We talk of knowing things. Like a figurative pyramid, our society continues to expand based upon the cumulative knowledge and experiences accumulated by previous generations. Certainly, it is only rational to build upon the findings of others, so long as genuine justification exists for belief and subsequent action. However, what happens when the veracity of what is believed to be fact, or general knowledge, is called into question. Epistemology attempts to answer that question by identifying how we come to acquire knowledge and the various justifications we develop to determine the truth value of said knowledge. By contrast, the theory of skepticism challenges the notion that we have true knowledge; and subsequently, the foundations upon which we establish rational belief. This essay will focus on two branches of epistemology: the theory of knowledge known as JTB, and the theory of skepticism as a counter critique of the study of epistemology.
The JTB Theory suggests that to have knowledge requires three conditions to be meet: truth, belief, and justification. To reach truth requires the examination of a proposition objectively, removing all personal biases to determine the accuracy of a given proposition. Once a truth-value, either positive or negative, is ascribed towards a proposition the second element, belief, comes into play. Belief, unlike truth, requires a degree of subjectivity; or, the acknowledgement of a given proposition for reasons other than its truth-value. Belief can be thought of as the process of examination of a proposition for both rational and irrational conclusion, the nonobservance of the irrational conclusions drawn, and the subsequent adoption of the rational conclusions. The third element, justificati...
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... true knowledge. Alternatively, the strength in the skeptic argument challenges us to not accept propositions that lack proper justification or contain misplaced truth-values; and as such presents a challenge to place a correct label on what can and can’t be identified as knowledge.
In conclusion, when we talk of knowing things we are inadvertently identifying the JTB Theory. In order to have knowledge we must first accept that a proposition is real, identify the given truth value, and provide justification for our accepted belief. Skepticism urges us to be cautions of the ways in which we come to determine a propositions truth-value and the justification we provide for believing as such. This ensure not only the accuracy of the knowledge we have but additionally, provides that the justification we provide for the knowledge we have accumulated is logically sound.
It is crucial that every belief must be thoroughly explored and justified to avoid any future repercussions. Clifford provides two examples in which, regardless of the outcome, the party that creates a belief without comprehensive justification ends up at fault. It is possible to apply the situations in The Ethics of Belief to any cases of belief and end up with the conclusion that justification is of utmost importance. Justifying beliefs is so important because even the smallest beliefs affect others in the community, add to the global belief system, and alter the believer moral compass in future decisions.
In “The Epistemic Significance of Disagreement”, Thomas Kelly gives two responses to the question “How should awareness of disagreement, with those that you take to be your epistemic equal, effect the rational confidence you have in your beliefs?”. Kelly discusses two possible responses to the question. The first is Richard Foley's first person perspective argument. Adam Elga calls the second the right reasons view (Elga, 2007 pg. 485). Kelly pursues the latter, and does not go further than agreeing with Foley that we should only view these disputes with a first person perspective.
hat for a belief to be true knowledge, it must be supported by evidence. Evidentialism also claims
Epistemology is purposed with discovering and studying what knowledge is and how we can classify what we know, how we know it, and provide some type of framework for how we arrived at this conclusion. In the journey to identify what knowledge is the certainty principle was one of the first concepts that I learned that explained how we, as humans, consider ourselves to know something. The certainty concept suggests that knowledge requires evidence that is sufficient to rule out the possibility of error. This concept is exemplified in cases like The Gettier problem in the instance that we suppose (S) someone to know (P) a particular proposition. As Gettier established the Justified True Belief as a conceptual formula for knowledge, certainty can be understood with the proper perspective and background. The certainty principle explains that knowledge requires evidence to be “sufficient” to rule out the possibility of error. This means that what we determine to be acknowledged as “knowledge” must present justification in order to be accepted believed as knowledge. This is important because Skepticism doubts the validation of knowledge and how we come to any such conclusion of justifying what we “know” indubitably as knowledge. This is the overarching problem with skepticism. Instead of having a solid stance on how to define knowledge, skeptics simply doubt that a reason or proposition offered is correct and suppose it to be false or flawed in some manner. See the examples below as identifiers of the skeptic way of life.
Almost all epistemologists, since Edmund Gettier’s 1963 article, have agreed that he disproved the justified-true-belief conception of knowledge. He proposed two examples
..., well defined idea about what is thought to be individually necessary and jointly sufficient for is needed in order to have knowledge. What I do not like about JTB analysis is that you can find a hole in every one of the analysis that I explained above. I feel like people are trying to make the subject fit in a box that is too small to be put in. I think what is needed is to widen the area that is trying to be used to specify knowledge.
How we approach the question of knowledge is pivotal. If the definition of knowledge is a necessary truth, then we should aim for a real definition for theoretical and practical knowledge. Methodology examines the purpose for the definition and how we arrived to it. The reader is now aware of the various ways to dissect what knowledge is. This entails the possibility of knowledge being a set of truths; from which it follows that one cannot possibly give a single definition. The definition given must therefore satisfy certain desiderata , while being strong enough to demonstrate clarity without losing the reader. If we base our definition on every counter-example that disproves our original definition then it becomes ad hoc. This is the case for our current defini...
Beliefs are a condition of said knowledge. Davidson’s argument deals a lot with the concept of objective trut...
In the selection, ‘Skeptical doubts concerning the operations of the understanding’, David Hume poses a problem for knowledge about the world. This question is related to the problem of induction. David Hume was one of the first who decided to analyze this problem. He starts the selection by providing his form of dividing the human knowledge, and later discusses reasoning and its dependence on experience. Hume states that people believe that the future will resemble the past, but we have no evidence to support this belief. In this paper, I will clarify the forms of knowledge and reasoning and examine Hume’s problem of induction, which is a challenge to Justified True Belief account because we lack a justification for our beliefs.
In this paper, I offer a solution to the Gettier problem by adding a fourth condition to the justified true belief analysis of knowledge. First though, a brief review. Traditionally, knowledge had been accounted for with the justified true belief analysis. To know something, three conditions had to be met: first, you had to have a belief; second, the belief had to be justified; third, this justified belief had to be true. So a justified true belief counts as knowledge. Gettier however showed this analysis to be inadequate as one can have a justified true belief that no one would want to count as knowledge.
The reader, like modern man, must not give into “the arrogant presumption of certitude or the debilitating despair of skepticism,” but instead must “live in uncertainty, poised, by the conditions of our humanity and of the world in which we live, between certitude and skepticism, between presumption and despair “(Collins 36).
Some of the objections, such as the ones made by Edmund Gettier, claim that three conditions are not nearly enough to justify a true belief, and that at the very least a fourth must be added. Gettier presents a very valid criticism of the JTB theory of knowledge, and his counter examples highlight flaws in the JTB theory that make it an inadequate theory of knowledge. Gettier claims takes an issue with the third part of the JTB theory, which states that proposition P must be true. Gettier makes the interesting observation that person S may very well be justified in believing in proposition P even if P is false
There have been attempts to answer the queries through the Justified-True-Belief Account of Knowledge (JTB), known to have been credited by Plato. According to the theory, knowledge is explained in some manner or way, a proposition known can’t be false, and the proposition must be accepted. The justified-true-belief account of knowledge, though, is considered to be a definition of knowledge where S, a person, knows that P, a proposition, if and only if: P is true, S believes that P is true, and S is justified in believing that P is true. However, this theory of knowledge challenges our understanding of propositional knowledge – like when people once thought they knew that the earth was flat; one could not know what was flat, only think that one knows it. The truth condition of the JTB of knowledge states that if you know that P, then P is true (Powerpoint, Lecture 4). Though P can be a claim that something else is false. Thus, the Gettier problems. In Edmund L. Gettier’s short article, “Is justified true belief knowledge?” he discusses the question about whether or not a piece of information with a faulty premise is knowledge. This innovative philosophical idea that Gettier wrote about, le...
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with the theory of knowledge. Epistemology studies the nature of knowledge, justification, and the rationality of belief. Much of the debate in epistemology centers on four areas: the philosophical analysis of the nature of knowledge and how it relates to such concepts as truth, belief, and justification, various problems of skepticism, the sources and scope of knowledge and justified belief, and the criteria for knowledge and justification. Epistemology addresses such questions as "What makes justified beliefs justified?", "What does it mean to say that we know something?" and fundamentally "How do we know that we know?"
The argument that is used in the idea of skepticism has comparable and incompatible views given from Augustine and Al-Ghazali. Both monologues cover and explain the doubts one should have, due to the