A Modest Proposal
I wish to confess attraction to a version of Feldman's analysis of knowledge in Epistemology. According to the analysis,
S knows p iff:
(i) S believes p,
(ii) p is true,
(iii) S is adequately justified in believing p, and
(iv) S's justification for p does not essentially depend on any falsehood.
I say it is a version of Feldman's analysis, because (iv) is explained as follows:
(J) S's justification for p does not essentially depend on any falsehood iff the body of evidence that supports p for S is such that it's not the case that deleting any false proposition from that body of evidence results in S's not being justified in believing p. (It is "of the essense" of S's justification for p that it depends on falsehood if the right-hand side of (J) obtains.)
Feldman does not accept (J). I believe he thinks that in order for the account to be plausible, it requires not only (J) but some sort of "no defeater" clause. I deny that there are knowledge defeaters, however. So I am interested in the viability of an account of knowledge that includes only (i-iv), where (iv) is analyzed in terms of (J).
This account yields some perhaps surprising verdicts.
In Gettier cases, the target proposition is not known since deleting a falsehood from the knower's body of evidence destroys justification.
In a Feldman-Gettier case, where all propositions explicitly reasoned through are true, there is still a falsehood in S's grounds such that its deletion from S's evidence result in a lack of justification. So in Feldman-Gettier Nogot/Havit, S infers directly from S's evidence regarding Nogot that someone in S's office who has Ford papers, drives a Ford, etc., and from this S infers that someone in the office owns a Ford. But here, the original belief is arguably "Gettiered"; deletion of all falsehoods from S's evidence base for the proposition that someone in the office has Ford papers, etc., results in loss of justification for that proposition.
Russell's stopped clock case is treated differently. S knows what time it is if it is time t, the clock says it is t, it seems to S as if this is so, and S has some sort of belief/evidence for the general reliability of clocks. That there is some accident involved is irrelevant; accident is involved in any case of knowledge. (Duncan Pritchard has a mountain of paper on epistemic luck. I think this issue would be worth checking out but I am not familiar with the details of Pritchard's proposals.)
Perhaps more interestingly, the view can be employed to explain how testimony can be a generative source of knowledge, rather than serving merely to transmit it. For some reason or other, A may not know p, but A may testify that p to B, and B may come to know p on the basis of A's testimony.
Perhaps even more interestingly, this suggests a problem for epistemicism about vagueness. Suppose a philosophical neophyte, suddenly made interested in the problem of vagueness by Andy's tupperware dish full of rubble and a bit of classical logic, travels the world consulting vagueness experts on the sharp cutoff for heapness. Each expert, after carefully reflecting on the question, tells the neophyte that the cutoff is 4; any number of grains less than that a heap does not make. It's plausible to suppose that the experts do not know their own answers (insert whatever motivation you like for their asserting it here). But suppose they're right. Now the neophyte has a justified true belief where his evidence is the wealth of expert testimony. And by the analysis, the neophyte knows the cutoff for heapness. The problem for epistemicism is clear; epistemicists hold that the cutoffs are unknowable in cases of vagueness. (I'm blurring use-mention stuff here, but the problem is hopefully clear enough.)
I think this view of knowledge comports well with the standard view and is not liable to any significant problems that I am aware of. So would someone please make me aware of some significant problems?
S knows p iff:
(i) S believes p,
(ii) p is true,
(iii) S is adequately justified in believing p, and
(iv) S's justification for p does not essentially depend on any falsehood.
I say it is a version of Feldman's analysis, because (iv) is explained as follows:
(J) S's justification for p does not essentially depend on any falsehood iff the body of evidence that supports p for S is such that it's not the case that deleting any false proposition from that body of evidence results in S's not being justified in believing p. (It is "of the essense" of S's justification for p that it depends on falsehood if the right-hand side of (J) obtains.)
Feldman does not accept (J). I believe he thinks that in order for the account to be plausible, it requires not only (J) but some sort of "no defeater" clause. I deny that there are knowledge defeaters, however. So I am interested in the viability of an account of knowledge that includes only (i-iv), where (iv) is analyzed in terms of (J).
This account yields some perhaps surprising verdicts.
In Gettier cases, the target proposition is not known since deleting a falsehood from the knower's body of evidence destroys justification.
In a Feldman-Gettier case, where all propositions explicitly reasoned through are true, there is still a falsehood in S's grounds such that its deletion from S's evidence result in a lack of justification. So in Feldman-Gettier Nogot/Havit, S infers directly from S's evidence regarding Nogot that someone in S's office who has Ford papers, drives a Ford, etc., and from this S infers that someone in the office owns a Ford. But here, the original belief is arguably "Gettiered"; deletion of all falsehoods from S's evidence base for the proposition that someone in the office has Ford papers, etc., results in loss of justification for that proposition.
Russell's stopped clock case is treated differently. S knows what time it is if it is time t, the clock says it is t, it seems to S as if this is so, and S has some sort of belief/evidence for the general reliability of clocks. That there is some accident involved is irrelevant; accident is involved in any case of knowledge. (Duncan Pritchard has a mountain of paper on epistemic luck. I think this issue would be worth checking out but I am not familiar with the details of Pritchard's proposals.)
Perhaps more interestingly, the view can be employed to explain how testimony can be a generative source of knowledge, rather than serving merely to transmit it. For some reason or other, A may not know p, but A may testify that p to B, and B may come to know p on the basis of A's testimony.
Perhaps even more interestingly, this suggests a problem for epistemicism about vagueness. Suppose a philosophical neophyte, suddenly made interested in the problem of vagueness by Andy's tupperware dish full of rubble and a bit of classical logic, travels the world consulting vagueness experts on the sharp cutoff for heapness. Each expert, after carefully reflecting on the question, tells the neophyte that the cutoff is 4; any number of grains less than that a heap does not make. It's plausible to suppose that the experts do not know their own answers (insert whatever motivation you like for their asserting it here). But suppose they're right. Now the neophyte has a justified true belief where his evidence is the wealth of expert testimony. And by the analysis, the neophyte knows the cutoff for heapness. The problem for epistemicism is clear; epistemicists hold that the cutoffs are unknowable in cases of vagueness. (I'm blurring use-mention stuff here, but the problem is hopefully clear enough.)
I think this view of knowledge comports well with the standard view and is not liable to any significant problems that I am aware of. So would someone please make me aware of some significant problems?
posted by Chris Tillman at 9:24 AM
4 Comments:
Chris,
I have two questions;
First, I don't see how this view allows you to say of Feldman's Gettier case that the subject fails to know the proposition that someone in the office owns a Ford. You say that the original proposition - the proposition that someone in the office is in possession of Ford papers, drives a Ford, said that he owns a Ford, etc. - is arguably Gettiered. But that proposition, m, is justified in Feldman's case by perceptual evidence. The subject sees Nogot driving a Ford and witnesses him in possession of Ford papers. Nogot told him that he owns a Ford. What false proposition in S's evidence base does S's justification for m essentially depend upon?
Second; isn't it the case that the philosophical neophyte's justification for the claim that the cutoff for 'heap' is four depends essentially on some false proposition concerning the reliability of the experts' testimony on such matters?
Hi avwake,
I was assuming that though they are not parts of the explicit chain of reasoning used to conclude that someone in the office owns a Ford, Smith has among his grounds false beliefs about Nogot such that deleting them results in loss of justification. Fwiw, Feldman seems to accept this assumption.
But a problem remains if the sort of case you describe, where all the evidence for the prop. that someone has Ford papers, etc., is perceptual, is possible. If it is, then I think either (i) perceptual content is propositional, and all evidence is propositional (I would like to think this but I'm not so sure), so the analysis applies straigtforwardly: Smith has false perceptual contents among his grounds such that deleting them causes him to lose justification. Or (ii) some percetual content is not propositional and it's possible for someone to be justified solely on the basis of this stuff in believing some false proposition. Then I think maybe we should introduce a notion like accuracy or satisfaction that applies to perceivings and is analogous to truth for a proposition. We could then accordingly modify the analysis to require that knowledge requires JTB that does not essentially rely on falsehoods/inaccuracies. Would that work?
Second, in the neophyte case, we could just add that the experts are reliable testificaters or we could consider a neophyte's belief that does not include beliefs about reliability among the grounds for the belief. (I'm not sure the latter case is clearly possible, so I prefer the former modification.)
Chris,
I guess I'm still not sure which belief in Smith's evidence base is false. Does Feldman (or do you) think that, though it isn't part of the explicit chain of reasoning, the belief that Nogot owns a Ford is in Smith's evidence base? That would be a clearly false proposition for clause (iv) of your account to work on. But it's false that Smith is unjustified in believing that someone in the office owns a Ford if his evidence base does not include the proposition that Nogot owns a Ford. He still has as evidence the proposition that someone in the office drives a Ford and possesses Ford papers, etc. That proposition is justified by the proposition that Nogot drives a Ford and possesses Ford papers, etc. The latter proposition is true. All Smith has to do to get to the former is generalize existential style.
It might be strange to imagine someone reasoning as Smith does in this case without also believing that Nogot owns a Ford, but the case seems possible. In fact, I always thought that that was the kind of case Feldman was after.
I'm not sure if this line is the "all the evidence is perceptual" line that you mentioned. Suppose it is. Suppose also that you're right that perceptual evidence is propositional. In that case, what false perceptual content does Smith have amongst his beliefs?
Regarding the philosophical neophyte; I guess I was assuming that the neophyte would have to have in his evidence base the belief that the testifiers were reliable with respect to the topic on which they were testifying. Is that obviously false?
"But it's false that Smith is unjustified in believing that someone in the office owns a Ford if his evidence base does not include the proposition that Nogot owns a Ford."
This is correct, but not clearly relevant. Among Smith's presuppositions/background assumptions/beliefs that play any role in the formation of the belief that someone in the office owns a Ford is almost surely the proposition that Nogot owns a Ford. I'm not sure it's possible for Smith to get a JTB that someone in the office owns a Ford in this case without it at least *seeming* to Smith that Nogot owns a Ford. But, plausibly, the deletion of this seeming would rob Smith of justification.
"I guess I was assuming that the neophyte would have to have in his evidence base the belief that the testifiers were reliable with respect to the topic on which they were testifying. Is that obviously false?"
It's not obviously false, but I worry about it. The unsophisticates can perhaps get justified beliefs on the basis of testimony without having a concept of reliability. I'm not too sure about this though. That's why I'm happier to suppose that the testifiers *are* reliable, but don't themselves know because they don't believe their answers, due to their other theoretical commitments.
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