The classical definition of knowledge is "justified true belief", that is, a person knows a proposition if the following conditions are met.
1 - The person believes in the proposition.
2.- The proposition is true.
3.- The person is justified in believing the proposition.
However, there are counterexamples where all 3 conditions are met but there does not seem to be knowledge.
Suppose you see on TV how your team won a soccer tournament. So you think they won, it is true that they did, and you are justified in believing it, because seeing it on TV is a good reason to believe it, therefore you know that your team won.
Now suppose that the television station made a mistake without your noticing and instead of broadcasting this year's game, it broadcast last year's replay, in which your team also won. So you believe that they won, it is true that they did, and you are justified in believing it, because the reasons why you believe it are the same as in the previous case and we had said that they were good reasons, however it does not seem that you know that they won this year, it was just a coincidence that your team won both times.
So we have to change the definition of knowledge, what seems to me the best solution is to add the following condition.
4.- The person does not have any false beliefs relevant to the proposition.
Where a belief relevant to a proposition is a belief such that if you did not believe it you would no longer be justified in believing the proposition.
So the counterexample no longer works. The false relevant belief is that the game you saw was this year's tournament, if you had not believed that, you would no longer be justified in believing that your team won this year, so the fourth condition is not met and therefore you do not know that they won.
What do you think of this solution? Does it look good to you? Or what do you think is the solution?
yoshi888888888 t1_iu7jgya wrote
Reply to /r/philosophy Open Discussion Thread | October 24, 2022 by BernardJOrtcutt
Definition of knowledge
The classical definition of knowledge is "justified true belief", that is, a person knows a proposition if the following conditions are met. 1 - The person believes in the proposition. 2.- The proposition is true. 3.- The person is justified in believing the proposition.
However, there are counterexamples where all 3 conditions are met but there does not seem to be knowledge.
Suppose you see on TV how your team won a soccer tournament. So you think they won, it is true that they did, and you are justified in believing it, because seeing it on TV is a good reason to believe it, therefore you know that your team won.
Now suppose that the television station made a mistake without your noticing and instead of broadcasting this year's game, it broadcast last year's replay, in which your team also won. So you believe that they won, it is true that they did, and you are justified in believing it, because the reasons why you believe it are the same as in the previous case and we had said that they were good reasons, however it does not seem that you know that they won this year, it was just a coincidence that your team won both times.
So we have to change the definition of knowledge, what seems to me the best solution is to add the following condition. 4.- The person does not have any false beliefs relevant to the proposition. Where a belief relevant to a proposition is a belief such that if you did not believe it you would no longer be justified in believing the proposition.
So the counterexample no longer works. The false relevant belief is that the game you saw was this year's tournament, if you had not believed that, you would no longer be justified in believing that your team won this year, so the fourth condition is not met and therefore you do not know that they won.
What do you think of this solution? Does it look good to you? Or what do you think is the solution?