Why is there more to knowledge than merely true belief or even justified true belief?

 

What is knowledge? The answer seems easy, but as soon as we begin to analyse the concept, we trip up on the problem of the criterion. Should we take the methodist approach - define the criteria and then look for cases that meet them, or the particularist approach - pick cases of knowledge and identify the criteria (Pritchard 21-2)?

Let us take the methodist approach and consider the classical account of knowledge attributed to Plato (Pritchard 23). It states that knowledge is Justified True Belief - if one claims to know a proposition, one must believe it to be true and support it with good reasons (justification). However, there are situations when we know a fact but find it difficult to justify it with confidence. For example, a co-worker asks you what time the meeting starts, and you reply “3 p.m.”, but when she asks you how you know it, you cannot remember.  As it happens, you are right, and the meeting starts at 3 p.m. So why isn’t a true belief sufficient? Shouldn’t truth be the essential requirement for a belief to qualify as knowledge? To answer this question, let us consider another situation. Two students take an MCQ exam. Student A has studied diligently and confidently picks the right answers. Student B has not revised; he picks the options that seem correct, but he is not at all confident; he keeps changing his mind, erasing and choosing the answers again. Surprisingly, he ends up getting most of them correct. Although both students achieve the goal of passing the exam, student B cannot credit his success to knowing but to dumb luck. A random guess or fallacious reasoning may coincidentally lead to truth, but a belief formed in such a way cannot equal knowledge.

We can see that knowledge is more than mere true belief. Knowledge gives certitude; mere true beliefs are volatile. Plato makes a clear distinction between the two concepts, comparing true beliefs to unchained statues of Daedalus - they lack lasting value considering how easy it is to lose them. In contrast, knowledge is stable, not prone to change, and therefore more valuable, instrumentally or intrinsically. It can be used with confidence and will take the knower far (Pritchard 14).

Plato’s JTB is not free from a major problem, though; one can be justified in their true belief and not have knowledge. Edmund Gettier’s famous counterexamples illustrate such cases (444-6). Gettier-style knowers arrive at justified true beliefs unaware of hidden facts, e.g. in the Stopped Clock Case, the person looks at the clock at just the right time it indicates, and not knowing it is broken, forms a justified and true belief about the time (Pritchard 24). The belief is formed on false assumptions, though.

In the attempt to fix the Gettier problem, philosophers have proposed a number of alternative theories and approaches to the analysis of knowledge. Some suggested adding a fourth condition to strengthen justification, others tried replacing justification with a different requirement (Ichikawa). The fact that none of them has managed to yield a satisfactory solution further exposes that knowledge is a lot more complicated and defies analysis.

                                                    Works Cited 

Gettier, E. L., ‘Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?’ in M. Huemer (ed.), Epistemology - Contemporary Readings, London and New York, Routledge, pp. 444–6

Ichikawa, Jonathan Jenkins and Matthias Steup, "The Analysis of Knowledge", The     Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/knowledge-analysis/. Date of Access 25.02.2021

Pritchard, Duncan. What Is This Thing Called Knowledge? 4th ed., Kindle ed., Routledge, 2018.