The complex dilemma that we have to face from the readings is essentially how to define knowledge and differentiate it from true belief.
After completing the readings, I was eager to claim that someone can know something without having full knowledge of it. For example, while I know that (-b±√b2-4ac)/2a and that a2+b2=c2, I do not have a full understanding of why these are true and accepted mathematical equations. I would have gone so far as to argue that I do not have knowledge of these. Certainly, I know how and when to use them, but by Pritchard’s standards in What Is This Thing Called Knowledge, I do not know why I use them and therefore lack knowledge on both the quadratic formula and Pythagorean’s Theorem. The evidence and reasoning that I needed to justify my true belief (which even then is not enough to be knowledge as noted by Edmund Gettier) stems merely from the fact that I learned these theorems in class and had practiced them enough to know that the answers I derived from such equations were true.
When does simply accepting something that we’ve learned in class become knowledge? Or does it ever?
Due to these questions, I decided to do some research and came across the terms “a priori knowledge” and “a posteriori knowledge.” A priori knowledge is independent from personal experience while a posteriori knowledge is developed from our personal experiences. These were fully discussed by Emmanuel Kant, a German philosopher, and he held that fields such as mathematics, physics, and metaphysics fall into this umbrella of knowledge. Therefore, the concepts that I have come to learn and accept in mathematics are examples of a priori knowledge, that I have gained independently and which are accepted universally.
Yet this makes me think of the Ptolemaic system (or geocentric model) which states that the Sun revolves around the earth. Of course, we now know this to be false due to the work of Nicolaus Copernicus. However, before his discovery, it was a system that was generally accepted in the Roman and medieval worlds. While we know it was a false belief, for those during ancient times, it was accepted and considered true. There are people who have long been dead who believed that the Earth was the center of the universe. This now transitions us into the topic of belief versus knowledge. Belief, even true belief (as discussed in the readings, particularly in The Meno by Plato) cannot be considered knowledge. Belief can simply give more credibility to knowledge that one has gained because one cannot truly purport to know something if they do not fully believe it. To know is, in a sense, to believe. But, conversely, it does not mean that to believe is to know.
Knowledge cannot be narrowed down so easily to “getting things right” because aside from the possibility of one merely being lucky (which was discussed by Pritchard and Gettier), there are many things that we as humans do not fully understand. For example, when we begin to approach questions that no one truly knows the answers to, such as whether or not there is a god or whether or not abortion is ethical or what is our purpose in life, we reach an area in which knowledge is difficult to determine. They may feel that they know and perhaps they may be right, but that does not necessarily mean that these beliefs are knowledge. When can (assuming they can) any of the answers that people develop to these questions cross the barrier of belief and transition into the knowledge we as humans naturally seek? Sure, we certainly have a slew of theories with plenty of evidence that would typically justify such theories as Plato suggests. But while we have evidence for theories such as evolution, that does not stop people from whole-heartedly believing in God and decrying the alleged falsity of such a theory. Will the answers that we develop for the questions that we have yet to find concrete evidence for remain beliefs forever? Until we find concrete evidence that “ties them down by (giving) an account of the reason why”, we can never gain knowledge on the answers to these questions (Plato, The Meno).
There was, I felt, an important line to note in the last section of the first chapter in What Is This Thing Called Knowledge: “whether or not the world is round, for example, has nothing to do with whether or not we think that it is, but simply depends upon the shape of the earth.” I know that we will discuss truth throughout the semester, but this begs the question of whether or not we can know if something is really true. We can be misled and deceived, we can be wrongly taught and filled with fallacies, accepting these lies as true. We can live a life devoid of truth if we so choose it or even if we do not choose it. How can we ever really know the truth if we are only taught lies?
From these readings, the only thing that I can firmly conclude is that I do not really know anything. None of us do.
Sources (other than the readings):
“a priori knowledge.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2014. Web. 08 Sep. 2014. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/117/a-priori-knowledge>.
I agree with your conclusion that “None of us really do.”[Us being inhabitants of earth, and claiming that people do not truly know anything.] However, we must recognize that Pritchard states that the contrast between knowledge and belief is to simply emphasize the fact that a person believes and knows the claims he/she makes (Pritchard 4). He is basically concluding that knowledge REQUIRES belief. So when we analyze your final conclusion, we may need to add on to it. Although none of us, may not know anything, that also means that we do not believe that we know anything. Based on Pritchard, in order for anyone to possess any knowledge, then one must be able to believe in their claims otherwise we will never be able to achieve success[ meaning possessing any type of knowledge].
I agree that knowledge requires belief. Otherwise, one couldn’t really claim to have that knowledge. However, I think that one could argue that knowing and believing that one has no knowledge is knowledge, which seems highly paradoxical. It is like the Socrates in Plato’s dialogues who claims that he knows that he knows nothing and this is something that he prides himself on (Blackburn, 2). I believe that the key to it, however, is that we remain skeptical of how much we think that we know. Or we could end up like the flat-earthists, with a false belief which we believe that we know.
On some level I do agree with you, that none of us know anything at all. On some level you can even argue the point even deeper, asking the question how do I know I am a person? Or how do I know what I am experiencing is reality. One may argue that one knows that he/she is a person because they can feel and taste things and see oneself in the mirror. However, to skip ahead a week to the brain in the vat theory, the sensations we see and feel and deeply believe that we know could all in fact be a complex simulation achieved by simulating the brain in just such a way. At the end of the day, we don’t even know if we are truly living, or if we are simply a brain sitting in a test tube enduring some complex simulation of existence.
And as droll as this may seem, and as hopeless as a situation what I just described is, the lesson I feel we must take from this is that for life to mean anything at all requires belief. If we do not believe we are alive, or believe that we are living a meaningful existences then life ceases to be enjoyable. Without belief, happiness itself, or rather emotion in general would become meaningless.
I really like the idea of the brain vat theory which I read about in another book.
I wonder if what you say about belief being important for a meaningful life (which I agree with) holds true for knowledge. If we lacked knowledge, would we still be able to lead happy, or at least meaningful lives? I would argue that we cannot continue to have meaningful lives because knowing something allows us to remain tethered with evidence and support for our beliefs.
Your post really prompted me to think deeply about knowledge and how it is acquired. I agree with what you wrote about whether or not we can actually know the truth. I cannot help feel disconcerted because like you said: How can we ever really know the truth if we are only taught lies? How do we know if we are being taught lies? Some children grow up believing in God and others do not. Both believe that what they know is truth. What we believe now, say, about the Earth being a sphere is what we are taught in school and in textbooks, but none of us (at least that I know of) have actually been in space to see the the Earth is, in fact, round. What if it is a triangular prism? Or an oval? My point here is to agree with you that in a sense we know nothing. This discussion is one of great importance but how can we effectively talk about obtaining knowledge if we don’t ever actually know that what we know is the truth?
Much of this discussion, including the IP, seems to center on the question of whether we can know anything at all. Is that one of Gettier’s claims? Is it entailed by what he says? It seems to me that y’all are confusing some related, but nonetheless distinct questions.
As Hilleary puts it:
Hilleary poses the question of whether we can ever be justified in believing (or know) THAT WE KNOW some proposition, say, P. But notice that this is a very different question from the one that we are interested in when testing the JTB account of knowledge (or any account that has the truth of P as a necessary condition for knowing that P). In the former case, the question is about a kind of second-order attitude, e.g. knowing that one knows that P. In the latter case, we are interested in asking whether, assuming that P is false, S can know that P (as this would be a counter-example to the claim that If S knows that P then P is true).
It seems to me that we should separate the question of whether we can know that we know that P from the question of what knowing itself consists in, i.e, the necessary and sufficient conditions for knowing that P. In fact, I’m not sure we can even approach the former question prior to answering the latter.
The other source of confusion, which I’ve actually already alluded to above, has to do with the difference in perspectives that can be taken when assessing the JTB account as it applies to the issue of the fallibility of knowledge. To say that knowledge of a claim is fallible is, at least, to say that good evidence for a claim may not guarantee that the claim in question is true, though it suffices to give one knowledge of that claim. If we think that someone simply `can’t be sure (i.e. certain)’ that P is true, then we are saying that one’s justification for believing that P is not sufficient to guarantee the truth of P, i.e. the justification is fallible. But isn’t that exactly the kind of possibility that Gettier acknowledges when he stipulates that one can be justified in believing propositions that are false?
Here’s a great explanation of the confusion from Stephen Hetherington’s entry on Fallibilism in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy http://www.iep.utm.edu/fallibil/#H9: