[Piers]

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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.