This is an excerpt from philosophical journal I was reading. It has helped me redefine my thinking of what I really know and as with others too. Learning this paradigm it has allowed me to dissect the world more critically. This is just part of the journal so the full context isn't there. But I think it is a good start!
*"Think of all the things that you know, or at least think you know, right now. You know, for example, that the earth is round and that Paris is the capital of France. You know that you can speak (or at least read) English, and that two plus two is equal to four. You know, presumably, that all bachelors are unmarried men, that it is wrong to hurt people just for fun, that The Godfather is a wonderful film, and that water has the chemical structure H2O. And so on.
But what is it that all these cases of knowledge have in common? Think again of the examples just given, which include geographical, linguistic, math- ematical, aesthetic, ethical, and scientific knowledge. Given these myriad types of knowledge, what, if anything, ties them all together? It is this sort of question that is asked by those who study epistemology, which is the theory of knowledge. The goal of this book is to introduce you to this exciting field of philosophy. By the end of this book, you should be able to count yourself as an epistemologist.
In all the examples of knowledge just given, the type of knowledge in question is what is called propositional knowledge, in that it is knowledge of a propo- sition. A proposition is what is asserted by a sentence which says that something is the case – e.g., that the earth is flat, that bachelors are unmarried men, that two plus two is four, and so on. Propositional knowledge will be the focus of this book, but we should also recognize that it is not the only sort of know- ledge that we possess.
There is, for example, ability knowledge, or know-how. Ability knowledge is clearly different from propositional knowledge; I know how to swim, for example, but I do not thereby know a set of propositions about how to swim. Indeed, I’m not altogether sure that I could tell you how to swim, but I do know how to swim nonetheless (and I could prove it by manifesting this ability – by jumping into a swimming pool and doing the breaststroke, say).
Ability knowledge is certainly an important type of knowledge to have. We want lots of know-how, such as to know how to ride a bicycle, to drive a car, or to operate a personal computer. Notice, however, that while only relatively sophisticated creatures like humans possess propositional knowledge, ability knowledge is far more common. An ant might plausibly be said to know how to navigate its terrain, but would we want to say that an ant has propositional knowledge; that there are facts which the ant knows? Could the ant know, for example, that the terrain it is presently crossing is someone’s porch? Intuitively not, and this marks out the importance of propositional knowledge over other types of knowledge like ability knowledge, which is that such knowledge presupposes the sort of relatively sophisticated intellectual abilities possessed by humans.
KNOWING VERSUS MERELY ‘GETTING IT RIGHT’
It is often noted that belief aims at the truth, in the sense that when we believe a proposition, we believe it to be the case (i.e., to be true). When what we believe is true, then there is a match between what we think is the case and what is the case. We have got things right. If mere true belief suffices for ‘getting things right’, however, then one might wonder as to why epistemologists do not end their quest for an account of knowledge right there and simply hold that knowledge is nothing more than true belief – i.e., ‘getting things right’.
There is in fact a very good reason why epistemologists do not rest content with mere true belief as an account of knowledge, and that is that one can have true belief entirely by accident, in which case it would be of no credit to you at all that you got things right. Consider Harry, who forms his belief that the horse Lucky Lass will win the next race purely on the basis of the fact that the name of the horse appeals to him. Clearly this is not a good basis on which to form one’s belief about the winner of the next horse race, since whether or not a horse’s name appeals to you has no bearing on its performance.
Suppose, however, that Harry’s belief turns out to be true, in that Lucky Lass does win the next race. Is this knowledge? Intuitively not, since it is just a matter of luck that his belief was true in this case. Remember that know- ledge is an achievement, something that one can take credit for, and yet one’s genuine achievements are not purely a matter of luck.
In order to emphasise this point, think for a moment about achievements in another realm, such as archery. Notice that if one genuinely is a skilled archer, then if one tries to hit the bull’s-eye, and the conditions are right (the wind is not gusting, for example), then one usually will hit the bull’s-eye. That’s just what it means to be a skilled archer. The word ‘usually’ is important here, since someone who isn’t a skilled archer might, as it happens, hit the bull’s eye on a particular occasion, but she wouldn’t usually hit the bull’s-eye in these conditions. Perhaps, for example, she aims her arrow and, by luck, it hits the centre of the target. Does the mere fact that she is successful on this one occasion mean that she is a skilled archer? No, and the reason is that she would not be able to repeat this success. If she tried again, for example, her arrow would in all likelihood sail off into the heavens.
Having knowledge is just like this. Imagine that one’s belief is an arrow, which is aimed at the centre of the target, truth. Hitting the bull’s-eye and forming a true belief suffices for getting things right, since all this means is that one was on that occasion successful. It does not suffice, however, for having knowledge any more than hitting the bull’s-eye purely by chance indi- cates that you are skilled in archery. To have knowledge, one’s success must genuinely be the result of one’s efforts, rather than merely being by chance.
And this means that forming one’s belief in the way that one does ought usually, in those circumstances, to lead to a true belief.
Harry, who forms his true belief that Lucky Lass will win the race simply
because he likes the name, is like the person who happens to hit the bull’s-
eye, but who is not a skilled archer. Usually, forming one’s belief about whether
a horse will win a race simply by considering whether the name of the horse appeals to you will lead you to form a false belief.
Contrast Harry with someone who genuinely knows that the race will be won by Lucky Lass. Perhaps, for example, this person is a ‘Mr Big’, a gangster who has fixed the race by drugging the other animals so that his horse, Lucky Lass, will win. He knows that the race will be won by Lucky Lass because the way he has formed his belief, by basing it on the special grounds he has for thinking that Lucky Lass cannot lose, would normally lead him to have a true belief. It is not a matter of luck that Mr Big hits the target of truth.
The challenge for epistemologists is thus to explain what needs to be added to mere true belief in order to get knowledge. In particular, epistemologists need to explain what needs to be added to true belief to capture this idea that knowledge, unlike mere true belief, is a genuine achievement on the part of the agent, something that the agent can take credit for, where this means, for example, that the agent’s belief was not simply a matter of luck.
As we will see, it is in fact surprisingly difficult to give an unproblematic account of knowledge which meets this requirement. This has led some commen- tators to be doubtful about the whole project of defining knowledge. Perhaps there just is nothing that ties all cases of knowledge together, or perhaps there is such an essence to knowledge, but it is so complex that it is a futile task to seek an account of it.
In this book, however, we will proceed with optimism on this score. Even if an unproblematic definition of knowledge is unavailable, there are a number of plausible accounts on offer, even though none of them is entirely uncon- tentious. Moreover, the very practice of evaluating these different views about knowledge itself casts light upon what knowledge is, even if it does not result in a neat definition of this notion.
In any case, while the project of elucidating knowledge is central to episte- mology (it is the principal focus of Chapters 1–6), it is important not to overstate its importance. As this book testifies, there is more to epistemology than the quest to define knowledge. One can examine the different ways in which know- ledge is acquired and retained, for example, such as via our perceptual faculty of sight and our faculty of memory (see Chapters 7–10 on the ways in which knowledge is acquired and retained). Furthermore, there are sceptical challenges
to be engaged with, challenges which purport to show that knowledge is impos-
2 sible to possess however we define it (Chapters 11–13 deal with sceptical
3222 challenges and related issues).*"