Knowledge
What is knowledge? And how do we obtain it?
Here are just the beginnings of my understanding of
knowledge…
The
Meanings of ‘Knowledge’
The impression I get from talking with people about knowledge
is that the term, ‘knowledge’, doesn’t mean exactly the same thing for everyone
in every context. For example, one of my non-philosophy friends said that he
thinks there can be false
knowledge—which is really confident false
belief. But others I’ve talked with disagree, or at least, they say they think
of ‘knowledge’ differently. For them, knowledge entails truth. Some have
confessed to me that knowledge entails certainty and infallibility: we don’t know that we have hands, they said to
me. But others have said that we can
know things even if we could be mistaken given our experiences. This suggests
to me that the term, ‘knowledge’, doesn’t always bring to mind the same
property for all English speakers.
Still, there may be a property that ‘knowledge’ is supposed to express in English. I should
confess that I’m not entirely interested in discovering the contingent,
sociological facts concerning which property or properties ‘knowledge’ is
supposed to express (though Jonathan Schaffer is doing intriguing work on this
through surveys). I’m more interested in fixing a certain property that
‘knowledge’ often does seem to express and analyzing that property.
Analyzing
Knowledge
Eric asks me, “Did you know that there was a
philosopher named, ‘Aristotle’?”
I instinctively reply, “Yes, I know that.”
By ‘knowledge’, I mean to pick out that salient type
of mental state, K, that I was trying to attribute to
myself when I thought and then said that I know such and such. I’m interested
in knowing what K is. We might call the question of what K is, the ‘general
knowledge question’ (analogous to van Inwagen’s,
general composition question). But there is also the question of what
conditions are necessary and sufficient for K to be instantiated. To ask about
these conditions is to ask what I’ll call, the ‘special knowledge question’.
An answer to the general knowledge question doesn't obviously imply an answer
to the special knowledge question, and an answer to the special knowledge
question doesn't obviously imply an answer to the general knowledge question.
Thus, these two questions, though related, should be distinguished.
I have not yet worked out a hypothesis for either
the general or the special knowledge questions. What I have so far are a few
tentative suspicions regarding some general features that the right answers to
those questions would exemplify. With respect to the general knowledge question
(concerning conceptual knowledge as
opposed to knowledge of a person, say), I suspect this:
(1) The type, K, is a
determinable of determinates of the form, knowing
P, where P is a proposition.
(2) K contains the
property of having a felt sense of sureness or seeming
concerning a true proposition or the
capacity to recall such a sense [so you can have K while asleep].
Some philosophers may wish to include in K the
property of being justified in believing
P or being rational in believing P.
Note: there is difference between saying that justification or rationality are
included in what it is to be
knowledge and saying that these are necessary conditions of knowledge. (I ask:
does the classical JTB view of knowledge require that justification be part of what it is to be knowledge, or does it
merely require that justification be necessary for knowledge?)
I find myself somewhat skeptical of the view that
rationality or justification is included in K for the following reason: it
seems to be easier, in general, for
me to tell that I know a proposition P than to tell that my believing P is
rational or justified. But if rationality or justification is a constitutive
part of knowledge, then it seems that I wouldn’t be able to tell that I know P
without thereby telling that my belief in P is rational or justified. Suppose,
for example, that Eric asks me, “Are you rational in accepting that there was
as a philosopher named, ‘Aristotle’?” I don’t think my answer would be quite as
quick in this case. I might immediately ask myself why I accept the proposition in question, or I might think, “I
don’t seem to be suffering from cognitive malfunction, so this particular
belief probable is rational”, or I might simply reply tentatively, “I think
so.” Whatever the case, it is evident to me that my reply would be less quick
and less confident. Rationality is itself a complex property (it is indeed
complicated if it is analyzed in terms of proper function, reliability, or
having evidence), and it’s not just easy to tell whether a given belief of mine
exemplifies it. This leads me to question whether rationality is indeed part of knowledge. The same goes for
justification. Still, perhaps
rationality (and justification) is necessary for knowledge.
As for the special knowledge question, I suspect
this:
(3) Necessarily, if S
has a property of the form knowing P,
then S is aware of the truth or likelihood of P, or S can recall the truth or
likelihood of P (without gaining new evidence).
We might call (3) an ‘internalist condition’ with
respect to knowledge. I said I suspect
it. I might very well be mistaken here. There are very bright philosophers who
don’t accept the internalist condition (e.g. Alvin Plantinga
and his pupil Michael Bergmann). (Though
note: the internalist condition is compatible
with externalist conditions on knowledge.) But I have tentative reasons for
suspecting (3). Here’s one: I suspect that the feeling of sureness or seeming
just is what it’s like phenomenologically to be aware of the truth or
likelihood of a proposition. (So, seemings aren’t
merely inclinations to believe.) That is, I suspect that (3) follows from (2).
I’ve come to suspect this by paying attention to what it feels like to be aware
of facts concerning the likelihood of a proposition and
comparing that feeling with what it feels like to feel sure about the truth of
a proposition. The feelings seem all but indistinguishable to me. Of course,
someone can question whether I am really paying attention to a state of awareness rather than seeming awareness when I am comparing
feelings (one might even wonder whether what I’m calling ‘awareness’ just is an inclination to believe!).
It’s because of this question that my suspicions here are presently mere suspicions.
For more on conditions of knowledge, I recommend Knowledge and It’s Limits, by Timothy
Williamson.
How
to Gain Knowledge
The best method, I say, is this: by being aware of things. We can be aware
of things by focusing on things
internal to us (e.g., our thoughts, beliefs, feelings, selves) or things
external to us (e.g., abstracta and facts about concreta). Many things we know can be known from an
armchair. But to know contingent facts about concreta,
you usually have to get up out of the chair and move to another location to focus on new data. Alternatively, pull
up your chair to a computer and type stuff into www.google.com
for testimonies about the external contingent world (or access to online
science papers).
Once you are aware of things, you can become aware
of propositions being true or likely true (corresponding or likely
corresponding to things you are aware of), thereby giving you propositional
knowledge. With propositional knowledge in hand, you can create arguments
potentially leading your mind to yet more knowledge.
Virtue epistemologists seek to identify intellectual
virtues that can help us be better at getting to the truth. Some of these are
obvious: being humble and willing to be wrong, seeking clarity, offering
charity to the thoughts of others, being careful, retesting one’s beliefs,
looking at ideas from many angles, considering much data, and so on. However,
it’s one thing to merely know what these virtues are; consistently putting them
into practice is an entirely different challenge.
The
Threat of Skepticism
Objection: If we gain knowledge by awareness, then
we wouldn’t know much of anything,
given that most of what we belief isn’t gained by way of awareness. For
example, I believe there are other minds besides my own, but I’ve never been
aware of any other minds other than my own. I believe I have a brain, but I’ve
never been aware of my brain. And so on.
Reply: First, I never said that we gain knowledge only by awareness. Perhaps we also gain knowledge by way of properly
functioning or reliable cognitive faculties. I say that awareness is the best
method to gaining knowledge, practically
speaking, because we normally have more control over what we are aware of
(by focusing) than over how our cognitive faculties are functioning. But
perhaps much (or even most) of what we know isn’t by way of awareness at all.
Second, it’s not actually clear to
me that our ordinary beliefs aren’t normally grounded in what we are or were
aware of. With respect to belief in other minds, for example, it isn’t clear to
me that I wasn’t ever aware of certain probabilistic relations holding between
people’s behavior and their behavior being caused by mental intentions. I take
it that one can be aware of a probabilistic relation between propositions
without thereby being aware of the proposition that the propositions are
probabilistically related or thereby being aware that one is aware of
the probabilistic relation. I suspect that much of the skeptical worry results
from viewing the internalist as having to be aware of the truth of the premises
in an argument (an inductive one) in support of our beliefs about the external
world. But I’m suggesting that one might be able to be aware of probabilistic
relations between propositions without thereby being aware of any argument at
all. It isn’t clear to me that this isn’t so. Thus, it isn’t clear to me that this
skeptical argument succeeds even given the internalist condition.
In general, I believe that we are
aware of much more than we realize because for any instance of awareness, one
isn’t usually also aware of that instance of awareness.
The
Threat of Gettier
Gettier
cases (you know cases where a true belief is justified but not a case of
knowledge) suggest to me that the following condition, at least, should be
added to (3):
(4) Necessarily, if S
has a property of the form knowing P,
then S’s belief in P is not based upon awareness of the likelihood of a premise
that happens to be false.
For a defense of this condition in light of Gettier cases, see McGrew’s, Internalism and epistemology: the architecture of reason.