Knowledge, Belief and Justification
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Transcript of Knowledge, Belief and Justification
Knowledge and Justification
‘Mediocre minds usually dismiss anything which
reaches beyond their own understanding’ –Francois de
La Rochefoucald
‘Where there is shouting there is no true
knowledge’ – Leonardo da Vinci
‘Never assume the obvious is true’ -William
Safire
‘Education is learning what
you didn’t even know you didn’t know.’ –Daniel J.
Boorstin
Can you come up with a worthy quote about knowledge?
‘The criterion of truth is that it works even if nobody is prepared to
acknowledge it’ –Ludwig von Mises
‘There are many who know many things, yet are lacking in wisdom’ -
Democritus
‘The most important truths are likely to be those which…
Society at that time least wants to hear.’ –W.H. Auden
‘Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and
conscientious stupidity’ –Martin Luther King
‘A very popular error –having the courage of one’s
convictions; rather it is a matter of having
the courage for an attack upon one’s convictions.’
-Anon
‘Shall I teach you what knowledge is?When you know a thing, to recognise
that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to recognise that you do
not know it. That is knowledge.’ -Confucius
What is Knowledge?
Write down an example for each of the following:
Information
Data
Belief
Faith
Opinion
Wisdom
Knowledge
What are the differences between them?
Three Types of Knowledge
1. Questions that have one correct answer. Example: ‘How many atoms of Hydrogen are there in a water molecule?’
2. Questions that have many possible answers but which require justification and reasoned judgments. Example: ‘What is the best way to counter the debt problem in the developing world’?
3. Questions that have no correct answer, but depend totally on the person answering the question. Example: ‘What is your favourite food?’
For each of the following questions decide which of the three categories the answer
fits into.• How many planets are
there in the solar system?• When was the French
Revolution?• Is it wrong to kill?• What is the colour of the
nearest wall?• Does God exist?• Are you happy?• Is 1 + 1 always 2?
• Does violence on television contribute to violence in the community?
• Was Hitler a good leader?• Can a male Doctor know
more about childbirth than a mother of ten children?
• What is the name of the current monarch?
What is knowledge?
We have seen a variety of different types of knowledge.
But how exactly should we define it?In order to try to answer this question, lets go
back to the most basic starting point for knowledge.
False Beliefs
Identify something that you have been told, which you believed at the time, but which you now recognise as false.
How did you find out the truth?
A conclusion that we might draw…
Possible conclusion 1:
Knowledge is True Belief
But is this always the case?
Consider the following scenario…
A man called Henry is driving through a prairie.
During this drive, he passes a number of edifices.
These resemble barns, but are in fact 2 dimensional cardboard cut outs, or fake barns.
But Henry has been concentrating on the road, and happens not to look out of his window whenever he passes a fake barn.
Henry and the Fake Barns
Henry continues to drive, and at one point glances out of his car window.
He sees a barn.But this is not like the
other fake barns, this is the only real barn
in fake barn land.
It is not a 2 dimensional card-board cut-out,
But a fully functioning barn.
Henry and the Fake BarnsHenry doesn’t think much
about this. He thinks he sees a barn.But if he had looked out at any
other moment on his drive through fake barn land, he would have seen a fake barn, and believed that it was real.
Do you think Henry has knowledge of the barn that he sees?
There is a barn
Henry and the Fake Barns
Henry clearly has a true belief –
But is this really knowledge?
What do you think?
When Henry looks at the Barn, he sees a real barn, so his belief is true.
He believes that what he is seeing is a barn, so he has a belief, both of which are required for knowledge.
But we might hesitate before saying that he has knowledge because he is unaware of the fact that he is surrounded by fake barns.
We want to say that his knowledge lacks the necessary justification.
Justification
It seems that Justification is an essential component of knowledge.
A conclusion that we might draw…
Possible conclusion 2:
Knowledge is True, justified Belief
This was what Plato thought…
“Knowledge is justified, true belief”
Tasks:
1. Does the ‘justified, true belief’ definition fit out understanding of the term ‘knowledge’? Or does it wrongly include or exclude anything? Can you think of a situation where either:
• Someone might have justified, True, Belief, but we wouldn’t say they knew something?
• Or someone did not have justified, true, belief, but we would say they knew something?
Edmund Gettier
Edmund Gettier wrote an article which provides several examples of examples of beliefs that are both true and justified, but that he claims we should not call ‘knowledge’
Cases of this sort are now called ‘Gettier-counter-examples’
Validity and Justification
Perhaps we should not talk about certain knowledge – but rather about ‘weak’ or ‘strong’ justification.
For example, we might say that Henry had ‘poor’ justification for claiming to have knowledge that there was a barn on the prairie.
It was ‘poor’ because there was such a high chance of him being fooled as he did not know about the fake barns.
Types of Justification
Intuition Sense perception
evidence reasoning
Memory Authority
Group consensus
Divine revelation
Task: Which do you think are a) the most and b) the least reliable forms of justification?
Below is a list of dubious things that I might claim to know, and another list of reasons that I might give to support these pieces of knowledge. Match the reasons to the claims:
Knowledge Claims1. the sky is blue2. that 1+1=23. that it is wicked to murder a person4. that I have a fear of spiders5. that I went out for a run yesterday.6. that what the doctor said is true.7. that women are more emotional than men8. exactly what God wants of me9. that I am going to heaven10. that a lake is more beautiful than a sewage
works11. that I love my brother
JustificationValue Judgment
FaithMemoryAuthorityIntuition
Divine RevelationSense perception
LogicSelf-Awareness
Common KnowledgeInstinct
A problem with Justification
Implications of having a belief:Belief
You think it’s true
You think it’s justified
• Justification is subjective.• This is problematic because
from the knower’s perspective there is very little to distinguish belief from knowledge, and arguments to the contrary appear circular,
• because they assume what they are attempting to prove.
Some tentative Conclusions…
• Perhaps contrary to what you have so far found in your formal education, certainty and truth are not easily found.
• Justification is a matter of degree• However it is possible to begin making initial
definitions about what knowledge is. • ‘Justified true belief’ may not be fool-proof
but it is a positive step