Knowledge

Types of Knowledge Knowledge by Acquaintance Ability ‘I know Bob’, ‘I know Robina;’ Ability ‘I know French’, ‘I know how to ride a bike;’ Propositional Knowledge ‘I know that Bob is a builder’, ‘I know that they speak French in Paris.’

Properties of Knowledge Knowledge is a Propositional Attitude Knowledge is a type of belief True Justified

Truth Correspondence What is ‘correspondence’? A sentence is true if the world is the way that the sentence says that it is ‘Snow is white’ is true if snow is white What is ‘correspondence’? Not a picture Does ‘Snow is white’ look like the whiteness of snow? What corresponds to negative facts?

Truth Coherence What is coherence? A sentence is true if it coheres with all the other true sentences ‘Snow is white’ is true if you can’t derive a contradiction from it and all your other beliefs BUT I’ve got lots of false beliefs already, so it follows that I have no beliefs at all What is coherence? Consistency is defined in terms of Truth. Circular?

Truth Pragmatic A sentence is true if it works ‘Snow is white’ is true because you can design camouflage on the basis of it BUT ‘The Earth is at the centre of the universe’ is true because you can predict eclipses using it

Justifications Are good reasons for holding beliefs, Infallible Makes the ‘true’ criterion redundant Fallible They can be wrong Preferred Have properties which make them good reasons Internal properties belong to the subject External properties are real, objective, external

Justifications Reliabilism A true belief is justified if the belief is formed by methods which reliably lead to true beliefs We know what we can see because our senses are reliable BUT we also know what we are told by a reliable oracle We need to know how the justification works

Justifications Foundationalism A true belief is justified if the belief is derived from basic true beliefs What makes the basic beliefs true? Are they self-justifying? Are there any?

Justifications Coherentism A true belief is justified if it coheres with the other beliefs that a subject holds One can have beliefs that are false and coherent, and also coherent with a true belief