PHI 3223 - Mid-Term/Spring 2015
Truth-Tracking Theory (Nozick)
The tracking theory of knowledge: S knows P iff: 1. P is true; 2. S believes P; 3. If P weren't true, S wouldn't believe P; and 4. If P were true, S would believe P.
Problems with Foundationalism
-Critics of foundationalism, have argued that the idea of a basic belief makes no sense. For a person to be justified in accepting a belief, they must have access to this reason. It is not enough to justify a belief that there is a good reason for thinking it true; the believer must know that there is a good reason for thinking that the belief is true. -Foundationalists must accept that our choice of basic beliefs is entirely arbitrary. As all of our beliefs are ultimately derived from our basic beliefs, though, this means not only that the foundation of our beliefs is arbitrary, but also that all of our beliefs are arbitrary -All that can be justified by the basic beliefs of the foundationalist are the very beliefs that are said to be basic.
Problems with Coherentism
-Fictional worlds such as Narnia, the Matrix, and the Discworld are as coherent (or at least could be made as coherent) as the actual world. If coherence is the standard of justification, therefore, then we are as justified in believing in the Discworld as we are in believing in Earth. -A belief-set can be coherent even if all of its members are false. The belief that your parents are aliens coheres very well with the belief that they keep a flying saucer in the garage, which coheres very well with the belief that the FBI have dispatched agents to investigate, etc. Despite the coherence of this belief set, however, none of these beliefs is true.
Traditional Account of Knowledge (TAK)
A. According to TAK, propositional knowledge is justified, true belief. 1. It would appear that I cannot know P if I do not even believe P. Take 'belief' here to pick out a variety of pro-attitudes, all of which require a commitment to P. 2. It seems that one cannot know P unless P is true. Thus, I cannot know that the Vikings won the 2008 Super Bowl because, well, they didn't. (Note, though, that I can know that the claim, "The Vikings won the 2008 Super Bowl", is false, due to the fact that it is true that this claim is false.) 3. Finally, to rule out lucky guesses where I have a true belief that doesn't qualify as knowledge, it is important that my true belief be justified. That is, I must have some compelling story or account to give of P that is itself grounded in reality. This account should go quite a distance toward establishing that P is true. Justification is what closes the gap between relying on luck and being confident.
Foundationalism
All knowledge rests on a foundation of basic beliefs. In order to be justified, beliefs must fit this structure. What is true, real etc; is discovered by rationally constructing an understanding of the world based on reliable first principles. The foundationalist seeks to avoid the regress problem by positing the existence of foundational or "basic" beliefs. Basic beliefs are non-inferentially justified, i.e. they are justified without being inferred from other beliefs. As basic beliefs are justified, they are able to confer justification onto other beliefs that can be inferred from them. However, they halt the regress of justification; we need not posit an infinite series of justified beliefs on which basic beliefs are based, because basic beliefs are self-justifying, and so need no such series.
Goldman's version of reliabilism (also known as process reliabilism)
At first pass, we can formulate Goldman's reliabilism as follows: A belief-forming process counts as reliable iff it tends to produce beliefs that are true rather than false. Examples provided by Goldman of unreliable belief-forming processes (p. 338): • Visual beliefs formed as a result of brief and hasty scanning. • Wishful thinking. • Mere hunch or guesswork. • Hasty generalization. What is a process? Goldman's answer: Let us mean by a 'process' a functional operation or procedure, i.e., something that generates a mapping from certain states—'inputs'—into other states—'outputs.' The outputs of the present case are states of believing this or that proposition at a given moment. How reliable does a belief-forming process need to be in order to yield beliefs that are justified? Answer: the degree to which the process is reliable corresponds to the degree to which the beliefs it produces are justified. Reliabilism is a prototypical externalist theory of justification: according to reliabilism, the facts about your beliefs that determine whether or not they are justified need not be "internally available" to you—they might be outside of your cognitive grasp or epistemic purview. In particular, you don't, according to reliabilism, have to know or even be justified in believing that a given belief of yours was formed via a reliable process in order for it to be justified. We need to distinguish between the following: • Whether a given belief held by a given person is justified. • Whether that person can state or give a justification for that belief (in the form of an argument, defense, or set of reasons that support i
Coherentism
Epistemological position or method that justifies beliefs or knowledge if they are consistent with all other held beliefs and knowledge. Strive for consistency. Holds that there are no immediately justified beliefs to build a comprehensive epistemology. Coherentists reject the idea that individual beliefs are justified by being inferred from other beliefs. Instead, according to coherentism, whole systems of beliefs are justified by their coherence. Consistent (not contradict each other), Cohesive (set of beliefs that support each other), and Comprehensive.
Evidentialist vs. Externalist
Evidentialist - Evidentialism is the theory that justification is about having evidence. To have evidence for the belief that p, some argue, is to have another mental state that represents p as true. It could be sense experience - you believe the rose is red because you see the rose, and it looks red. Or a memory - you remember where you left your keys. Or it could be that p is 'self-evident' - you just 'see' the truth of 'if the dog is behind the cat, the cat is in front of the dog'. Evidence is required for a belief to be justified. You have direct access to, and directly recognize, your grounds for that belief. So whenever your belief is justified, you can know that it is justified. Externalist - Externalism about justification simply denies internalism. It argues that, at least sometimes, you can have a justified belief without knowing what justifies it. The most common version of externalism is reliabilism. Holds that the mind is not only the result of what is going on inside the nervous system (or the brain) but also of what either occurs or exists outside the subject.
Reliabilism
Is a general approach to epistemology that emphasizes the truth-conduciveness of a belief-forming process, method, or other epistemologically relevant factor. The reliability theme appears both in theories of knowledge and theories of justification. According to reliabilism, a belief is justified based on how it is formed. Reliabilism is an externalist theory of justification.
Causal Theory of Knowledge
Is one that states that in order for knowledge to exist, one must have a belief about something true, and that belief must have a causal relation with the truth. The intention of the causal theory is to solve the Gettier problem with the traditional definition of knowledge, that knowledge is justified true belief. A causal threory states that in order for there to be knowledge, there must be a causal chain, however complex, between the individual's belief in some proposition, and the truth of the proposition itself. -S knows that p if and only if the fact p is causally connected in an "appropriate" way with S' s believing p.¹
Pure Externalist
It is always sufficient for justification if some certain external fact which is specified by the partic-ular account obtains.
Gettier Examples
It's important to understand the centrality of TAK, as well as the unchallenged sway it held over epistemology, when turning to the Gettier cases. These cases are counterexamples that seem clear to many in this game, and they can be reported so simply and quickly that they it surprises many that they were not identified before. These are counterexamples to TAK, as they demonstrate that one can have justified, true belief without that qualifying as knowledge. A. These counterexamples show that justified, true belief is not sufficient for knowledge—you need something more, or perhaps something different. (The latter would be a real surprise, as it would involve jettisoning the other necessary pieces, but perhaps that is the way to go.) b. TAK is supposed to be universal and apply to all instances of knowledge, so a counterexample's job is only to show that it fails to be general by failing to cover all the examples of knowledge. 2. Counterexample #1 (from Gettier): Smith has strong evidence that Jones has 10 coins in his pocket and he also has strong evidence that Jones will get the promotion, so Smith has strong evidence for the conjunctive proposition, "Jones is the man who will get the job, and Jones has ten coins in his pocket"; Smith believes this, and deductively infers from it the equally justified conclusion that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket; this is true, but as it turns out, Smith gets the job and he has (by a stroke of epistemic luck!) exactly 10 coins in his pocket; thus, Smith has a justified, true belief that does not count as knowledge. 3. Counterexample #2 (from Gettier): Smith is justified in believing that Jones owns a Ford, and proceeds to conclude from this the claim, "Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Barcelona", which is valid and so justified even though Smith is just guessing on Brown's whereabouts; turns out, Jones is just driving a rental but Brown is in fact in Barcelona, so Smith's disjunctive belief is true and justified, even though it doesn't count as knowledge. 4. Counterexample #3 (modified from Chisholm): Smith is justified in believing that there is a deer in a field, having just seen one of those lookalikes that Fish and Game put up to catch drive-by hunters; his son asks him if there is a deer in the field, and he responds affirmatively; as it turns out, there is a deer in the field—one Smith didn't see—so he has a justified, true belief that doesn't count as knowledge. The cases rest on the following principles: a. The Justified Falsehood Principle (JF): It is possible for a person to be justified in believing a false proposition. (p. 28) b. The Justified Deduction Principle (JD): If S is justified in believing p, and p entails q, and S deduces q from p and accepts q as a result of this deduction, then S is justified in believing q. (p. 28) 2. Both of these principles seem correct—justification understood as evidence can be had in truckloads for propositions that turn out to be false, and deductive inference would seem to be justification preserving if anything is. (Remember: a valid, deductive inference guarantees the truth of the conclusion given the truth of the premises, and so if the premises are justified, the inference should do nothing to threaten that justification; put another way, the justification of the premises and the validity of the inference should suffice to guarantee the justification of the conclusion.)
Perks of The Casual Theory of Knowledge
The causal theory nicely handles the standard Gettier cases. • The causal theory doesn't require that one be able to state one's justification for believing that p. This makes it easy to account for one's knowledge of facts whose justification one has forgotten. (Lincoln ex.) • Because the list of appropriate causal processes is left open, the causal theory leaves room for presently controversial causal processes that we may later deem to be genuinely knowledge-producing. • The causal theory unseats the traditional assumption "that epistemological questions are questions of logic or justification, not causal or genetic questions" (p. 372).
Problems of The Casual Theory of Knowledge
correct reconstruction without knowledge: In some cases, it seems that one does not know that p, even though one has properly reconstructed the causal chain from the fact that p to one's belief that p. For example, if S infers that the mountain erupted many centuries ago from his belief that there is solidified lava throughout the countryside for haphazard reasons, S doesn't seem to count as knowing that the mountain erupted many centuries ago. knowledge without correct reconstruction: In some cases, it seems that one can know that p, even though one has improperly reconstructed the causal chain from the fact that p to one's belief that p. For example: Overdetermined Death: James watches me take a fatal dose of poison for which there is no antidote. On this basis, he comes to believe, and appears to know, that I will die. I do in fact die, but his reconstruction of the causal chain leading up to my death is incorrect: I ended up dying of a heart attack unrelated to the poison. knowledge of existential and universal generalizations: The causal theory is best designed to handle our knowledge of specific facts about the external world; it has a more difficult time accounting for our knowledge of existential generalizations (such as that someone in my department owns a Prius) and universal generalizations (such as that all men are mortal). After all, these sorts of facts do not seem to have causes, or to cause anything.
Cartesian foundationalism
i. Beliefs about one's own inner state of mind (e.g. appearance beliefs and beliefs about the having of certain propositional attitudes) and beliefs about simple necessary truths (e.g. beliefs about elementary truths of logic and mathematics) can be immediately justified. ii. Immediately justified beliefs are justified because we are infallible about such matters. iii. All other justified beliefs are justified because they can be deduced from one's immediately justified beliefs. Appearance beliefs a belief that I seem to see a table before me; a belief that I seem to hear a loud crash in the distance; a belief that I feel cold; a belief that I am hungry; a belief that I have a dull headache. Propositional attitudes a belief that I believe that Socrates is mortal; a belief that I hope class will be cancelled tomorrow; a belief that I wonder whether there is a solution to the regress problem. Simple necessary truths a belief that if P & Q is true, then P is true; a belief that 2 + 3 = 5; a belief that if person A is younger than person B, and person B is younger than person C, then person A is younger than person C. Beliefs about one's inner mental states are not infallible. Arguably, the following is an example in which I believe that I feel something hot, but am wrong: the initiation trick: As part of an initiation ritual for some secret club, I am blindfolded and told that I will be branded with a red hot poker that I can hear (and smell) being heated for that purpose. When a piece of ice is then pushed into my bare stomach, I scream, for I mistakenly believe myself to be feeling a sensation of intense heat. Feldman's counterreply: This reply leaves us with no way of explaining what is happening at the moment at which I realize that the thing being pressed into my stomach is not actually hot.
Problems with Truth-Tracking Theory
the trash chute: I drop a trash bag down a chute in my apartment complex. An hour later I presumably know that the bag is in the basement. However, if it were not true that the bag is in the basement, this would be because the bag got stuck in the chute (a very rare occurrence). But in that case I would still believe that the bag is in the basement, so condition 3 is not satisfied. the mountain-climbing brain-in-a-vat: Presumably, I right now know that I'm not a brain-in-a-vat being led to believe that I'm climbing a mountain. However, if I were a brain-in-a-vat being led to believe that I'm climbing a mountain, I would believe that I'm not such a brain-in-a-vat, so condition 3 is not satisfied. the lucky glance: I glance out my window and see James crossing the street. However, James very easily could have crossed the street at a spot that I can't see from my window. So although it seems that I know that James crossed the street, in several nearby worlds in which that proposition is true and in which I use the same belief-forming method (glancing out my window), I don't believe that James crossed the street. Thus condition 4 is not satisfied. Kripke's barn: I'm driving through the countryside in my new Prius and see a red barn. However, it turns out that, although I passed a real barn, there are lots of fake barn facades scattered throughout the countryside. One catch: all of the fake barns are yellow. So I fail condition 3 with respect to the proposition that I passed a barn (there are nearby worlds in which I pass a facade instead of a barn, but believe that I passed a barn), but I meet all four conditions with respect to the proposition that I passed a red barn. However, this is counterintuitive: either I know both propositions or I know neither, but I don't know one but not the other.