Comparison Of Knowledge: Austin, Descartes And Stroud

Knowledge: Austin, Descartes, and Stroud This paper will be covering what knowledge essentially is, the opinions and theories of J.L. Austin, Descartes, and Stroud, and how each compare to one another. Figuring out what knowledge is and how to assess it has been a discussion philosophers have been scratching their heads about for as long as philosophy has been around. These three philosophers try and describe and persuade others to look at knowledge in a different light; that light might be how a statement claiming knowledge is phrased, whether we know anything at all for we may be dreaming, or maybe you’re just a brain in a vat and don’t know anything about what you perceive the external world to be. Before one can start talking about specific

There is no concrete definition of knowledge, but there is a definition that is widely agreed upon, or a standard definition. This definition may be widely accepted, but just like most things in philosophy, it is controversial and many disagree with it. The definition involves three conditions that must be met in order for one to truly say that they know something to be true. If one were to state: “The Seattle Mariners have never won a world series,” using the standard definition would look like this: first, the person believes the statement to be true. Second, the statement is in fact true. Third, the person is justified in believing the statement to be true. The three conditions are belief, truth, and justification. There are the “necessary and sufficient conditions” for knowledge. Necessary and sufficient conditions are linked to conditional statements, ‘if x, then y’ statements.

The first, Stroud brings up Austin’s claim that, to raise a legitimate doubt about someone’s knowledge claim, one must suggest some specific way in which the subject might be mistaken. “If you say ‘That’s not enough’, then you must have in mind some more or less definite lack…if there is no definite lack, which you are at least prepared to specify on being pressed, then it’s silly just to go on saying ‘That’s not enough’.” Next, Stroud discuses Austin’s claim that dreams are qualitatively distinguishable from no dreaming experiences. Austin believes dreams always have a special “dream-like quality” that one can use to help distinguish the difference between waking and dreaming experiences. Austin says that “there are recognized ways of distinguishing between dreaming and waking, ‘how otherwise should we know how to use and to contrast the words, or to know between something being stuffed or live, and so forth.” The last aspect Stroud touches upon when discussing Austin, is that you only need to rule out some possibility if there’s some special reason to believe that it does now obtain. Meaning, only in special instances does one have to worry about asking if you are in a dream state. Typically, in the real world, the question if one is dreaming or not when checking validity is not taken seriously, nor should it be taken as a serious procedure to see if something is fact or not. For example, suppose I