Gradient of knowledge

[fast]

The JTB Analysis of knowledge is our best known Theory of knowledge, and my question presumes as much. In this thread, I'm avoiding Gettier examples. Also, be careful not to confuse knowledge with certainty. Any use by another of the phrase, "know that I know" will be interpreted as a confusion with certainty (Cartesian sense, not confidence) unless otherwise specified.

If I have a justified belief that P is true, then I know that P is true if P is true. Whether I know the truth condition is met is wholly irrelevant. For instance, I believe the cat is in the house. I have good justifiable reasons for believing the cat is in the house. If the cat is not in the house, I'm still justified in claiming that the cat is in the house. Being mistaken is a good defense for inaccurate claims of knowledge when one has a justified belief.

Now, I'm in the front yard and see the cat go in the house at 5:00, and never before has the cat left the house after going in around that time. There's never before been a way for the cat to get out after going in. I have a justified belief that the cat is in the house. Unbeknownst to me, my daughter opened the back door for the first time ever. Do I know that the cat is in the house? The answer is yes. We already know that I have a justified belief, so the only other condition that needs to be met is for the truth condition to be satisfied. I do not need to go inside and look. I'm perfectly justified in claiming that I know since my belief is justified, and being mistaken is excusable. It just so happens that the cat did't go out the back door. It just so happens that my justified belief is true; therefore, and barring Gettier counter examples that leave room for its possibility, I do in fact know that the cat is inside.

Now, my wife is inside and sees that the back door is open. She saw the cat enter, she sees the cat, and sees that the cat never left out either the front or back door. She too knows that her justified belief is true.

When I go in and learn that the back door is open, I realize that I might have been mistaken. Of course, I always knew I might be mistaken, but the possibility of mistake is irrelevant, for the truth condition of knowledge deals with actuality, not possibility. Whether P is actually true is what matters, not whether there's a possibility of mistake. There's always a possibility of mistake, and people are notorious for using that as an excuse to proclaim that I don't truly know what I believe I know, but to leave no room for the possibility of mistake is to confuse knowledge (actual true knowledge as we ordinarily use the term) with certainty (and I'm not speaking of confidence).

Anyone that understands the JTB Analysis of truth well shouldn't jump to disagree with me to this point.

Now, the purpose of this thread actually has more to do with qualifying or categorizing justification into discernible groups. As it stands, one is either justified or not, but from my example, both my wife and I were justified in our beliefs, yet the strength of her justification was stronger, but what terms do we use to differ between varying degrees of justification. I knew my belief was justified, but I also knew there was room for error, but we must be careful not to use that as a basis for insufficient justification for declaring I didn't know; moreover, it was possible that my cat and a stray cat went into the house and that she never saw my cat but instead a cat that looked the same--that gets into Gettier-mode. What I'm trying to do is fasten down the variants between minimal justification and strong justification. Are there categories already established that scholars with an analytical bent cling to in discussing such matters, or is "strong" and "weak" the only thing I have to work with?

 

[Speakpigeon]

I disagree with your definition of knowledge. So, no, you don't know that the cat is in, whatever justification you think you have. There's of course no point arguing from there and I'll respect the gag order.
EB

 

[ronburgundy]

The JTB Analysis of knowledge is our best known Theory of knowledge, and my question presumes as much. In this thread, I'm avoiding Gettier examples. Also, be careful not to confuse knowledge with certainty. Any use by another of the phrase, "know that I know" will be interpreted as a confusion with certainty (Cartesian sense, not confidence) unless otherwise specified.

If I have a justified belief that P is true, then I know that P is true if P is true. Whether I know the truth condition is met is wholly irrelevant. For instance, I believe the cat is in the house. I have good justifiable reasons for believing the cat is in the house. If the cat is not in the house, I'm still justified in claiming that the cat is in the house. Being mistaken is a good defense for inaccurate claims of knowledge when one has a justified belief.

Now, I'm in the front yard and see the cat go in the house at 5:00, and never before has the cat left the house after going in around that time. There's never before been a way for the cat to get out after going in. I have a justified belief that the cat is in the house. Unbeknownst to me, my daughter opened the back door for the first time ever. Do I know that the cat is in the house? The answer is yes. We already know that I have a justified belief, so the only other condition that needs to be met is for the truth condition to be satisfied. I do not need to go inside and look. I'm perfectly justified in claiming that I know since my belief is justified, and being mistaken is excusable. It just so happens that the cat did't go out the back door. It just so happens that my justified belief is true; therefore, and barring Gettier counter examples that leave room for its possibility, I do in fact know that the cat is inside.

Now, my wife is inside and sees that the back door is open. She saw the cat enter, she sees the cat, and sees that the cat never left out either the front or back door. She too knows that her justified belief is true.

When I go in and learn that the back door is open, I realize that I might have been mistaken. Of course, I always knew I might be mistaken, but the possibility of mistake is irrelevant, for the truth condition of knowledge deals with actuality, not possibility. Whether P is actually true is what matters, not whether there's a possibility of mistake. There's always a possibility of mistake, and people are notorious for using that as an excuse to proclaim that I don't truly know what I believe I know, but to leave no room for the possibility of mistake is to confuse knowledge (actual true knowledge as we ordinarily use the term) with certainty (and I'm not speaking of confidence).

Anyone that understands the JTB Analysis of truth well shouldn't jump to disagree with me to this point.

Now, the purpose of this thread actually has more to do with qualifying or categorizing justification into discernible groups. As it stands, one is either justified or not, but from my example, both my wife and I were justified in our beliefs, yet the strength of her justification was stronger, but what terms do we use to differ between varying degrees of justification. I knew my belief was justified, but I also knew there was room for error, but we must be careful not to use that as a basis for insufficient justification for declaring I didn't know; moreover, it was possible that my cat and a stray cat went into the house and that she never saw my cat but instead a cat that looked the same--that gets into Gettier-mode. What I'm trying to do is fasten down the variants between minimal justification and strong justification. Are there categories already established that scholars with an analytical bent cling to in discussing such matters, or is "strong" and "weak" the only thing I have to work with?

So, JTB is actually a very useless definition of knowledge, which is better defined in psychological terms than philosophical ones.
Your understanding of JTB in incorrect, and your examples of knowledge actually meet a psychologically useful definition of knowledge, but not JTB , because you are discounting whether or not your belief is actually true as being irrelevant, and psychologically it is irrelevant and pointless to even discuss since it is inherently unknowable whether anything is actually true. We can only know our level of justification for thinking something is true, which is always < certain.
Your understanding of JTB is incorrect. Your examples suggest that you think so long as as you are justified in thinking your belief is "true", that satisfies
JTB, but JTB theory means actually "true" independent of any thoughts or justifications of the believer. Under JTB , an idea is only "knowledge" if it is in fact objectively true, in addition to there being justification to belief it, no matter how strong that justification is.
Here is the deductive logic of the JTB definition of knowledge:

JTB: S knows that p if and only if

(i) S believes that p, and
(ii) p is true, and
(iii) S is justified in believing that p.

Note premise ii, the idea being true, is a separate requirement from iii, which is justification (no matter how extreme) in believing that p is true.
Under JTB, the most justified belief that imaginable is still not knowledge, if it turns out to be false. This is what makes JBT such a useless definition of knowledge, because it means nothing can ever be claimed to be knowledge, because awareness of whether something is actually true is a psychological state that is the same as (and cannot be a distinct criteria from) awareness that one is justified in believing it. Psychologically, iii and ii are identical, and ii and only every assessable in terms of whether iii is met. Any requirement that ii and iii to be independently validated can never be met, thus JTB knowledge is only an ideal abraction that can never be said to actually apply to any idea. Psychologically, beliefs that are knowledge versus non-knowledge both have property i (that the person believes it), and are only distinguishable by iii (the level of justification). As a side, this undermines the silly retort you often hear people make that "I don't believe it, I know it". This is impossible. All knowledge is also belief. You cannot know something if you don't believe it. In contrast, all belief is not knowledge. You can believe something without sufficient justification, thus you don't "know" it.

Anyone who knows that evolution occurs, also believes in evolution. However, those who believe that evolution is false, do not know it is false, because their is no possible justification to reach that conclusion.

As to your last point about gradients of justification, again psychology is of more use than philosophical abstractions. Bayesian theory is precisely a theory about a continuum of justification for belief. It deals not only with amounts of evidence for the claim but the reliability and diagnosticity of the evidence.
Caution: Bayes theorem has some validity as a defining idealized norms of how a knowledge seeker ought to go about assigning probabilities to the various claims they consider. However, despite over-reaching claims by some folks, it is not a valid theory of how all people actually do assign such probabilities. It presumes pure rationality and the sole goal of optimal accuracy in one's beliefs. Thus, it ignores, emotional biases and goals served by forming beliefs for reasons other than their objective accuracy as implied by optimal coherence with evidence.

 

[fromderinside]

The JTB Analysis of knowledge is our best known Theory of knowledge, and my question presumes as much. In this thread, I'm avoiding Gettier examples. Also, be careful not to confuse knowledge with certainty. Any use by another of the phrase, "know that I know" will be interpreted as a confusion with certainty (Cartesian sense, not confidence) unless otherwise specified.

If I have a justified belief that P is true, then I know that P is true if P is true. Whether I know the truth condition is met is wholly irrelevant. For instance, I believe the cat is in the house. I have good justifiable reasons for believing the cat is in the house. If the cat is not in the house, I'm still justified in claiming that the cat is in the house. Being mistaken is a good defense for inaccurate claims of knowledge when one has a justified belief.

Now, I'm in the front yard and see the cat go in the house at 5:00, and never before has the cat left the house after going in around that time. There's never before been a way for the cat to get out after going in. I have a justified belief that the cat is in the house. Unbeknownst to me, my daughter opened the back door for the first time ever. Do I know that the cat is in the house? The answer is yes. We already know that I have a justified belief, so the only other condition that needs to be met is for the truth condition to be satisfied. I do not need to go inside and look. I'm perfectly justified in claiming that I know since my belief is justified, and being mistaken is excusable. It just so happens that the cat did't go out the back door. It just so happens that my justified belief is true; therefore, and barring Gettier counter examples that leave room for its possibility, I do in fact know that the cat is inside.

Now, my wife is inside and sees that the back door is open. She saw the cat enter, she sees the cat, and sees that the cat never left out either the front or back door. She too knows that her justified belief is true.

When I go in and learn that the back door is open, I realize that I might have been mistaken. Of course, I always knew I might be mistaken, but the possibility of mistake is irrelevant, for the truth condition of knowledge deals with actuality, not possibility. Whether P is actually true is what matters, not whether there's a possibility of mistake. There's always a possibility of mistake, and people are notorious for using that as an excuse to proclaim that I don't truly know what I believe I know, but to leave no room for the possibility of mistake is to confuse knowledge (actual true knowledge as we ordinarily use the term) with certainty (and I'm not speaking of confidence).

Anyone that understands the JTB Analysis of truth well shouldn't jump to disagree with me to this point.

Now, the purpose of this thread actually has more to do with qualifying or categorizing justification into discernible groups. As it stands, one is either justified or not, but from my example, both my wife and I were justified in our beliefs, yet the strength of her justification was stronger, but what terms do we use to differ between varying degrees of justification. I knew my belief was justified, but I also knew there was room for error, but we must be careful not to use that as a basis for insufficient justification for declaring I didn't know; moreover, it was possible that my cat and a stray cat went into the house and that she never saw my cat but instead a cat that looked the same--that gets into Gettier-mode. What I'm trying to do is fasten down the variants between minimal justification and strong justification. Are there categories already established that scholars with an analytical bent cling to in discussing such matters, or is "strong" and "weak" the only thing I have to work with?

So, JTB is actually a very useless definition of knowledge, which is better defined in psychological terms than philosophical ones.
Your understanding of JTB in incorrect, and your examples of knowledge actually meet a psychologically useful definition of knowledge, but not JTB , because you are discounting whether or not your belief is actually true as being irrelevant, and psychologically it is irrelevant and pointless to even discuss since it is inherently unknowable whether anything is actually true. We can only know our level of justification for thinking something is true, which is always < certain.
Your understanding of JTB is incorrect. Your examples suggest that you think so long as as you are justified in thinking your belief is "true", that satisfies
JTB, but JTB theory means actually "true" independent of any thoughts or justifications of the believer. Under JTB , an idea is only "knowledge" if it is in fact objectively true, in addition to there being justification to belief it, no matter how strong that justification is.
Here is the deductive logic of the JTB definition of knowledge:

JTB: S knows that p if and only if

(i) S believes that p, and
(ii) p is true, and
(iii) S is justified in believing that p.

Note premise ii, the idea being true, is a separate requirement from iii, which is justification (no matter how extreme) in believing that p is true.
Under JTB, the most justified belief that imaginable is still not knowledge, if it turns out to be false. This is what makes JBT such a useless definition of knowledge, because it means nothing can ever be claimed to be knowledge, because awareness of whether something is actually true is a psychological state that is the same as (and cannot be a distinct criteria from) awareness that one is justified in believing it. Psychologically, iii and ii are identical, and ii and only every assessable in terms of whether iii is met. Any requirement that ii and iii to be independently validated can never be met, thus JTB knowledge is only an ideal abraction that can never be said to actually apply to any idea. Psychologically, beliefs that are knowledge versus non-knowledge both have property i (that the person believes it), and are only distinguishable by iii (the level of justification). As a side, this undermines the silly retort you often hear people make that "I don't believe it, I know it". This is impossible. All knowledge is also belief. You cannot know something if you don't believe it. In contrast, all belief is not knowledge. You can believe something without sufficient justification, thus you don't "know" it.

Anyone who knows that evolution occurs, also believes in evolution. However, those who believe that evolution is false, do not know it is false, because their is no possible justification to reach that conclusion.

As to your last point about gradients of justification, again psychology is of more use than philosophical abstractions. Bayesian theory is precisely a theory about a continuum of justification for belief. It deals not only with amounts of evidence for the claim but the reliability and diagnosticity of the evidence.
Caution: Bayes theorem has some validity as a defining idealized norms of how a knowledge seeker ought to go about assigning probabilities to the various claims they consider. However, despite over-reaching claims by some folks, it is not a valid theory of how all people actually do assign such probabilities. It presumes pure rationality and the sole goal of optimal accuracy in one's beliefs. Thus, it ignores, emotional biases and goals served by forming beliefs for reasons other than their objective accuracy as implied by optimal coherence with evidence.

All of what you are discussing is why those who discuss the  Scientific theory “we mean by any concept nothing more than a set of operations; the concept is synonymous with the corresponding set of operations” (Bridgman, 1927) commonly referred to as understanding rather than  knowledge which is held firmly within the philosophical JTB camp.

 

[fast]

Your understanding of JTB in incorrect, and your examples of knowledge actually meet a psychologically useful definition of knowledge, but not JTB , because you are discounting whether or not your belief is actually true as being irrelevant, and psychologically it is irrelevant and pointless to even discuss since it is inherently unknowable whether anything is actually true. We can only know our level of justification for thinking something is true, which is always < certain.

Being so certain (that we know what we think we know) that it's impossible to be mistaken is not necessary to know the things we think we know. In other words, that me might be mistaken is not applicable. What's applicable is whether we are mistaken. We do not even need to know that. What's needed is that we are not mistaken, not whether our justification is such that there's no room for error. If I have a justified false belief, then I don't know. If i have a justified true belief, then I do know. Just because I'm not certain such I couldn't have been mistaken doesn't always matter.

Your understanding of JTB is incorrect. Your examples suggest that you think so long as as you are justified in thinking your belief is "true", that satisfies
JTB, but JTB theory means actually "true" independent of any thoughts or justifications of the believer. Under JTB , an idea is only "knowledge" if it is in fact objectively true, in addition to there being justification to belief it, no matter how strong that justification is.

I don't disagree with that. If I hold a belief, and if I have an extremely strong justification for that belief, then I do not know what I believe if what I believe is false.

This is what makes JBT such a useless definition of knowledge, because it means nothing can ever be claimed to be knowledge

People claim that they know things all the time, and though they shouldn't when their beliefs are unjustified, there's nothing improper about claiming knowledge when their beliefs are justified. Falling short of being so certain that it's impossible to be mistaken is not a good basis for refraining from claiming to know something. To err is human.

As a side, this undermines the silly retort you often hear people make that "I don't believe it, I know it". This is impossible. All knowledge is also belief. You cannot know something if you don't believe it. In contrast, all belief is not knowledge. You can believe something without sufficient justification, thus you don't "know" it.

I agree. Knowledge implies belief whereas belief does not imply knowledge. When people say, "I don't believe it; I know it", they are incorrect, for (and as I said), knowledge implies belief, so if one does know P, then one believes P. Of course, what they're really trying to convey is that they don't merely believe but in fact know.

 

[fast]

Here it is again from another angle: if I hold a true belief with strong justification for that belief, then why in the world ought I refrain from claiming knowledge? Clearly, if there is no justification, then the belief isn't knowledge. If the belief is justified (but merely so), I could see why some may question whether one really knows when there are plausible explanations for how things could have been different. But, in cases where justification is high and being mistaken is exceptionally low, why (given how ordinary fluent speakers ordinarily use the term) would we insist on raising the bar of what can rightly be called knowledge so high that we'd have to be an infallible species to think such a strongly justified belief is in fact knowledge? To do so is to fall into the extremist trap of altering the scope of how the term is ordinarily and properly (I might add) used by fluent speakers of a language.

Yes, I know my name. Yes, I truly do. If by some incredibly oddity it turns out that I don't, then that doesn't mean that knowledge ought to be regarded differently or held to a different standard. It just means I didn't really know what I thought I did.

 

[Speakpigeon]

So, JTB is actually a very useless definition of knowledge, which is better defined in psychological terms than philosophical ones.
<snip>
psychologically it is irrelevant and pointless to even discuss since it is inherently unknowable whether anything is actually true

Truth as a belief, i.e. the belief that certain representations and statements can be true of the world, makes the notion of truth relevant to psychology. Whether these representations and statements are indeed true may not be relevant to psychology. Yet, psychology itself is nothing if not a certain representation of the world and a collection of statements about the world. Aren’t those psychology statements either true or false? Doesn’t that make the truth of them rather crucial to psychology?
Or are you saying that it doesn’t matter to psychology, and probably to any science, whether our representations and statements, including psychological and scientific statements, are actually true of the world?
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

Here it is again from another angle: if I hold a true belief <snip>

When does anyone know he is actually holding a true belief about the world? How would we know that some of our beliefs about the world are actually true of it?
EB

 

[fromderinside]

<snip> Aren’t those psychology statements either true or false? Doesn’t that make the truth of them rather crucial to psychology?

Psychological statements cannot be true. Truth requires all knowledge which humans are incapable of possessing simply by the observation they can't be everywhere. At best they are representations that hold with current understanding of a topic which in turn is only current if it is not falsified. Obviously it is not truth, but, observed consistency of materially verified statements that ae rather crucial to psychology.

 

[Juma]

Truth and JTB is only usable in hypotetical cases. Never in real cases.

 

[fast]

Here it is again from another angle: if I hold a true belief <snip>

When does anyone know he is actually holding a true belief about the world? How would we know that some of our beliefs about the world are actually true of it?
EB

When we learn that we do.

These ancillary questions divert us from something that is important. We turn to authoritative sources (dictionaries) that report on how fluent speakers collectively use terms. The definitions help us clarify the lexical meaning of the terms. For further explanation, we can analyze the conditions, but the necessary conditions of knowledge as offered in the JTB analysis of knowledge isn't necessarily going to pave the road to the answers for these ancillary questions.

I do not believe for a moment that everyone using the term "know" when people say that they know things are not using the word properly. People don't go through life not knowing anything. Sure, there are probably many times when people don't really know that which they believe they know, and I certainly believe that there are many things that people not only believe they know but in fact know exactly what they believe they do. We may not be able to use the analysis such that we can infallibly distinguish in every case between the times when we do in fact know and the other times when we merely think we know but don't, but answering ancillary questions isn't the function of either the definitions or the analysis.

What we learn from the analysis beyond the definitions are necessary conditions. It improves our understanding--it doesn't provide a roadmap to guarantee us when or how we know the things we do. The inability for the analysis to tell us when we're mistaken about the things we aren't aware that we are does not somehow change what it actually means to say we know something. I do know many, many things, and yes, some of the things I think I know, I don't, and no, I can't tell them apart, but it's still the case that I know many of the things I think I do. That doesn't make the analysis useless. It just doesn't guarantee that we can when we're wrong. This by no means implies that we therefore don't truly know things. That's preposterous. Sure, we can't know to such an extent that error is an impossibility, but that doesn't matter, and the reason it doesn't matter is because having knowledge is independent of being infallibly certain, and the reason
I hold that position is because I understand that how we use the term in everyday usage is wholly distinguishable from this extremist view that knowledge requires such a grand sense of certainty.

 

[ontological_realist]

When does anyone know he is actually holding a true belief about the world? How would we know that some of our beliefs about the world are actually true of it?
EB

When we learn that we do.

This does not answer the question.

 

[ontological_realist]

Here it is again from another angle: if I hold a true belief <snip>

When does anyone know he is actually holding a true belief about the world?

How would we know that some of our beliefs about the world are actually true of it?
EB

One never knows that he is actually holding a true belief about the world.

There is no way to know that some of our beliefs about the world are actually true of it.

As ronburgundy said, "Because awareness of whether something is actually true is a psychological state."

If some one is certain of the truth of some thing about the world, it does not mean that it is certainly true about the world.

 

[fromderinside]

When we learn that we do.

This does not answer the question.

I like to use relative terms to illustrate when we know things. My son knew he could die when he was confronted by a drunken boyfriend who was younger, stronger, and more determined to get his way than was my son. His death in that situation confirmed to others that my son knew his probable expressed fate that night. Let me suggest this is a point where scientific method conjoins with JTB. Insert any outcome from an experiment when it proves to confirm the scientist's understanding that lead to the experiment.

Please note that application of JTB did not bring us to the scientific method.

JTB is just a set of mental gymnastics that got in the way of finding that verification by public means always trumps faith. Whether one knows what one knows isn't relevant to knowledge. Rather it is that what one believes is confirmed in public controlled experiment that is important to the acquisition and accumulation of knowledge There is no need to conjecture ideal faeries with special traits to understand what is knowledge or how knowledge is achieved.

Also don't try to say publishing what is known is knowledge. Such is no more that a brain or group of brains being aware of the same understanding.

 

[Juma]

I agree with fromderinside. "Knowledge" is not what you think it is. When you say "i know A" or is not really use the concept of knowledge.
I know something if i have been informed (partly by making my own conclusions) of something that i am feeling I am justified in believing. Wether it is true or not does not come into it. It is more of a feeling of being informed.

 

[Speakpigeon]

<snip> Aren’t those psychology statements either true or false? Doesn’t that make the truth of them rather crucial to psychology?

Psychological statements cannot be true. Truth requires all knowledge which humans are incapable of possessing simply by the observation they can't be everywhere. At best they are representations that hold with current understanding of a topic which in turn is only current if it is not falsified. Obviously it is not truth, but, observed consistency of materially verified statements that ae rather crucial to psychology.

I'm just so PROUD o' you, maaan!


Ok, enough with civilities, let me quibble some, ya' know how I am.

So, first, psychological statements cannot be true only to the extent that no statement about the material world could be true. So, this apply to all of science as well as anything else.

Second, if they are not true, they must be false, assuming they are meaningful and I will assume so but maybe you don't. Although, since your post suggests you accept the notion of falsifiability and therefore falsehood, I would expect you to take psychology's statements as possibily meaningful (i.e. some are, some aren't).

I also disagree with your view that knowledge of anything requires knowledge of everything, if that's what you meant. That might be true regarding the material world, but it does depend on the material world, and since you seem to accept you don't know it, you can't logically pretend to know that it is such that knowledge of anything requires knowledge of everything. I accept however that your view seems consistent with your other beliefs about the unity of the material world.

Finally, my post wasn't asserting the truth of any psychological statements contrary to what your reply seems to suggest. I was questionning the logical consistency of ronburgundy's post.

Keep up the good work!
EB

 

[ronburgundy]

So, JTB is actually a very useless definition of knowledge, which is better defined in psychological terms than philosophical ones.
<snip>
psychologically it is irrelevant and pointless to even discuss since it is inherently unknowable whether anything is actually true

Truth as a belief, i.e. the belief that certain representations and statements can be true of the world, makes the notion of truth relevant to psychology. Whether these representations and statements are indeed true may not be relevant to psychology. Yet, psychology itself is nothing if not a certain representation of the world and a collection of statements about the world. Aren’t those psychology statements either true or false? Doesn’t that make the truth of them rather crucial to psychology?
Or are you saying that it doesn’t matter to psychology, and probably to any science, whether our representations and statements, including psychological and scientific statements, are actually true of the world?
EB

Psychology cares about beliefs and beliefs are notions of what is true. Psychology (and all of science) cares about epistemic methods by which believes are arrived at because it is assumed that methods of justification for belief determine the probable accuracy of those beliefs, with the acknowledgement that complete accuracy (capital T truth) is not possible. This is another way of saying what I already said, which is that psychology and science care about parts i and iii of the JTB theory. Part ii is an abstract goal that can never be obtained and we cannot have direct knowledge of how close we are to it, only how much we've satisfied part iii (justification).

IOW, it is just a waste of time to talk about whether something is true independent of the level of justification for believing that it is. We should acknowledge that the most justified belief possible still falls short of Truth, and then pretty much never bother talking about that kind of Truth again. From a pragmatic standpoint in deciding upon actions, there is no difference between whether an idea is actually true versus it is the epistemicly most justified and supported idea we can reach. Thus, I am fine with the word "true" being used in discourse, so long as we acknowledge it means the latter. IOW, truth is what we have justification to believe is true.

 

[Speakpigeon]

When does anyone know he is actually holding a true belief about the world? How would we know that some of our beliefs about the world are actually true of it?
EB

When we learn that we do.

These ancillary questions divert us from something that is important. We turn to authoritative sources (dictionaries) that report on how fluent speakers collectively use terms. The definitions help us clarify the lexical meaning of the terms. For further explanation, we can analyze the conditions, but the necessary conditions of knowledge as offered in the JTB analysis of knowledge isn't necessarily going to pave the road to the answers for these ancillary questions.

I do not believe for a moment that everyone using the term "know" when people say that they know things are not using the word properly. People don't go through life not knowing anything. Sure, there are probably many times when people don't really know that which they believe they know, and I certainly believe that there are many things that people not only believe they know but in fact know exactly what they believe they do. We may not be able to use the analysis such that we can infallibly distinguish in every case between the times when we do in fact know and the other times when we merely think we know but don't, but answering ancillary questions isn't the function of either the definitions or the analysis.

What we learn from the analysis beyond the definitions are necessary conditions. It improves our understanding--it doesn't provide a roadmap to guarantee us when or how we know the things we do. The inability for the analysis to tell us when we're mistaken about the things we aren't aware that we are does not somehow change what it actually means to say we know something. I do know many, many things, and yes, some of the things I think I know, I don't, and no, I can't tell them apart, but it's still the case that I know many of the things I think I do. That doesn't make the analysis useless. It just doesn't guarantee that we can when we're wrong. This by no means implies that we therefore don't truly know things. That's preposterous. Sure, we can't know to such an extent that error is an impossibility, but that doesn't matter, and the reason it doesn't matter is because having knowledge is independent of being infallibly certain, and the reason
I hold that position is because I understand that how we use the term in everyday usage is wholly distinguishable from this extremist view that knowledge requires such a grand sense of certainty.

Ok, that's more forthcoming than your usual pronouncements on this question.

I still disagree. You still haven't shown that justification is sufficient (on top of truth and belief) or even necessary, which makes the JTB definition just pie in the sky. Of course, if we are to know something about the material world, it would require something more that belief and truth, but justification is patently not enough. You would need a stronger condition, something more like verification, proof, etc. And then we don't have those.


You are also mixing the issue of the definition and the issue of whether people know things. The confusion is between what we mean when we use the term "knowledge" (or claim to know something), and whether we actually know something when we say we do. I don't say, "I know my sister is in London" because I think I am justified in believing she is. Rather, I have a belief that she is in London, whatever way this belief came to me, much like I may have a memory that she was in Tokyo last year, i.e. it's just a psychological state, a mental representation of my sister being in London that I happen to believe is true. I am then caused to say that I know she is in London by the fact that I effectively know my belief that she is in London, i.e. I know the mental state, and that I happen to take this belief as coming with enough certainty that I don't want to question it. It's not even that I know that this belief is true. It's just that my brain does a trade-off between a risk of being wrong asessed as low and the urge to be efficient in my communication with other people. I could well say first that I know she is in London only to admit later that maybe she isn't if I am asked to take into account low probability or extraordinary conditions. I would therefore also expect people to be more likely to claim they know something when under pressure, their brain disregarding uncertainty in favour of a balance of probabilities in emergency situations. So, first, what people mean by knowledge is not JTB.

Second, if we suppose people mostly use the word "knowledge" in accordance with its proper definition, it does not follow that people know anything of the material world (I'm not considering any supernatural world). People may well use the notion of knowledge properly (and I think they do since I take the appropriate definition to reflect common usage) and still be wrong about their repeated claims that they know certain things.

Thirdly, people may well use the word "knowledge" properly, i.e. according to common usage, which is not JTB, but at the same time liberally, much as they do other words, for example "I love you", "you can trust me", "I have the money", "I am honest", "I will do it", etc. And I personally have not reason to believe them and I still don't see any good reason to think we know material things.
EB

 

[fast]

Ok, that's more forthcoming than your usual pronouncements on this question.

Thanks

 

[Speakpigeon]

When does anyone know he is actually holding a true belief about the world?

How would we know that some of our beliefs about the world are actually true of it?
EB

One never knows that he is actually holding a true belief about the world.

This may or may not be coherent depending on what one means exactly by "belief", "world" and "knows". We cannot just assume a priori that we all happen to mean the same things. And this would effectively imply that we know something about the world, which would constitute a contradiction to your claim.

There is no way to know that some of our beliefs about the world are actually true of it.

Maybe there is. It's just that no one seems to have ever explained what that would be.

As ronburgundy said, "Because awareness of whether something is actually true is a psychological state."

Again this may or may not be coherent. If you conceive of psychological states as part of the world then how do you know that awareness of whether something is actually true is a psychological state?

If some one is certain of the truth of some thing about the world, it does not mean that it is certainly true about the world.

It has to depend on what precisely you include in what you call "the world" here.
EB