believe that P, even though P is true. This example shows that condition (4) is false for this case.

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I think I see your point but your nearest possible world seems a very long way away. Aren't there a lot of much closer worlds in which Sam still believes P?

I think Nozicks idea gives a feel for the robustness of a belief. The more the connection between the truth of P and belief in P correctly responds to small changes in the world, the 'better' the belief. This seems to grab hold of something important but I don't know if it can be made precise or amounts to knowledge.

chez

Re: What is it to have knowledge?
 

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They can't both know the time. Only one time is the correct time so only one person can know the time. Look at the requirements again for justified true belief.

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What I am saying is that I do not like the OP definition of knowledge.

When someone says, “I know that A is true” They do not mean ‘true belief in the sense the OP uses the word. They are referring to the state of their mind, not making a deep and profound statement about the nature of the universe. Their assertion of knowledge has only indirect relation on the truth of A.

We are not discussing anything magic here, just fitting definition to terms.

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1. S must believe P (It makes no sense to say: "I know it's raining but I don't believe it"

2. P must be true (I think no further explanation is needed here)

3. S must be justified in believe P (Otherwise the clock case would be knowledge, or any wild belief that we have that HAPPENS to be true would also be knowledge)

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For a strong definition of justified, it is impossible for 3 to apply to anyone.

No one can be completely sure his or her belief exactly corresponds to reality. Hence it is necessary to weaken 3 in some fashion.

For instance you might say that it is only possible to know the time by reference to a timepiece that has been given an accreditation of accuracy from some governing body.

But doing things like this makes 3 subjective. The definition of ‘true belief’ is incomplete in the sense that you need a further assumption as to what level of justification is required for true belief.

If you wish to disallow two people to simultaneously have mutually contradictory true beliefs, you need to be very careful how you define ‘justified’. To repeat the alternative to this is to have a definition of ‘true belief’ that can never be applied to a human.

Another point. When I hear ‘true belief’ used in casual conversation, it is usually in the phrase:

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I truly believed A was true.

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They are usually referring to something they beloved was true but currently do not believe is true.

Re: What is it to have knowledge?
 

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I think Nozicks idea gives a feel for the robustness of a belief. The more the connection between the truth of P and belief in P correctly responds to small changes in the world, the 'better' the belief. This seems to grab hold of something important but I don't know if it can be made precise or amounts to knowledge.


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Very nicely put, I believe I concur with this.

Re: What is it to have knowledge?
 

I think Chez summed this one up pretty succinctly by characterizing knowledge as 'the aim of beliefs, that can never be reached'.

Just to expand on that. We approach knowledge and truth by judging the extent to which our beliefs match the outside world, or by predictive value. This isn't just the mantra of epistemologists, it's also the scientific principle. We predict a solar eclipse and one happens at the right time to the second, when the previous one happened decades ago. We can't strictly speaking rule out a fluke, but the chances of a fluke seem so astronomical (no pun intended) that we put faith in the beliefs and understandings we used to calculate that eclipse. Then we do it again, and again, and everytime increase our faith that we've discovered a truth. But no matter how many times we do this, the possibility that we were just lucky still exists, with decreasing odds, so true knowledge can never be verified. IMO that's how knowledge works, and why its at the same time tangible/real and unattainable.

Edit: Should say also that I'd apply the same principle to past events. Only in those circumstances it's memory/perception that are the variables.

Re: What is it to have knowledge?
 

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They can't both know the time. Only one time is the correct time so only one person can know the time. Look at the requirements again for justified true belief.

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What I am saying is that I do not like the OP definition of knowledge.

When someone says, “I know that A is true” They do not mean ‘true belief in the sense the OP uses the word. They are referring to the state of their mind, not making a deep and profound statement about the nature of the universe. Their assertion of knowledge has only indirect relation on the truth of A.

We are not discussing anything magic here, just fitting definition to terms.

[ QUOTE ]
1. S must believe P (It makes no sense to say: "I know it's raining but I don't believe it"

2. P must be true (I think no further explanation is needed here)

3. S must be justified in believe P (Otherwise the clock case would be knowledge, or any wild belief that we have that HAPPENS to be true would also be knowledge)

[/ QUOTE ]

For a strong definition of justified, it is impossible for 3 to apply to anyone.

No one can be completely sure his or her belief exactly corresponds to reality. Hence it is necessary to weaken 3 in some fashion.

For instance you might say that it is only possible to know the time by reference to a timepiece that has been given an accreditation of accuracy from some governing body.

But doing things like this makes 3 subjective. The definition of ‘true belief’ is incomplete in the sense that you need a further assumption as to what level of justification is required for true belief.

If you wish to disallow two people to simultaneously have mutually contradictory true beliefs, you need to be very careful how you define ‘justified’. To repeat the alternative to this is to have a definition of ‘true belief’ that can never be applied to a human.

Another point. When I hear ‘true belief’ used in casual conversation, it is usually in the phrase:

[ QUOTE ]
I truly believed A was true.

[/ QUOTE ]

They are usually referring to something they beloved was true but currently do not believe is true.

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The question was not, "When does someone think they know that p," which is what you seem to be describing, but rather, "When does someone know that p." It can't just be a state of mind to have knowledge, for otherwise anyone can know anything as long as they really think they do, so to speak. We can't put scientific knowledge for example on a par with this subjective state of mind you are referring to, for otherwise scientific knowledge has no special justificatory status--it's as subjective as me knowing that the moon is made of cheese (which is possible by your account).

We're also not asking what someone means when they say "I know that p," because that's not the same question as what was originally asked, i.e., what conditions have to be satisfied for someone to actually know that p. People may mean all different sorts of things when they say "I know that p," so obviously that wouldn't get at what the conditions are for having genuine knowledge are either. If knowledge really were just being in a certain subjective state of mind, then when a scientist (or anyone else, for that matter) claimed to know that the moon was made of cheese no one would dispute it--after all, he would only be reporting some subjective state of mind. But since we *know* in fact that the moon is not made of cheese when someone claims to know that it is we point out that they are wrong.

Re: What is it to have knowledge?
 

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The question was not, "When does someone think they know that p," which is what you seem to be describing, but rather, "When does someone know that p."

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I am saying the two are the same. Someone knows p when they think they know p.

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It can't just be a state of mind to have knowledge, for otherwise anyone can know anything as long as they really think they do, so to speak

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I am saying that precisely that. Someone knows something when they really think they do.

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We can't put scientific knowledge for example on a par with this subjective state of mind you are referring to, for otherwise scientific knowledge has no special justificatory status--it's as subjective as me knowing that the moon is made of cheese (which is possible by your account).


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On the contrary I am saying precisely that. Knowledge is entirely subjective.

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If knowledge really were just being in a certain subjective state of mind, then when a scientist (or anyone else, for that matter) claimed to know that the moon was made of cheese no one would dispute it--after all, he would only be reporting some subjective state of mind.

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If someone knew that the moon was made of blue cheese, I would not dispute that they knew the moon was made of blue cheese, however I would dispute the statement that the mood was made of blue cheese.

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But since we *know* in fact that the moon is not made of cheese when someone claims to know that it is we point out that they are wrong.

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You can point out that they are wrong, however that does not change the fact that they know the moon is made of blue cheese and you know that it is not.

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what conditions have to be satisfied for someone to actually know that p

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Someone knows p if they think they know p.

The problem I think is that you appear to believe that at some level understanding of reality is accessible.

While I consider that understanding reality is inaccessible fantasy, and all have is what we can observe and our reactions to that.

Back to your definition of true belief.

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1. S must believe
2. P must be true
3. S must be justified in believe P

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2 is unconfirmable and 3 is meaningless without explaining what justified means.

Re: What is it to have knowledge?
 

You're very confused.

Re: What is it to have knowledge?
 

Sorry for a momment I got you mixed up with the OP.

Re: What is it to have knowledge?
 

since serious thinkers have spent a lifetime writing on what you have covered in a couple paragraphs, perhaps you could do some reading rather than "help" the rest of us out. i can supply a long list of essential readings on the subject----i would not presume to discuss these subjects w/ you if you are a leading thinker in the field of theory of knowledge----nor would i if you don't have an extensive background in the subject...................b