Gettier cases long ago convinced me that it is useless to talk about 'truth' apart from 'justification'.
Obviously, none of us can ascertain truth directly. The only way we can claim A or B is true is by appealing to some justification for our belief. Therefore, the idea that [knowledge = true and justified belief] collapses to [knowledge = justified belief].
From that point, we have only to discuss what constitutes better/worse justification(s).
Doesn't applying no false premise (a la Nozick) remove the so-called Gettier problem entirely though, at least from an epistemological viewpoint? It seems to based on my hour or so of reading just now.
The problem is that if your definition of knowledge requires only three conditions (belief, truth and justification), then it has counterexamples, namely, the Gettier cases. So we need to either revise our concept of justification (for example, make it so that a knowledge-apt belief is justified only if it is for the right reasons -- but then, how to account for justified but false beliefs?), look for ways to supplement the analysis with additional conditions (for example, that the conditions are satisfied in a robust ways counterfactually), or reject the idea that knowledge can be analyzed altogether.
To make it more concrete how this sort of thing can get complicated quickly, consider your own explanation of the case. As I take it, you think that the issue is that "the justification is faulty". But how is it faulty, besides not being true (remember, we have reasons to want justification to not imply truth)? And also, there are Gettier-like cases where we cannot say that justification is faulty or where we can't find false premises (for example, cases where it seems like the problem is that the individuals in questions are not in an appropriate environment, see [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettier_problem#False_premises...)).
> But Gettier suggested some counterexamples to this definition, by telling stories in each of which there’s a true, justified belief that he claimed isn’t a case of knowledge. For example, imagine that at noon you look at a stopped clock that happens to have stopped at noon. Your belief that it’s noon is true, and arguably it’s also justified. The question is: do you thereby know that it’s noon, or do you merely believe it?
I've slowly been converging upon the belief that there's no such thing as "truth". There are only models and predictions, and some models lead to better predictions than other models. (What then is a mathematical truth?)
For the clock example, "knowing" whether it's noon or not is useless in the framework of prediction. You instead develop a model with two (probability-weighted) possibilities: 1) the clock is broken and thus can't be relied upon as a correlate with other events or 2) the clock is functioning and this information can be utilized in some way to improve future predictions. From a utilitarian perspective, what value does knowing the absolute "truth" about the state of the clock add?
You're trying to smuggle the "truth" criterion back into the "justification". Any standard of justification that depends on truth is impractical (to say the least) to meet, creates conceptual confusion, and, if applied to the definition of knowledge in this case, makes the "truth" criterion redundant.
Sure, from a present perspective on epistemology this may make sense, since we now know all the troubles and faulty attempts to decide proper justifications from incorrect ones after Gettier's paper. However, back then the idea to define knowledge using JTB was on the table. The knowledge as justified true belief view is about a definition of knowledge, not a learning method or how to gain knowledge. Many authors would even have rejected the idea of graded belief entirely and said you either believe something or don't (many still do).
Since you accept the notion of truth (otherwise you couldn't be a Bayesian), you'd have to explain why you reject the realist conception of knowledge inherent to the JTB view. Gettier's paper is one attack on it, arguing for graded belief representations is another type of attack on it. In this context it is worth noting that graded belief and categorical belief are very hard to reconcile because they have different logical properties [1]. It's known as Locke's Thesis and quite a vexing problem.
That being said, I share your intuitions. The factivity of knowledge has created more problems in epistemology than the notion of knowledge was supposed to solve. The German word Erkenntnis in Erkenntnistheorie has a meaning closer to learning theory. AFAIK there is no good equivalent to this in English.
I haven't read the original paper, so maybe the example is better, but it seems the cow example fails the justified condition. The knowledge is justified if it derives from the evidence, but once we know the evidence is faulty it can no longer be used for justification by definition. It seems by extension that any justified true belief can become unjustified by the addition of new information that invalidates the justification on which the alleged knowledge is based upon.
Not so. I was applying a strict definition of justified, where justified means "logically necessary." Others have clarified elsewhere in this conversation that this in't the intent.
As I've said elsewhere in this thread, I already think the truth criterion is redundant, since if you can determine whether your knowledge is true, you don't need to worry about justifying it or believing it.
Thanks for engaging in the conversation. When I say "the justification is faulty" I just mean it's not deductively air-tight, therefore we can't assume that it leads to truth. In this sense, pretty much all justifications are 'faulty.'
The thing I'm struggling with here, ultimately, is truth. All of these problems rely on some outside, oracular knowledge of what is true, (e.g. in the example you linked there really is a cow/sheep in the field, or Mark is really hiding under the desk). But we have no such oracle to refer to, so trying to ground knowledge in truth seems like a lost cause in the first place. All we can have is more or less certain beliefs.
By what definition? The "notion" of "justified true belief" WAS the definition of knowledge prior to these complications. Just saying "everything is subjective" is more tedious than making meaningful distinctions, in my subjective opinion
"The field of philosophy called epistemology deals with what knowledge is and how it is obtained, and the field overwhelmingly agrees that it is necessary (but not sufficient) for knowledge to be a (1) belief that is (2) true, and (3) justified."
How do you know if something's true, though?
If knowledge of truth has to be true, how do you know that the true knowledge of truth really is true? Etc..
Yeah, I'm not arguing that it is easy to know the truth, but the issue I take with many modern philosophies is that they argue it is impossible to know the truth. Which to me is a self-defeating argument.
I have had plenty of interesting discussions with people at dinner-parties/gatherings that start out on the surface as being a disagreement over morality or a different political leaning, but then once you get right down to first principles they admit that actually they think it's impossible to know the truth, so what does it matter anyway? This is always so frustrating, but it's important to get to this point so that you can debate the real issue, rather than going back and forth on the surface level issues that ultimately don't address the underlying disagreement.
Both halves of the sentence contain wrong and rendundant statements. Since truth is a relation of correspondence between a proposition and reality and knowledge is justified true belief or it is not knowledge; it is both impossible for us to know untruths if we believe them to be true (we can believe falsehoods but we can only know truth), and likewise truths, being essentially propositions, cannot not be known (can only be known by someone, or there is no one proposing them therefore no truth relation subsists - ergo no 'truth' can be wholly unknown to everyone.)
You may say instead:
A lot we believe is not true, and we don't know much.
Actually, it's literally impossible to know something that isn't true. Plato defined knowledge as "true justified belief", which is an imperfect definition but good enough for our purposes.
1. Knowing that truth exists but we won’t ever know we found it or be 100% sure that we did
2. Knowing that there is no truth
In both cases we are stuck not knowing what we know. Furthermore, #2 may only apply to only subsets of truths. Ie., this book is real. This iPhone is “true”. Yet not knowing what’s outside of the universe or knowing it can’t be known does not seem to influence the day to day.
My perspective, is truth as a goal in itself is not useful. An interesting way to talk to people is see the consequences of their beliefs on them, not on the theoretically world where everyone does or doesn’t believe as they believe.
I’ve met too many good Christians who acted poorly. I’ve met many asshole non-believers. In the end their faith or lack their of doesn’t appear correlated with how they treat their mother, their father, or others. In the short time we have on this planet I emphasize how I’m actually being treated.
A fact has no truth value. Truth only comes from reason, and reason only exists in each person's head. This is reducing the demand for reason, and thus destroying truth.
A critique of a strawman of empiricism, is not really a justification for an alternative truth system (mysticism.).
Yes, there are things that are unknowable, even with the tools of empiricism.
But pointing out this issue, in no way supports the idea of using a non-sense ideology in its place, or even ascribing any value to such a thing.
> that holds that there is value in both kinds of knowledge
No, there is no knowledge in mysticism. And is it a bad argument to point out a supposed problem in empiricism, as a justification for a different system, when that other system doesn't deal with the problem any better.
> believing something irrational to be true, makes it true.
Believing something to be true, does not make it true, unless you redefine the word "true" to a nonsense definition of "Well a true thing, is whatever we believe to be true. Gotcha, I win! I just created a self-consistent tautology, by playing word games, and making up a new definition! You can't call me wrong, because it's a consistent, self referential belief! That intro to philosophy class sure was useful!"
Obviously, none of us can ascertain truth directly. The only way we can claim A or B is true is by appealing to some justification for our belief. Therefore, the idea that [knowledge = true and justified belief] collapses to [knowledge = justified belief].
From that point, we have only to discuss what constitutes better/worse justification(s).
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