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The Analysis of Knowledge
First published Tue Feb 6, 2001; substantive revision Mon Jan 16, 2006
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The objective of the analysis of knowledge is to state the conditions that are
individually necessary and jointly sufficient for propositional knowledge:
knowledge that such-and-such is the case. Propositional knowledge must be
distinguished from two other kinds of knowledge that fall outside the scope of
the analysis: knowing a place or a person, and knowing how to do something.
The concept to be analyzed -- the analysandum -- is commonly expressed using
the schema "S knows that p", where "S" refers to the knowing subject, and "p"
to the proposition that is known. A proposed analysis consists of a statement
of the following form: S knows that p if and only if -- . The blank is to be
replaced by the analysans: a list of conditions that are individually necessary
and jointly sufficient. To test whether a proposed analysis is correct, we
must ask (a) whether every possible case in which the conditions listed in the
analysans are met is a case in which S knows that p, and (b) whether every
possible case in which S knows that p is a case in which each of these
conditions is met. When we ask (a), we wish to find out whether the proposed
analysans is sufficient for S's knowing that p; when we ask (b), we wish to
determine whether each of the conditions listed in the analysans is necessary.
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- Knowledge as Justified True Belief
- The Belief Condition
- The Justification Condition
- The Gettier Problem
- An Alternative Approach: Reliabilism
- Internalism and Externalism
- Why Internalism?
- Why Externalism?
- Two Analyses of Knowledge
Supplement: Knowledge and Skepticism
Bibliography
Other Internet Resources
Related Entries
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1. Knowledge as Justified True Belief
According to the following analysis, which is usually referred to as the "JTB"
account, knowledge is justified true belief.
The JTB Analysis of Knowledge:
S knows that p iff
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- p is true;
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- S believes that p;
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- S is justified in believing that p.
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Condition (1), the truth condition, has not generated any significant degree of
discussion. It is overwhelmingly clear that what is false cannot be known.
For example, it is false that G. E. Moore is the author of Sense and
Sensibilia. Since it is false, it is not the sort of thing anybody can
know.
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Although the truth-condition enjoys nearly universal consent, let us
nevertheless consider at least one objection to it. According to this
objection, Newtonian Physics is part of our overall scientific knowledge. But
Newtonian Physics is false. So it's possible to know something false after
all. [1] In response, a y that Newtonian physics involves a set of laws
of nature {L1, L2,..., Ln}. When we say we know Newtonian physics, this could
be interpreted as saying we know that, according to Newtonian physics, L1,
L2,..., Ln are all true. And that claim is of course true.
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Additionally, we can distinguish between two theories, T and T*, where T is
Newtonian physics and T* updated theoretical physics at the cutting edge. T*
does not literally include T as a part, but absorbs T by virtue of explaining
in which way T is useful for understanding the world, what assumptions T is
based on, where T fails, and how T must be corrected to describe the world
accurately. So we could say that, since we know T*, we know Newtonian physics
in the sense that we know how Newtonian physics helps us understand the world
and where and how Newtonian physics fails.
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1.1 The Belief Condition
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Unlike the truth condition, condition (2),
the belief condition, has generated
at least some discussion. Although initially it might seems obvious that
knowing that p requires believing that p, some philosophers have argued that
knowledge without belief is indeed possible. Suppose Walter comes home after
work to find out that his house has burned down. He utters the words "I don't
believe it." Critics of the belief condition might argue that Walter knows that
his house has burned down (he sees that it has), but, as his words indicate, he
does not believe it. Therefore, there is knowledge without belief. To this
objection, there is an effective reply. What Walter wishes to convey by saying
"I don't believe it" is not that he really does not believe what he sees with
his own eyes, but rather that he finds it hard to come to terms with what he
sees.
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A more serious counterexample has been suggested by Colin Radford (1966).
Suppose Albert is quizzed on English history. One of the questions is: "When
did Queen Elizabeth die?" Albert doesn't think he knows, but answers the
question correctly. Moreover, he gives correct answers to many other questions
to which he didn't think he knew the answer. Let us focus on Albert's answer
to the question about Elizabeth:
(E) Elizabeth died in 1603.
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Radford makes the following two claims about this example:
- Albert does not believe (E). Reason: He thinks he doesn't know
the answer to the question. He doesn't trust his answer because he
takes it to be a mere guess.
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- Albert knows (E). Reason: His answer is not at all just a
lucky guess. The fact that he answers most of the questions correctly
indicates that he has actually learned, and never forgotten, the basic
facts of English history.
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Since he takes (a) and (b) to be true, Radford would argue that knowledge
without belief is indeed possible. But Radford's example is not compelling.
Those who think that belief is necessary for knowledge could reply that the
example does not qualify as a case of knowledge without belief because it isn't
a case of knowledge to begin with. Albert doesn't know (E) because he has no
justification for believing (E). If he were to believe (E), his belief would
be unjustified. This reply anticipates what we have not yet discussed: the
necessity of the justification condition. Let us first discuss why friends of
JTB hold that knowledge requires justification, and then discuss in greater
detail why they would not accept Radford's alleged counterexample.
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1.2 The Justification Condition
Why is condition (3) necessary? Why not say that
knowledge is true belief? The standard answer is that to identify knowledge
with true belief would be implausible because a belief that is true just
because of luck does not qualify as knowledge. Beliefs that are lacking
justification are false more often than not. However, on occasion, such
beliefs happen to be true. Suppose William takes a medication that has the
following side effect: it causes him to be overcome with irrational fears. One
of his fears is that he has cancer. This fear is so powerful that he starts
believing it. Suppose further that, by sheer coincidence, he does have cancer.
So his belief is true. Clearly, though, his belief does not amount to
knowledge. But why not? Most epistemologists would agree that William does
not know because his belief's truth is due to luck (bad luck, in this case).
Let us refer to a belief's turning out to be true because of mere luck as
epistemic luck. It is uncontroversial that knowledge is incompatible
with epistemic luck. What, though, is needed to rule out epistemic luck?
Advocates of the JTB account would say that what is needed is justification. A
true belief, if an instance of knowledge and thus not true because of epistemic
luck, must be justified. But what is it for a belief to be justified? [2]
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Among the philosophers who favor the JTB approach, we find bewildering
disagreement on how this question is to be answered. According to one
prominent view, typically referred to as "evidentialism", a belief is justified
if, and only if, it fits the subject's evidence. [3] Evidentialists, then,
would say that the reason why knowledge is not the same as true belief is that
knowledge requires evidence. Opponents of evidentialism would say that
evidentialist justification (i.e., having adequate evidence) is not needed to
rule out epistemic luck. They would argue that what is needed instead is a
suitable relation between the belief and the mental process that brought it
about. What we are looking at here is an important disagreement about the
nature of knowledge, which will be our main focus further below. In the
meantime, we will continue our examination of the JTB analysis.
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Let us return to Radford's objection to the belief condition, which we
considered above. We are now in a position to discuss further how that
objection can be rebutted. Recall that Albert does not take himself to know
the answer to the question about the date of Elizabeth's death. He does not
because he does not remember having learned the basic facts of British history.
Now, it is of course true that he did learn these facts, and is indeed able to
recall them. But is this by itself sufficient for knowing them? Philosophers
who think that knowledge requires evidence would say that it is not. Albert
needs to have evidence for believing that he learned those facts. Until he is
quizzed, he has no such evidence. After the quiz, when he is told that most of
his answers are correct, he does have the requisite evidence. For once he
comes to know that he is able to produce consistently correct answers to the
questions he is asked, he has acquired evidence for believing that he must have
learned this subject matter at school. This evidence is also evidence for the
answers he has given. So at that point, the justification condition is met,
and thus (since the other conditions of knowledge are also met) he knows
(again) that Elizabeth died in 1603. However, he did not know this before
finding out that he must have learned those facts, for at that point his answer
to the question lacked justification and thus did not add up to knowledge.
Evidentialists would deny, therefore, that Radford has supplied us with a
counterexample to the belief condition. [4]
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2. The Gettier Problem
In his short 1963 paper, "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?", Edmund Gettier
presented two effective counterexamples to the JTB analysis (Gettier 1963). The
second of these goes as follows. Suppose Smith has good evidence for the false
proposition
1. Jones owns a Ford. [5]
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Suppose further Smith infers from (1) the following three disjunctions:
2. Either Jones owns a Ford or Brown is in Boston.
3. Either Jones owns a Ford or Brown is in Barcelona.
4. Either Jones owns a Ford or Brown is in Brest-Litovsk.
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Since (1) entails each of the propositions (2) through (4), and since Smith
recognizes these entailments, he is justified in believing each of propositions
(2)-(4). Now suppose that, by sheer coincidence, Brown is indeed in Barcelona.
Given these assumptions, we may say that Smith, when he believes (3), holds a
justified true belief. However, is Smith's belief an instance of knowledge?
Since Smith has no evidence whatever as to Brown's whereabouts, and so believes
what is true only because of luck, the answer would have to be "no".
Consequently, the three conditions of the JTB account -- truth, belief, and
justification -- are not sufficient for knowledge. [6] How must the analysis of
knowledge be modified to make it immune to cases like the one we just
considered? This is what is commonly referred to as the "Gettier problem".
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Epistemologists who think that the JTB approach is basically on the right track
must choose between two different strategies for solving the Gettier problem.
The first is to strengthen the justification condition. This was attempted by
Roderick Chisholm. [7] The second strategy is to search for a suitable further
condition, a condition that would, so to speak, "degettierize" justified true
belief. Let us focus on this second strategy. According to one suggestion,
the following fourth condition would do the trick:
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4. S's belief that p is not inferred from any falsehood.[8]
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Unfortunately, this proposal is unsuccessful. Since Gettier cases need not
involve any inference, there are possible cases of justified true belief in
which the subject fails to have knowledge although condition (iv) is met.
Suppose, for example, that James, who is relaxing on a bench in a park,
observes a dog that, about 8 yards away from him, is chewing on a bone. So he
believes
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c. There is a dog over there.
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Suppose further that what he takes to be a dog is actually a robot dog so
perfect that, by vision alone, it could not be distinguished from an actual
dog. James does not know that such robot dogs exist. But in fact a Japanese
toy manufacturer has recently developed them, and what James sees is a
prototype that is used for testing the public's response. Given these
assumptions, (5) is of course false. But suppose further that just a few feet
away from the robot dog, there is a real dog. Sitting behind a bush, he is
concealed from James's view. Given this further assumption, James's belief is
true. So once again, what we have before us is a justified true belief that
doesn't qualify as an instance of knowledge. Arguably, this belief is directly
justified by a visual experience; it is not inferred from any falsehood. But
if (5) is indeed a non-inferential belief, then the JTB account, even if
supplemented with (iv), gives us the wrong result that James knows (5).
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Another case illustrating that clause (4)
won't do the job is the well-known Barn County case (Goldman 1976). Suppose
there is a county in the Midwest with the following peculiar feature. The
landscape next to the road leading through that county is peppered with
barn-facades: structures that from the road look exactly like barns.
Observation from any other viewpoint would immediately reveal these structures
to be fakes: devices erected for the purpose of fooling unsuspecting motorists
into believing in the presence of barns. Suppose Henry is driving along the
road that leads through Barn County. Naturally, he will on numerous occasions
form a false belief in the presence of a barn. Since Henry has no reason to
suspect that he is the victim of organized deception, these beliefs are
justified. Now suppose further that, on one of those occasions when he
believes there is a barn over there, he happens to be looking at the one and
only real barn in the county. This time, his belief is justified and true.
But since its truth is the result of luck, it is exceedingly plausible to judge
that Henry's belief is not an instance of knowledge. Yet condition (4) is met in this case. His belief is clearly not the
result of any inference from a falsehood. Once again, we see that (4) does not
succeed as a solution to the Gettier problem.
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Above, we noted that the role of the justification condition is to ensure that
the analysans does not mistakenly identify as knowledge a belief that is true
because of epistemic luck. The lesson to be learned from the Gettier problem
is that the justification condition by itself cannot ensure this. Even a
justified belief, understood as a belief based on good evidence, can be true
because of luck. So if a JTB analysis of knowledge is to rule out the full
range of cases of epistemic luck, it must be amended with a suitable fourth
condition, a condition that succeeds in preventing justified true belief from
being "gettiered." Thus amended, the JTB analysis becomes a JTB+ account of
knowledge, where the '+' stands for the needed fourth condition.
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3. An Alternative Approach: Reliabilism
The analysis of knowledge may be approached by asking the following question:
What turns a true belief into knowledge? An uncontroversial answer to this
question would be: the sort of thing that effectively prevents a belief from
being true as a result of epistemic luck. Controversy begins as soon as this
formula is turned into a substantive proposal. According to evidentialism,
which endorses the JTB+ conception of knowledge, the combination of two things
accomplishes this goal: evidentialist justification plus degettierization (a
condition that prevents a true and justified belief from being "gettiered").
However, according to an alternative approach that has in the last three
decades become increasingly popular, what stands in the way of epistemic luck
-- what turns a true belief into knowledge -- is the reliability of the
cognitive process that produced the belief. Consider how we acquire knowledge
of our physical environment: we do so through sense experience. Sense
experiential processes are, at least under normal conditions, highly reliable.
There is nothing accidental about the truth of the beliefs these processes
produce. Thus beliefs produced by sense experience, if true, should qualify as
instances of knowledge. An analogous point could be made for other reliable
cognitive processes, such as introspection, memory, and rational intuition. We
might, therefore, say that what turns true belief into knowledge is the
reliability of our cognitive processes.
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This approach -- reliabilism, as it is usually called -- can be carried out in
two different ways. First, there is reliabilism as a theory of justification
(J-reliabilism). [9] The most basic version of this view -- let's call it
'simple J-reliabilism' -- takes knowledge to be justified true belief but,
unlike evidentialism, conceives of justification in terms of reliability:
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Simple J-Reliabilism:
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Part A: S knows that p iff S's belief that p is (i) true and (ii) justified.
Part B: S is justified in believing that p iff S's belief that p was produced
by a reliable cognitive process (in a way that degettierizes S's belief).
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Second, there is reliabilism as a theory of knowledge (K-reliabilism).[10]
According to this approach, knowledge does not require justification. Rather,
what it requires (in addition to truth) is reliable belief formation. Let us
define this second version of reliabilism thus:
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Simple K-Reliabilism:
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S knows that p if, and only if, S's belief that p (i) is true and (ii) was
produced by a reliable cognitive process (in a way that degettierizes S's
belief).
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The degettierization-clauses in parentheses are needed because the Gettier
problem is no less of a problem for reliabilism as it is for the JTB approach.
We will set this issue aside for now and return to it at the end of this
section.
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In the following passage, Fred Dretske articulates how K-reliabilism can be
motivated:
Those who think knowledge requires something other than, or at least more
than, reliably produced true belief, something (usually) in the way of
justification for the belief that one's reliably produced beliefs are being
reliably produced, have, it seems to me, an obligation to say what benefits
this justification is supposed to confer…. Who needs it, and why? If an animal
inherits a perfectly reliable belief-generating mechanism, and it also
inherits a disposition, everything being equal, to act on the basis of the
beliefs so generated, what additional benefits are conferred by a
justification that the beliefs are being produced in some reliable way? If
there are no additional benefits, what good is this justification? Why should
we insist that no one can have knowledge without it? (Dretske 1989, p. 95)
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Further below we will discuss how advocates of the JTB approach might answer
Dretske's question. In the meantime, let us focus a bit more on Dretske's
account of knowledge. According to Dretske, reliable cognitive processes
convey information, and thus endow not only humans, but (nonhuman) animals as
well, with knowledge. He writes:
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I wanted a characterization that would at least allow for the possibility that
animals (a frog, rat, ape, or my dog) could know things without my having to
suppose them capable of the more sophisticated intellectual operations
involved in traditional analyses of knowledge. (Dretske 1985, p. 177)
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It does indeed seem odd to think of frogs, rats, or dogs as having justified or
unjustified beliefs. Yet attributing knowledge to animals is certainly in
accord with our ordinary practice of using the word 'knowledge'. So if, with
Dretske, we want an account of knowledge that includes animals among the
knowing subjects, we might want to abandon the traditional JTB account in favor
of K-reliabilism.
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Advocates of J-reliabilism take justification, and thus reliable belief
formation, to be a necessary condition of knowledge. Advocates of
K-reliabilism also take reliable belief formation to be a necessary condition
of knowledge, however without saying anything about justification. We might
wonder, therefore, whether there is any substantive difference between the two
views, a difference that goes beyond the mere terminological difference of
using vs. not using the word 'justification'. Why not think that J and
K-reliabilism actually amount to the same thing? [11]
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Simple J-reliabilism and simple K-reliabilism would appear to be extensionally
equivalent: whatever is a case of knowledge according to the former is also a
case of knowledge according to the latter, and vice versa. This does not mean,
however, that there is no important difference between the two views. Suppose
B is a belief that, though produced by a reliable faculty or process, is in
fact false. About B, K-reliabilism implies one and only one thing: B is not
an instance of knowledge. But J-reliabilism implies two things about B: (i) B
is not an instance of knowledge; (ii) B is a justified belief. So although the
two theories do not differ with regard to which beliefs qualify as instances of
knowledge and which do not, they do differ in the following respect: Whereas
J-reliabilism yields implications about justification or the lack of it,
K-reliabilism does not. This could be viewed as a consideration favoring
J-reliabilism. Beliefs that fail to qualify as knowledge can, after all, still
exhibit an epistemically desirable quality, namely that of being justified. We
might be interested in having an account of this quality even if we do not want
to conceive of justification as resulting from the possession of evidence.
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According to Dretske, his version of K-reliabilism avoids Gettier problems. He
says: Gettier difficulties... arise for any account of knowledge that
makes knowledge a product of some justificatory relationship (having good
evidence, excellent reasons, etc.) that could relate one to something false...
This is [a] problem for justificational accounts. The problem is evaded in the
information-theoretic model, because one can get into an appropriate
justificational relationship to something false, but one cannot get into an
appropriate informational relationship to something false. (Dretske 1985, p.
179)
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However, consider again the case of the barn facades. Henry sees a real barn,
and that's why he believes there is a barn near-by. Since the barn he is
looking at is an actual barn, it would appear that the perceptual process that
causes Henry to believe this does not relate him to anything false. So if
perception, on account of its reliability, normally conveys information, it
should do so in this case as well. Alas, it arguably does not. Since Henry
would have believed the same had he been situated in front of one of the many
barn-facades in the vicinity, we are reluctant to judge that Henry knows there
is a barn nearby. There is reason to doubt, therefore, that Dretske's version
of K-reliabilism escapes the Gettier problem.
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In general terms, since reliable faculties can be just as misleading as a
person's evidence, a bare bones reliability condition does little toward
solving the Gettier problem. When Henry travels through Barn County, surely
his vision works just as well as it would elsewhere. Hence, unless we are told
how to gauge reliability relative to the subject's environment, reliabilism
offers us no reason to judge that Henry fails to know that there is a barn
near-by. Or consider the example of the Japanese toy-dog. When James believes
that there is a toy-dog before him, his failure to know this is not due to a
sudden deterioration of his vision. Rather, James fails to know because an
otherwise reliable faculty, vision, is misleading on this particular occasion.
Hence, if reliabilism is to yield the correct outcome about this case, it needs
to be amended with a further clause. We need to be told either a principled
reason why James's visual faculty fails to be reliable under the circumstances,
or else why James fails to know even though his belief is produced by a
reliable faculty. Clearly, then, Gettier cases pose as much of a problem for
reliabilism as for an evidentialist JTB account. Neither theory, unless
amended with a clever degettierization clause, succeeds in stating sufficient
conditions of knowledge. [12]
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4. Internalism and Externalism
Evidentialists reject both J-reliabilism and K-reliabilism. We will first focus
on J-reliabilism and further below discuss why evidentialists reject
K-reliabilism as well. Evidentialists reject J-reliabilism because they take
justification to be something that is internal to the subject. J-reliabilists,
on the other hand, take justification to be something that is external to the
subject.[13]
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How are we to understand the difference between the, so to speak, internality
and the externality of justification? Let us turn to Roderick Chisholm, one of
the chief advocates of internalism. In the third edition of Theory of
Knowledge, Chisholm says the following:
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If a person S is internally justified in believing a certain thing, then this
may be something he can know just by reflecting upon his own state of mind.
(Chisholm 1989, p. 7)
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In the second edition of this book, he characterizes internalism in a somewhat
different way:
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We presuppose … that the things we know are justified for us in the following
sense: we can know what it is, on any occasion, that constitutes our grounds,
or reasons, or evidence for thinking that we know. (Chisholm 1977, p. 17)
..
These passages differ in the following respect: in the first Chisholm is
concerned with the property of justification (a belief's being justified); in
the second, with justifiers: the things that make justified beliefs
justified. What is common to both passages is the constraint Chisholm imposes.
In the first passage, Chisholm characterizes justification as something that is
recognizable on reflection and, in the second, as the sort of thing that
can be known on any occasion. Arguably, this is just a terminological
difference. It would not be implausible to claim that what can be recognized
through reflection is something that can be recognized on any occasion, and
what can be recognized on any occasion is something that can be recognized
through reflection. Although this point deserves further examination, let us
here simply assume that recognizability on reflection and recognizability on
any occasion amount to the same thing. In what follows, we will refer to it as
direct recognizability.
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As already noted, in the first passage Chisholm imposes the direct
recognizability constraint on justification, in the second on justifiers. Does
this amount to a substantive difference? If the direct recognizability of
justifiers implies the direct recognizability of justification, and vice versa,
then the two passages we considered would indeed just be alternative ways of
stating the same point. Whether they really are is perhaps debatable, but here
we will simply assume that it makes no substantive difference whether the
characterization of internalism focuses on justification or justifiers.
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Chisholm, then, defines internalism by saying that justification is
recognizable on reflection, and thus in terms of the accessibility of
justification. This type of internalism may therefore be called accessibility
internalism. Alternatively, internalism could be defined in terms of limiting
justifiers to mental states. According to this second approach, internalism
says that justifiers must be internal to the mind, i.e., must be mental events
or states. Internalism thus defined could be labeled mental state
internalism.[14] Whether accessibility internalism and mental state internalism
are genuine alternatives depends on whether being directly recognizable is an
essential property of mental states. If it is, then what appear to be genuine
alternatives might in fact not be. [15] Since here we cannot go into the
details of this issue, we will cut this matter short and simply define
internalism, as suggested by Chisholm, in terms of direct recognizability,
while acknowledging that it might be preferable to define it by restricting
justifiers to mental states. We will refer to internalism as defined here as
"J-internalism," since it imposes the direct recognizability constraint not on
knowledge but justification.
..
J-Internalism:
..
Justification is directly recognizable. At any time t at which S holds a
justified belief B, S is in a position to know at t that B is justified.[16]
..
J-internalism is to be contrasted with J-externalism, which is simply its
negation.
..
J-Externalism:
..
Justification is not directly recognizable. It is not the case that at any
time t at which S holds a justified belief B, S is in a position to know at t
that B is justified. (There are times at which S holds a justified belief B
but is not in a position to know that B is justified.)
..
Next, we will discuss what consequences we can derive from J-internalism. To
begin with, we can derive the result that Simple J-reliabilism is an
externalist theory. Suppose S's belief B has, at time t, the property of being
reliably formed. B's being reliably formed at t, and S's being able to
recognize at t that B is reliably formed, are clearly two different affairs.
It could be the case that B is reliably formed without S's being able to tell
at t that B is reliably formed. According to Simple J-reliabilism, however,
reliability by itself -- without the subject's having any evidence indicating
its presence -- is sufficient for justification. Simple J-reliabilism,
therefore, allows for cases of the following kind: S's belief B is reliably
formed and therefore justified, but, since B's reliability is, so to speak,
"hidden" from S, S cannot directly recognize that B is justified.
J-reliabilism is, therefore, an externalist theory.
..
To illustrate this point, let us consider a familiar example due to Laurence
BonJour.[17] Suppose Norman is a perfectly reliable clairvoyant. At time t,
his clairvoyance causes Norman to form the belief that the president is
presently in New York. However, Norman has no evidence whatever indicating
that he is clairvoyant. Nor has he at t any way of recognizing that his belief
was caused by his clairvoyance. Norman, then, cannot at t recognize that his
belief is justified. So Simple J-reliabilism implies that Norman's belief is
justified at t although Norman cannot recognize at t that his belief is
justified.
..
Second, J-internalism allows us to derive the consequence -- as it should --
that evidentialism is an internalist theory. The question of what a person's
evidence consists of is of course not uncontroversial. Nor is it
uncontroversial what kind of cognitive access a subject has to her evidence.
However, it would not be without a good deal of initial plausibility to make
the following two assumptions. First, a subject's evidence consists of her
perceptual, introspective, memorial, and intuitional states, as well as her
beliefs. In short, a subject's evidence consists of her mental states. Items
other than mental states are never part of a subject's evidence. [18] Second, a
subject's mental states are directly recognizable to her. [19] If we now add
the further assumption (mentioned above) that the direct recognizability of
justifiers implies the direct recognizability of justification, then we get the
result that evidentialism is a form of J-internalism. Let us display the
argument in detail:
..
Why Evidentialism is a Version of J-Internalism:
..
- According to evidentialism, justifiers consist of a person's evidence.
..
- A person's evidence (consisting of her mental states) is
directly recognizable to that person.
..
- Therefore:
According to evidentialism, a person's justifiers are directly
recognizable to that person.
..
- If the justifiers that make a person's justified beliefs
justified are directly recognizable to that person, then the
justification of that person's justified beliefs is directly
recognizable to that person.
..
- Therefore:
According to evidentialism, the justification of a person's justified
beliefs is directly recognizable to that person.
..
The crucial premises in this argument are (2) and (4). Evidentialists would be
reluctant to call "evidence" something that is not directly recognizable to
a subject. [20] So (2) would appear to be a premise that evidentialists are
likely to endorse. And (4) expresses no more than one part of what we already
assumed: that the direct recognizability of justifiers implies the direct
recognizability of justification, and vice versa. Of course, both premises
might be challenged. What seems safe to say, therefore, is the conditional
point that, if (2) and (4) capture what is essential to evidentialism, then
evidentialism implies internalism about justification.
..
As mentioned at the beginning of this section, evidentialists also reject
K-reliabilism. They do so because, pace Dretske, they think that internal
justification -- justification in the form of having adequate evidence -- is
necessary for knowledge. In other words, they deny that a belief's origin in a
reliable cognitive process is sufficient for the belief's being an instance of
knowledge. Let us refer to this position as internalism about knowledge, or
K-internalism, and let us define it using the concept of internal
justification: the kind of justification that meets the direct recognizability
constraint.
..
K-Internalism:
Internal justification is a necessary condition of knowledge. A belief's
origin in a reliable cognitive process is not sufficient for its being an
instance of knowledge.
..
K-externalism is the negation of K-internalism:
..
K-Externalism:
Internal justification is not a necessary condition of knowledge. A belief's
origin in a reliable cognitive process is sufficient for its being an instance
of knowledge. Consequently, there are cases of knowledge without internal
justification.
..
In this section, we have merely concerned ourselves with what internalists and
externalists disagree about with regard to both justification and knowledge.
In the next two sections, we will examine what reasons internalists and
externalists can cite in support of their respective views.
..
5. Why Internalism?
First, both J- and K-internalism can be motivated by appealing to evidentialism
as a premise. As we saw in the previous section, evidentialism is plausibly
construed as entailing internalism. Consequently, reasons in support of
evidentialism are also reasons in support of J-internalism. Moreover,
evidentialists would say that internal justification is a necessary condition of
knowledge. Evidentialists would support this claim with examples. Consider again
BonJour's clairvoyant Norman. Norman has no evidence for thinking that he is a
reliable clairvoyant. Suppose Norman's belief B is caused by his clairvoyance.
Suppose further Norman has no independent evidence for B. Evidentialists would
say that, since due to the lack of evidence B is unjustified, B is not an
instance of knowledge. Considerations supporting evidentialism, then, are also
considerations in favor of K-internalism. [21]
..
Second, there is an argument for internalism that starts with what is known as
the deontological conception of epistemic justification:
Deontological Justification:
any of his epistemic duties.
..
The concept of duty employed here must not be confused with ethical or
prudential duty. The type of duty in question is specifically epistemic.[22]
What exactly epistemic duties are is a matter of controversy. A fairly
uncontroversial starting point is to say that epistemic duties are those that
arise in the pursuit of truth. [23] Thus we might express the concept of
deontological justification alternatively as follows: S is justified in
believing that p iff in believing that p, S does not fail to do what he ought
to do in the pursuit of truth. Of course, this way of putting things leads us
directly to a further question: In the pursuit of truth, exactly what is it
that one ought to do? Evidentialists would say: It is to believe what, and
only what, one's evidence supports. [24]
..
Let's call proponents of the deontological concept of justification
deontologists. If deontologists conceive of epistemic duty in the way
suggested in the previous paragraph, then they can argue as follows: To be
justified is to meet the duty of believing what one's evidence supports.
Evidential support is directly recognizable. Therefore, deontological
justification is directly recognizable. Hence, deontological justification is
internal justification. There is also an argument from deontology to
internalism that does not depend on evidentialism as a premise. [25] It derives
the direct recognizability of justification from the premise that what
determines epistemic duty is directly recognizable.
..
From Deontology to Internalism:
..
- Justification is a matter of epistemic duty fulfillment.
..
- Therefore:
What determines justification is identical to what determines
epistemic duty.
..
- What determines epistemic duty is directly recognizable.
..
- Therefore:
What determines justification is directly recognizable.
..
- If what determines justification is directly recognizable, then
justification itself is directly recognizable.
..
- Therefore:
Justification is directly recognizable.
..
(2) follows directly from the deontological conception of justification. (5) is
nothing new; we have assumed it above already. The argument's main premise is
of course (3). [26] Though certainly not implausible, this premise is open to
criticism. Clearly, then, the argument is not uncontroversial. Nevertheless,
it seems fair to say that it represents a straightforward and not obviously
implausible derivation of internalism from deontology.
..
Third, internalism (J or K) can be supported by objecting to particular
externalist accounts of justification or knowledge. Let us use reliabilism for
the purpose of illustration. Internalists will argue that reliable belief
formation is neither necessary nor sufficient for justification, nor sufficient
for knowledge when added to true belief. To challenge sufficiency,
internalists would cite cases like BonJour's Norman, the unwittingly reliable
clairvoyant. Evidentialists would say that the beliefs arising from his
clairvoyance (unless supported by adequate evidence) are neither justified nor
instances of knowledge. To support the claim that reliable belief production
is not necessary for justification, internalists will appeal to the possibility
of being deceived by Descartes's evil demon. Let's suppose you are a victim of
such deception, and let's distinguish between the normal world and the evil
demon world. Your memories, experiences, and beliefs in the evil demon world
mirror your memories, experiences, and beliefs in the normal world. However,
whereas your beliefs in the normal world are by and large true, by far most of
your beliefs in the evil demon world are false and thus unreliably produced.
Simple J-reliabilism implies, therefore, that your beliefs in the evil demon
world are unjustified. To internalists, this is an intuitively implausible
result. Here is why. Your beliefs in the normal world are (as we may assume)
by and large supported by adquate evidence and therefore justified. However,
as far as your evidence is concerned, there is no difference between the evil
demon world and the normal world. Your beliefs in the evil demon world,
internalists would therefore say, are also by and large supported by adequate
evidence and therefore justified. Hence internalists would reject the claim
that being produced by reliable faculties is a necessary condition of epistemic
justification.[27]
..
6. Why Externalism?
..
One reason for externalism lies in the attraction of philosophical
naturalism. According to Gilbert Harman, this view, when applied to
ethics, "is the doctrine that moral facts are facts of nature. Naturalism as a
general view is the sensible thesis that all facts are facts of nature" (Harman
1977, p. 17). What naturalists in ethics want, according to Harman,
..
is to be able to locate value, justice, right, wrong, and so forth in the
world in the way that tables, colors, genes, temperatures, and so on can be
located in the world. (Harman 1984, p. 33)
..
According to this conception of naturalism, a naturalist in epistemology wants
to be able to locate such things as knowledge, justification, certainty, or
probability "in the world in the way that tables, colors, genes, temperatures,
and so on can be located in the world." How, though, are naturalists to
accomplish this? According to one answer to this question, they can accomplish
this by identifying the non-epistemic grounds on which epistemic phenomena
supervene. Alvin Goldman describes this desideratum as follows:
..
The term "justified", I presume, is an evaluative term, a term of appraisal.
Any correct definition or synonym of it would also feature evaluative terms. I
assume that such definitions or synonyms might be given, but I am not
interested in them. I want a set of substantive conditions that specify when a
belief is justified... I want a theory of justified belief to specify in
non-epistemic terms when a belief is justified. (Goldman 1979, p. 1)
..
However, internalists need not deny that epistemic phenomena supervene on
non-epistemic grounds, and that it is the task of epistemology to reveal these
grounds. It is doubtful, therefore, that the goal of locating epistemic value
in the natural world establishes a link between philosophical naturalism and
externalism. [28]
..
According to a second approach, the way to locate epistemic value in the
natural world is to employ the methods of the natural sciences.[29] Appealing
to this methodological constraint, externalists might argue that, because the
study of justification and knowledge is an empirical study, justification and
knowledge cannot be what internalists take it to be, but rather must be
identified with reliable belief production: a phenomenon that can be studied
empirically. It is far from clear, however, that the fundamental questions of
epistemology can be answered by employing the methods of the natural sciences.
For example, can empirical sciences solve the Gettier problem? Can they answer
the question of whether knowledge requires evidence? Can they tell us whether
the beliefs of evil demon victims are justified, or whether BonJour's Norman
can acquire knowledge on account of his clairvoyance even though is he as no
reason to suppose that he is in possession of such a faculty? Indeed, is the
question of whether epistemology can be done solely by employing empirical
science a question that can be answered by empirical science itself? It is not
easy to imagine that these questions should be answered affirmatively. But if
the methodological constraint in question cannot be sustained with complete
generality, then this constraint offers us no compelling reason to think that
justification and knowledge are the sort of thing that can only be studied
empirically, and thus cannot be what internalist take them to be.
..
A second reason for externalism (more specifically, J-externalism) has to do
with the connection between justification and truth. Internalists conceive of
a justified belief as a belief that, relative to the subject's evidence or
reasons, is likely to be true. However, such likelihood of truth is compatible
with the belief's actual falsity. Indeed, likelihood of truth as internalists
conceive of it can be exemplified in the evil demon world, in which your
justified beliefs about the world are mostly false. Hence externalists view
the connection between internalist justification and truth as being too thin
and therefore demand a stronger kind of likelihood of truth. [30] Reliability
is usually taken to fill the bill. [31] William Alston, for example, has argued
that, without a reliability constraint, the connection between justification
and truth becomes too tenuous. [32] He argues that only reliably formed beliefs
can be justified, and defines a reliable belief-producing mechanism as one that
"would yield mostly true beliefs in a sufficiently large and varied run of
employments in situations of the sorts we typically encounter" (Alston 1993, p.
9). Suppose we endorse this conception of justification. Let's suppose
further that most of our beliefs are justified. It then follows that most of
the beliefs we form in ordinary circumstances would have to be true most of the
time. Such a belief system could still be brought about by an evil demon.
However, it would not be a belief-system consisting of mostly false beliefs,
and thus the evil demon responsible for it wouldn't be quite as evil as he
could be. So what Alston-type justification rules out is this: a belief system
of mostly justified beliefs that is generated by an evil demon who sees to it
that most of our beliefs are false. This, then, is the benefit we can secure
when, as externalists suggest, we make reliability a necessary element of
justification.
..
Internalists would object that a strong link between justification and truth
runs afoul of the rather forceful intuition that the beliefs of an evil demon
victim are justified even when they are mostly false. In response,
externalists might concede that the sort of justification internalists have in
mind and attribute to evil demon victims is a legitimate concept, but question
the epistemological relevance of that concept. Of what epistemic value (of
what value to the acquisition of knowledge), they might ask, is internal
justification if it is the sort of thing an evil demon victim can enjoy, a
person whose belief system is massively marred by falsehood? Internalists
would reply that internal justification should not be expected to supply us
with a guarantee of truth, and that its value derives (at least in part) from
the fact that internal justification is necessary for knowledge.
..
A third reason for externalism has to do with Dretske's question about
justification: "Who needs it, and why?" Dretske would say, of course, that
nobody needs it (for the acquisition of knowledge, that is) because reliable
belief production is sufficient for turning true belief into knowledge. With
this, internalists disagree. [33] As we have seen, they take the existence of
examples like BonJour's clairvoyant Norman as a decisive reason to reject this
sufficiency claim. Internalists, therefore, would answer Dretske's question
thus: Those who wish to enjoy knowledge need justification, and they need it
because one does not know that p unless one has adequate evidence for believing
that p.
..
In reply to this, Dretske might repeat a point -- one that amounts to a fourth
reason for externalism -- from the passage we considered above: he takes
animals such as frogs, rats, apes, and dogs to have knowledge. This is surely
in line with the way we ordinarily use the concept of knowledge. The owner of
a pet who does not attribute knowledge to it would be hard to find. But are
animals capable of the sophisticated mental operations required by beings who
enjoy the sort of justification internalists have in mind? It would seem
not. [34]
..
7. Two Analyses of Knowledge
..
K-internalism and K-externalism, then, are supported by conflicting intuitions.
On the one hand, there are examples like BonJour's clairvoyant Norman, examples
that strongly suggest that internal justification is necessary for
knowledge. On the other hand, there is Dretske's point that knowledge is
enjoyed by not only humans but animals as well. This strongly suggests that
internal justification is not necessary for knowledge. Both of these
thoughts are inherently plausible. Might it be possible to reconcile them? If
animals could have the sort of justification internalists have in mind,
internalism would be compatible with animal knowledge. Certainly, animals have
sensory experiences, just as humans do. Some internalists think that sensory
experiences, in and by themselves, constitute evidence. Such internalists
might not shy away from attributing internal justification and therefore
knowledge to animals. Other internalists, however, think that S's sensory
experiences constitute evidence only if S can coherently view them as a
reliable guide to truth. That, it would seem, is a condition animals can't
meet.
..
Suppose animals are not the sort of beings that can have internally justified
or unjustified beliefs. If so, we get two alternative and irreconcilable
analyses of knowledge: one internalist, the other externalist. Let us state a
gloss of the respective analyses. In these analyses, the term "internal
justification" stands for the kind of concept internalists have in mind, and
the term "external justification" for the kind of concept externalists employ.
..
External Knowledge (EK):
S knows that p iff
..
- p is true;
..
- S believes that p;
..
- S is externally justified in believing that p (in a way that
degettierizes S's belief).
..
Internal Knowledge (IK):
S knows that p iff
..
- p is true;
..
- S believes that p;
..
- S is internally justified in believing that p;
..
- S's belief that p is degettiered.
..
EK and IK agree and differ in the following respects:
- According to both EK and IK, knowledge requires true belief. The
question each of these analyses is intended to answer is: what do we
need to add to true belief to get knowledge?
..
- According to both, whether or not one knows is an external
matter. K-internalists acknowledge the externality of knowledge for
two reasons. The first is that knowledge requires truth; the second
is that knowledge requires degettierization. Let us consider each of
these reasons in turn.
..
First, consider an evil demon victim's false belief that he has hands.
By the victim's own lights, it certainly looks as though he has hands.
Surely, the victim would take himself to know that he has hands.
Since he has no hands, he is mistaken in thinking he knows he has
hands. His failure to know, however, is not directly recognizable to
him. For unless his evidential situation were to change radically, no
amount of reflection will enable him to figure out that he has no
hands. So because of the truth condition, it is not always directly
recognizable whether or not one knows. Knowledge, therefore, is
essentially external.
..
Second, let us examine why degettierization is an external matter.
Call the condition needed to rule out Gettier-cases the 'G-condition'.
If the G-condition is met, then S is not in a Gettier situation. If
the G-condition is not met, then S is in a Gettier situation. Whether
or not the G-condition is met might not be directly recognizable to S,
just as whether or not S's beliefs are reliably produced might not be
directly recognizable to S's. For example, BonJour's Norman has a
faculty (his clairvoyance) whose reliability is hidden from him. On
reflection, Norman cannot tell that that he is a reliable clairvoyant.
(Of course, future experiences might reveal this to him.) Similarly,
evil demon victims cannot through reflection figure out that their
perceptual faculties are unreliable. Likewise, a subject who is in a
Gettier situation cannot directly recognize -- find out through
reflection alone -- that he is. Consider Henry in Barn County: that
there is an abundance of barn facades in the area is a feature of his
situation that is (at least for the time being) hidden from him.
Therefore, it's not directly recognizable to him that he is in a
Gettier situation. This point can be generalized. It is an essential
aspect of the G-condition that, when it is not met, the subject is not
in a position to recognize this directly. Hence degettierization, and
thereore knowledge, are essentially external.
..
- IK requires internal justification, EK does not. That is the
one condition where the two analyses differ. As a result of this
difference, EK includes within the scope of knowledge animals, but
fails to accommodate the intuition underlying BonJour's case of
clairvoyant Norman and other cases like that. IK, on the other hand,
does accommodate this intuition, but -- counter-intuitively, as
K-externalists would say -- excludes animals from the range of
subjects that can have knowledge.
..
If the internalism/externalism controversy is seen as essentially a controversy
over the nature of justification, then the debate over J-internalism vs.
J-externalism would appear to be a case of talking past each other.
J-internalists and J-externalists simply intend justification to achieve
different things. They each operate with a different concept of justification.
J-externalists take justification to be the sort of thing that turns true
belief into knowledge, and they view the Gettier problem merely as the problem
of adding the right sort of bells and whistles to the justification-condition.
J-internalists, on the other hand, cannot view degettierization as something
that can, in the form of a suitable clause, be tacked on to the justification
condition, for degettierization is an external matter. Rather, internalists
take justification to be the sort of thing that turns true and degettiered
belief into knowledge. Since J-internalists and J-externalists assign
different roles to justification, what they ultimately disagree about is not
the nature of justification, but the sort of thing in relation to which the
theoretical role of epistemic justification is fixed: knowledge.
Internalists assign justification the role of turning true and degettiered
belief into knowledge because they think that internal justification is
necessary for knowledge. In contrast, externalists (J-externalists, that is)
assign a different role to justification -- that of turning true belief into
knowledge -- because they think that internal justification is not necessary
for knowledge. It is this difference in their respective views on the nature
of knowledge that leads to different views on the nature of justification.
..
Thus we are confronted with a fundamental disagreement about the nature of
knowledge. Externalists such as Dretske would say that the desideratum of
making knowledge a natural phenomenon that is instantiated equally by humans
and animals must trump the demand that knowledge require the possession of
justification in the form of adequate evidence. Externalists of that
persuasion would have to say, therefore, that Norman, the unwitting
clairvoyant, has knowledge just as much as a mouse that knows where to look for
the cheese. Internalists would argue the other way around. To them,
Norman-type cases establish the necessity of adequate evidence. And so they
would say that, just as Norman's reliable clairvoyance (by itself, in the
absence of evidence) does not give him knowledge, a mouse's reliable cognitive
mechanisms do not give it knowledge of where to look for the cheese.
Externalists would say that it merely seems to us that Norman lacks knowledge
when in fact he has it. Internalists would say that it merely seems to us that
animals know when in fact they do not.
..
It might be a mistake to expect that there is a decisive argument that settles
the dispute between internalists and externalists one way or another. One way
to respond to the intracatability of the debate is to acknowledge that there
simply is not one concept of knowledge for which there is an analysis that has
any chance of meeting with broad assent. Rather, we might conclude that, when
we use the word "knowledge", we have sometimes one concept and at other times
another concept in mind. If we take this approach, we can distinguish beween
animal knowledge and reflective knowledge. The former, we might say, is
reliably formed true belief (that meets a suitable Gettier-clause built into
the reliability condition), and the latter is internally justified true belief
(that meets a suitable, separate Gettier-condition). Whereas the former kind
of knowledge can be shared by animals and humans alike, the latter kind is
available only to beings who are capable of intellectual reflection.[35]
..
To sum up, if we attempt to articulate an analysis of knowledge, we must find
answers to the following questions:
- How can the analysis of knowledge be made immune to
Gettier cases?
- Does knowledge require justification?
..
- If it does, is the nature of justification internal or external?
..
As we have seen, how these questions are to be answered is extremely
controversial. Most likely, there isn't one single concept of knowledge that
permits consensus on what the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge
are. Rather, it might be that we must distinguish between animal knowledge and
reflective knowledge, and that each of these concepts has its own analysis. In
addition to the problems we have discussed in this essay, there are further
issues that bear, in a broader sense, on the analysis of knowledge. One of
these is:
..
What is the extent of our knowledge? Do we know about as much as we think
we do?
..
When we discuss this question, we are confronted with a paradox. On the one
hand, there is a seemingly sound argument for the conclusion that we don't even
know that we have hands, and thus know much less than we are inclined to think.
On the other hand, we are convinced that we do know that we have hands. If
this conviction is right, the argument can't be sound after all. The
following, supplementary chapter discusses the issues that arise when we try to
solve this paradox and examines how they bear on our understanding of the
concept of knowledge.
..
Supplement: Knowledge and Skepticism
..
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Reasons." Philosophical Perspectives 13.
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Perspectives 2, 91-123.
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- Conee, Earl. 2005. "Contextualism Contested". In Steup and Sosa
(eds.) 2005, pp. 47-56.
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- DeRose, Keith. 1999. "Contextualism: An Explanation and
Defense." In: Greco and Sosa (eds.) 1999, pp. 187.
..
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Philosophical Review 104, pp. 1-52.
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- Feldman, Richard. 1999. "Contextualism and Skepticism."
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Philosophical Studies 103, pp. 61-85.
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- Goldman, Alvin. 1976. "Discrimination and Perceptual Knowledge."
The Journal of Philosophy 73, pp. 771-791.
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- Greco, John and Sosa, Ernest (eds.). 1999. The Blackwell Guide
to Epistemology. Oxford: Blackwell.
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- Hawthorne, John. 2005. "The Case for Closure." In Steup and Sosa
(eds.) 2005, pp. 26-43.
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- -------. 2004. Knowledge and Lotteries. Oxford: Clarendon
Press.
..
- Lewis, David. 1996. "Elusive Knowledge." Australasian Journal of
Philosophy 74, pp. 549-567.
..
- Lite, Adam. 2004. "Is Fallibility an Epistemological
Shortcoming?" The Philosophical Quarterly 54, pp. 233-251.
..
- Moore, G.E. 1959. Philosophical Papers. London: Allen and
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Philosophical Issues 15, pp. 349-378.
..
- Russell, Bruce. 2004. "How to be an Anti-Skeptic and a
Noncontextualist." Erkenntnis 61, pp. 245-255.
..
- Schiffer, Stephen. 1996. "Contextualist Solutions to
Skepticism." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 96, pp. 317-333.
..
- Sosa, Ernest. 2003. "Relevant Alternatives, Contextualism
Included." Philosophical Studies 119, pp. 3-15.
..
- Sosa, Ernest. 1999. "How to Defeat Opposition to Moore."
Philosophical Perspectives 13, pp. 141-153.
..
- Steup, Matthias. 2005. "Contextualism and Conceptual
Disambiguation." Acta Analytica 20, pp. 3-15.
..
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Debates in Epistemology. Oxford: Blackwell.
..
- Stine, Gail. 1976. "Skepticism, Relevant Alternatives, and
Deductive Closure." Philosophical Studies 29, pp. 249-61.
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Other Internet Resources
- Keith De Rose's Epistemology Page
- The Epistemology Research Guide
- Contextualism in Epistemology — A Bibliography
..
Related Entries
brains in a vat | contextualism, epistemic | epistemic closure principle |
epistemology: naturalized | epistemology: social | epistemology: virtue |
justification, epistemic: coherentist theories of | justification, epistemic:
foundationalist theories of | justification, epistemic: internalist vs.
externalist conceptions of
..
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank Laurence BonJour and Michael Bergman for helpful comments and
criticisms.
Copyright -- 2006 by
Matthias Steup