1
00:00:10,770 --> 00:00:17,280
Okay, so how might we begin to pin down what we mean by knowledge that p what is it?

2
00:00:17,280 --> 00:00:24,550
For somebody, let's call them s the subject to know a proposition P.

3
00:00:24,550 --> 00:00:29,590
Well, the standard traditional analysis is to say, first of all, he has to be true.

4
00:00:29,590 --> 00:00:39,410
You can't know a proposition that's false. You might think you know it, but if actually it's false, you don't know it.

5
00:00:39,410 --> 00:00:45,340
Secondly, you have to believe it. You can't be said to know something you don't even believe.

6
00:00:45,340 --> 00:00:49,610
And thirdly, you have to be justified in believing it.

7
00:00:49,610 --> 00:00:56,320
So those are the three standard conditions sometimes called the JVB analysis justified true belief.

8
00:00:56,320 --> 00:01:01,590
A.J. Hammer, who is particularly well-known in this connexion, gave the last two conditions slightly differently.

9
00:01:01,590 --> 00:01:08,470
He said that to know something, you have to be sure of it and you have to have the right to be sure.

10
00:01:08,470 --> 00:01:14,940
And you might think that's rather preferable if I just vaguely believe something without any strong commitment.

11
00:01:14,940 --> 00:01:21,920
That might not be enough for knowledge. Suppose something to my mind has a 60 percent probability, though.

12
00:01:21,920 --> 00:01:28,470
I reckon it's going to rain tomorrow. Something like that. And maybe it's justified because I've seen the weather forecast.

13
00:01:28,470 --> 00:01:35,750
But is that knowledge? Probably we'd say it isn't that kind of weak belief isn't enough.

14
00:01:35,750 --> 00:01:40,790
You've got to be sure in order for it to count as knowledge and you have to have the right to be sure.

15
00:01:40,790 --> 00:01:50,210
At any rate, that seems quite plausible. But let's ask some further questions about all this.

16
00:01:50,210 --> 00:01:56,030
If somebody knows that he does it actually follow that P must be true.

17
00:01:56,030 --> 00:02:01,430
Notice that there are two slightly different claims that might be made here.

18
00:02:01,430 --> 00:02:10,220
When I say if S. knows that P p must be true or if s knows that P P is necessarily true.

19
00:02:10,220 --> 00:02:16,340
That's an ambiguous claim. On the one hand, I might be saying the defence knows that P.

20
00:02:16,340 --> 00:02:22,870
It follows that P is necessarily true, but P is a necessary truth.

21
00:02:22,870 --> 00:02:31,270
It might be tempting to think that, but it's just wrong. I know that I exist, but that I exist is not a necessary truth.

22
00:02:31,270 --> 00:02:37,690
It's not like one equals one or two. It's greater than one. I could easily not have existed once.

23
00:02:37,690 --> 00:02:44,720
I didn't. Sometime I won't. But I do know that I exist right now, don't I?

24
00:02:44,720 --> 00:02:48,830
So it's simply not true and it can't follow from the meaning of no.

25
00:02:48,830 --> 00:02:58,820
That the only things you can know are necessary truths. The second interpretation of this claim, however, looks much more plausible necessarily.

26
00:02:58,820 --> 00:03:06,380
If S. knows that P, then P is true. Something cannot count as a case of propositional knowledge.

27
00:03:06,380 --> 00:03:12,620
Unless the proposition in question is true. And that seems right.

28
00:03:12,620 --> 00:03:17,570
But do be ever so careful when you use words like necessarily in philosophy.

29
00:03:17,570 --> 00:03:21,530
Always be careful to watch for the scope of the modal operator.

30
00:03:21,530 --> 00:03:26,090
So distinguish between the two versions there.

31
00:03:26,090 --> 00:03:30,830
In the second case, you see necessarily lies outside the brackets.

32
00:03:30,830 --> 00:03:37,190
Whereas in the first case, if you were to put brackets, necessarily lies inside.

33
00:03:37,190 --> 00:03:42,080
So talking about the scope of the modal operator sounds terribly technical,

34
00:03:42,080 --> 00:03:51,700
but be very aware that word orderings of this sort can matter a great deal in philosophy.

35
00:03:51,700 --> 00:04:01,930
Let's now ask, is it, in fact, the case that if somebody knows some proposition, that proposition must be true?

36
00:04:01,930 --> 00:04:06,640
Well, supposing I say I know that frumps is hexagonal.

37
00:04:06,640 --> 00:04:12,580
I know that Frantz's hexagonal. And Italy is shaped like a boot.

38
00:04:12,580 --> 00:04:16,780
But of course, France isn't hexagonal. So there we are.

39
00:04:16,780 --> 00:04:22,510
I know a falsehood. Now, that seems to me to be just a confusion.

40
00:04:22,510 --> 00:04:29,440
There is a sense in which France is hexagonal, namely that it's roughly hexagonal in that sense.

41
00:04:29,440 --> 00:04:38,110
I can know that France is hexagonal. There's another sense, a precise sense in which France isn't anything like hexagonal.

42
00:04:38,110 --> 00:04:45,520
And in that sense, I can't know that it is. So as long as we're clear is what we mean about what we mean by hexagonal.

43
00:04:45,520 --> 00:04:51,690
Exactly. Hexagonal or roughly hexagonal. That straightens out the problem.

44
00:04:51,690 --> 00:04:59,180
For a different case, if you want to get your philosophy, tutors really cross say something like this.

45
00:04:59,180 --> 00:05:03,560
Well, that might be true for you, but it's not true for me.

46
00:05:03,560 --> 00:05:12,170
Philosophers hate that. Often people say that kind of thing when all they really mean is, I believe P but you don't believe P.

47
00:05:12,170 --> 00:05:18,560
So some people will say it was true in the mediaeval period that the sun orbited around the Earth.

48
00:05:18,560 --> 00:05:23,270
No, it wasn't. It wasn't true. It was universally believed.

49
00:05:23,270 --> 00:05:29,530
But it was never true. Probably it was quite a reasonable belief at that time.

50
00:05:29,530 --> 00:05:34,230
That didn't make it true. Take another example.

51
00:05:34,230 --> 00:05:39,570
It's true, we think that the continents drift for centuries, millennia.

52
00:05:39,570 --> 00:05:48,180
Nobody believed that. But it was, in fact, true. Indeed, if you didn't think it was true way back in the time of the dinosaurs and so on.

53
00:05:48,180 --> 00:05:52,740
You're going to have a very difficult job explaining the distribution of fossils around the world.

54
00:05:52,740 --> 00:06:00,780
That distribution only makes sense in the context that continents were moving even when nobody believed it.

55
00:06:00,780 --> 00:06:05,730
So don't confuse P is true with everyone believes that P.

56
00:06:05,730 --> 00:06:12,050
They're quite different. Let's move on.

57
00:06:12,050 --> 00:06:17,060
I'm gonna take it for granted from now on that you can't know a falsehood.

58
00:06:17,060 --> 00:06:22,980
What about belief? In order to know that P. Do you have to believe P?

59
00:06:22,980 --> 00:06:28,220
This isn't so clear. Suppose, for example, I mean a quiz and I'm asked.

60
00:06:28,220 --> 00:06:38,690
Let's say to compare a list of capital cities and the countries and I have to say, which city is the capital city of each country?

61
00:06:38,690 --> 00:06:42,810
And suppose I say, I don't know. I haven't a clue.

62
00:06:42,810 --> 00:06:50,270
I don't know any of these. I mean, somebody says, go on, have a go, have a guess.

63
00:06:50,270 --> 00:06:56,010
Well, I really don't know, it's random. Go on, guess. And I do.

64
00:06:56,010 --> 00:07:02,990
And I get them all right. Now, there might be some very plausible explanation of that.

65
00:07:02,990 --> 00:07:10,490
It might be that when I was at school, I learnt all these things. Maybe I had a teacher who was really keen on capital cities.

66
00:07:10,490 --> 00:07:16,400
And fortunately, the test was confined to countries that existed when I was at school.

67
00:07:16,400 --> 00:07:22,880
And although I've completely forgotten all those lessons, I'm able to do the test accurately.

68
00:07:22,880 --> 00:07:26,630
I didn't believe that I knew. But actually, I gave the right answers.

69
00:07:26,630 --> 00:07:32,000
And you can imagine the quizmaster saying afterwards, Milliken didn't think he knew any of those.

70
00:07:32,000 --> 00:07:44,050
But in fact, he did know them. Now, one way of dealing with this kind of problem is to say I had unconscious knowledge of the capital cities,

71
00:07:44,050 --> 00:07:51,690
and in that same sense, you might want to say I had unconscious belief. We can flesh this out a bit.

72
00:07:51,690 --> 00:07:56,380
Suppose somebody is putting one of those quizzes. They claim to be guessing.

73
00:07:56,380 --> 00:08:04,740
They make their guesses and all they guesses come out wrong. But then you put them in the quiz again.

74
00:08:04,740 --> 00:08:11,740
The guess again, they come out wrong again, but they come out wrong consistently, they're still getting the same thing.

75
00:08:11,740 --> 00:08:16,790
Well, clearly, they don't know the answers because they're getting them wrong.

76
00:08:16,790 --> 00:08:25,110
But you might want to say they've gotten some kind of unconscious belief because they're consistently giving the same answers.

77
00:08:25,110 --> 00:08:33,650
A map could give you a way of saying that knowledge does require belief, even if you accept that in the case of the quiz, I do have knowledge.

78
00:08:33,650 --> 00:08:39,260
You could say, yes, you can have unconscious knowledge, but only if you've got unconscious belief.

79
00:08:39,260 --> 00:08:50,010
Only if your answers display a kind of consistency. The related case is the strange phenomenon called blindsight.

80
00:08:50,010 --> 00:08:56,590
This is where someone has damage to their brain in such a way that they have no conscious awareness of seeing anything.

81
00:08:56,590 --> 00:09:01,950
And yet if you ask them to point to things, they can do it with reasonable reliability.

82
00:09:01,950 --> 00:09:10,380
So if you take them into a room, spin them around and say, point to the desk, they'll say, I can't see a thing.

83
00:09:10,380 --> 00:09:15,840
How do you expect me to point to the desk? And you say, go on, guess.

84
00:09:15,840 --> 00:09:20,180
My guess, and when they do guess, they get it right.

85
00:09:20,180 --> 00:09:29,270
Much better than chance. So, again, with this sort of case, it might be tempting to say they know something even though they don't believe it.

86
00:09:29,270 --> 00:09:33,620
Here, the idea of unconscious belief may seem a little bit less plausible because

87
00:09:33,620 --> 00:09:41,580
there's no long term memory or consistent pattern underlying the behaviour.

88
00:09:41,580 --> 00:09:52,890
A related problem. It's tempting to think that knowledge must be completely conscious that if you know something, you must know that you know it.

89
00:09:52,890 --> 00:09:57,570
So at one extreme, you've got the question, do you even need to believe it?

90
00:09:57,570 --> 00:10:02,400
At the other extreme, you've got people who might want to say that if you know it.

91
00:10:02,400 --> 00:10:07,300
Not only do you have to believe it. You have to know that you know.

92
00:10:07,300 --> 00:10:16,060
Well, that at least must be wrong. Suppose it's true, but in order to know something, I have to know that I know it.

93
00:10:16,060 --> 00:10:20,740
In that case, if I know that P, I have to know that I know that P.

94
00:10:20,740 --> 00:10:24,730
And that means I have to know that. I know that. I know that P. Which means that I have to know that.

95
00:10:24,730 --> 00:10:31,060
I know that. I know that. I know that p. And obviously there's no stop to that.

96
00:10:31,060 --> 00:10:34,390
In order to know that P. I have to know that. I know that. I know.

97
00:10:34,390 --> 00:10:44,110
And so on. Even when there are Google, Plex knows in that sentence something I'm obviously completely incapable of understanding, let alone believing.

98
00:10:44,110 --> 00:10:48,380
There's no way that you can possibly believe an infinite number of those propositions.

99
00:10:48,380 --> 00:10:55,000
And I, I personally lose grip on what's being said once you've got five or six no's in there.

100
00:10:55,000 --> 00:11:07,400
So insisting on consciousness all the way through that all knowledge has to be self reflective and known to be known is just not going to work.

101
00:11:07,400 --> 00:11:16,070
OK, I'm going to put the question of belief to one side now and move on to the key condition that attracts most of the attention,

102
00:11:16,070 --> 00:11:26,690
because the main point in distinguishing between just having a belief that P and knowing that P seems to be to focus on justification.

103
00:11:26,690 --> 00:11:36,410
The main reason we want a concept of knowledge is to distinguish between things that we really know and things that we think we know.

104
00:11:36,410 --> 00:11:48,290
So let's just assume that P is true here. What is it that makes the difference between truly believing that P and knowing that P?

105
00:11:48,290 --> 00:11:55,650
Suppose I have a true belief that P. Basilone surely isn't enough to imply that I know it.

106
00:11:55,650 --> 00:12:03,570
It might be just a lucky guess. It might be something I've been told by someone who's actually completely unreliable.

107
00:12:03,570 --> 00:12:07,910
Yet on this occasion, they just happened to have told me a truth.

108
00:12:07,910 --> 00:12:15,840
There are all sorts of ways that I can have a true belief, and yet it fails to be knowledge because it is not justified.

109
00:12:15,840 --> 00:12:28,890
So we know terms, if I'm to know that P, I must have a right to believe it or a right to be sure of it, at least that seems very plausible.

110
00:12:28,890 --> 00:12:34,040
Here, the shadow of scepticism can come back to haunt us.

111
00:12:34,040 --> 00:12:39,210
Suppose I believe that P. What is required for this to be knowledge?

112
00:12:39,210 --> 00:12:46,980
Well, plausibly, it has to be justified. No doubt it will be justified in terms of other beliefs.

113
00:12:46,980 --> 00:12:52,440
If you asked, how do you know that, P, I'm likely to have to appeal to other beliefs.

114
00:12:52,440 --> 00:12:56,190
Call them Q and R and then the question can arise.

115
00:12:56,190 --> 00:13:05,460
Okay. How can you justify Q and R and they recut require further justification perhaps in terms of S and T and so we go on.

116
00:13:05,460 --> 00:13:11,820
It looks like there's a threat of infinite regress here. Everything has to be justified by reference to something else.

117
00:13:11,820 --> 00:13:19,800
How can you stop it? Well, there are two different approaches that are traditionally taken.

118
00:13:19,800 --> 00:13:29,650
Indeed, it's difficult to see how else you could do it. One of them is coherent wisdom, which simply says you have this web of interlocking beliefs.

119
00:13:29,650 --> 00:13:35,480
And if they all cohere together strongly enough, then they can justify each other.

120
00:13:35,480 --> 00:13:41,000
The other approach foundation, lissom, says that ultimately you hit rock bottom.

121
00:13:41,000 --> 00:13:48,290
Ultimately, you get to certain things that you can just know directly without there having to be justified by anything else.

122
00:13:48,290 --> 00:13:53,510
Maybe one equals one. For example, how do you know one equals one?

123
00:13:53,510 --> 00:14:00,110
Well, I just see it to be true. I don't have to justify that in terms of anything else.

124
00:14:00,110 --> 00:14:04,870
How do you know you're thinking? Well, I just see it to be true.

125
00:14:04,870 --> 00:14:15,550
Like, Descartes was a foundation foundational. He thought some beliefs were just totally secure in and of themselves.

126
00:14:15,550 --> 00:14:22,880
A more modern approach to halting the regressive justification which moves away from the emphasis on conscious justification, which we've seen,

127
00:14:22,880 --> 00:14:29,600
is probably not something that we want to insist on right the way through is called externalism,

128
00:14:29,600 --> 00:14:35,610
externalism features in a lot of modern approaches to philosophy.

129
00:14:35,610 --> 00:14:41,460
An internal list counter justification is one that requires that all the relevant factors that play a role in

130
00:14:41,460 --> 00:14:49,950
assessing a belief as worthy of being called knowledge must be cognitively except accessible to the subject.

131
00:14:49,950 --> 00:14:55,830
Nothing can be hidden. And externally, it doesn't require this an external list.

132
00:14:55,830 --> 00:15:04,350
By contrast, will say that some factors that are relevant to judging whether you're justified in believing something may be inaccessible to you,

133
00:15:04,350 --> 00:15:09,790
external to you. Now, one obvious advantage of this is the following.

134
00:15:09,790 --> 00:15:14,050
Suppose you want to say that dogs can know things or cats can know things.

135
00:15:14,050 --> 00:15:22,240
Well, that better not be in terms of some intellectual justification the dog or the cat is able to provide.

136
00:15:22,240 --> 00:15:28,120
So how does the dog know that there's a cat nearby? Well, it smells it.

137
00:15:28,120 --> 00:15:32,260
Can the dog give an explanation of that? Of course it can't.

138
00:15:32,260 --> 00:15:41,050
What makes this knowledge is that there's a reliable causal connexion between the smell and the existence of a cat nearby.

139
00:15:41,050 --> 00:15:45,010
And the dogs detecting the smell and the smell actually being there.

140
00:15:45,010 --> 00:15:54,010
So you've got a reliable causal link between the cat and the dog sensing the presence of a cat.

141
00:15:54,010 --> 00:15:59,680
Now, it's quite tempting to say that the key to knowledge in this sort of case is not intellectual justification,

142
00:15:59,680 --> 00:16:05,140
not reflection, but simply the existence of that reliable causal link.

143
00:16:05,140 --> 00:16:11,940
And the dogs having reliable faculties. Well, why not say the same about us?

144
00:16:11,940 --> 00:16:19,250
Why not say that we are capable of knowing things without necessarily knowing how we know?

145
00:16:19,250 --> 00:16:26,270
Because we've already seen, after all, that we don't want to say that you can only know that P if you could know that you know that P.

146
00:16:26,270 --> 00:16:38,336
Why not go the whole hog and say you don't even have to be able to give an account of how you know that you're justified.