What is Knowledge?

By Duncan Pritchard – A Summary

Submitted by Manya Sharma (22BPHI002)

Duncan Pritchard begins by stating that there are, largely, two kinds of knowledge, Propositional
Knowledge and Ability Knowledge. The former concerns the knowledge of propositions while
the latter concerns the knowledge of abilities. Also referred to as know-how, it is different from
Propositional Knowledge since we cannot provide a set of propositions to explain an ability such
as dancing or skiing. Propositional Knowledge is also considered to be paramount because it is
such knowledge that distinguishes the relatively sophisticated intellectual abilities possessed by
humans from the kind of knowledge (Ability Knowledge) held by animals.

Epistemologists agree that for any proposition to count as knowledge, one must believe in the
knowledge claim and that the knowledge claim must be true. This is so because to state that
someone possesses knowledge, we assume it to mean that the information or ‘knowledge’ that
they have is true, not false, and that they believe in the claim.

However, epistemologists cannot simply hold that knowledge is mere true belief because one can
gain true belief entirely by accident or luck. Since knowledge involves a kind of success that is
creditable to the agent, true belief gained by accident or luck won’t be credible and would, hence,
not count as knowledge.

The challenge then, for epistemologists, is to explain what needs to be added to the definition of
true belief to ensure that what deem ‘knowledge’ is genuinely the result of one’s efforts rather
than being by chance. Plato solved this problem by proposing the third condition for knowledge
– justification. This proposal came to be known as the Classical Account of Knowledge, also
known as the tripartite account of knowledge. The condition calls for providing good reasons (or
justifications) for believing in a given knowledge claim.

Hence, according to the tripartite account of knowledge, knowledge is justified true belief.

However, Edmund Gettier, a philosopher, showed how this theory is indefensible through an
article wherein he showed how one may have justified true belief and yet not be considered to
have knowledge because said ‘knowledge’ was acquired through sheer luck. This issue with the
tripartite account of knowledge came to be known as the Gettier Problem.

For instance, let’s suppose that a person named Luke comes downstairs in his house one morning
to find his clock striking 6AM. The claim that it is six o’clock in the morning is a justified true
belief because Luke believes in it since the clock has been telling him the time accurately for the
past many years which makes it true and Luke has good reasons for believing the clock because
the clock has been reliable in the past. However, John is not aware that the clock had stopped
working the previous day at 6PM and is stuck there. In this case, even though John was justified
in believing in the ‘true’ claim that it was six o’clock in the morning, it would not count as

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knowledge because it was luck that allowed the claim to be true. Had John checked the time any
earlier or later, the clock would’ve told the wrong time.

There were numerous solutions offered as an attempt to tackle the Gettier Problem. Initially, it
was believed that making slight adjustments – such as the condition that the true belief must be
justified and also not be based on false presuppositions – to the classical account of knowledge
would fix the issue. However, the problem with such a condition is the ambiguity of the term
‘presupposition’. If we take the idea of presuppositions too weakly, it won’t be able to provide a
solution to the Gettier Problem but if we make it too restrictive, it would render most knowledge
claims baseless.

An objection to this adjustment, however, was presented by Roderick Chrisholm. The objection
was that it is unclear whether an agent in a knowledge claim needs to presuppose anything at all.
In the classical account of knowledge, the truth condition relates to the world while the other two
conditions – belief and justification – relate to the agent of the knowledge claim. Said objection
refers to these two conditions that pertain to the agent of knowledge.

Let’s understand the objection with an example. Let’s suppose that Luke has a farm. Luke forms
the belief that there is a sheep in his farm by looking at a shaggy dog that resembles a sheep.
However, there was, in fact, a sheep right behind the dog that Luke was unaware of. In this case,
we might intuitively not deem Luke’s finding of a sheep in the presence of a shaggy dog a
legitimate knowledge claim even though he hasn’t made any false presuppositions. However,
according to the tripartite account, Luke is justified to have this true belief.

Hence, the task at hand now becomes finding a notion of presupposition which is broad enough
to handle Gettier Cases but narrow enough that it doesn’t apply to other non-Gettier cases.

Once it was realised that there was no easy solution to this problem, the quest for a new analysis
of knowledge that was Gettier-proof began. A feature shared by all of these analyses was that the
conditions for knowledge demand more from the world than the agent. Simply put, the condition
relating to the world – truth – is more important than the conditions relating to agents –
justification and belief.

*End of Document*

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