How do we know? - 2. What is knowledge?

Welcome to the second post in this series looking at epistemology. As I alluded to in the introductory post, I wanted to start by looking at the very definition of knowledge itself. Now this may seem like a bit of an odd starting point to some of you. Indeed, you may feel that you have a pretty clear idea of what we mean when we say the word knowledge. And it is probably this fact - this innate feeling of the term - that provides some of the fascinating thinking points. This is because, as we shall find out when we start to unpick the definitions that we have been using, we start to find problems with what we ‘feel’ is knowledge, and how we actually articulate that. Let’s explore!

What's the point?

Is this at all useful? Now this seems to be a legitimate starting question and I myself had been a bit dubious about starting to play word games. However, epistemologists certainly think it is, and the debate about this apparently simple challenge of forming a definition still occupies a good deal of debate. Indeed, from my own extensive history of preparing for exams, I know that exploring a good definition can expose some (occasionally surprisingly glaring) gaps in one’s knowledge. It therefore seems to serve as a useful landmark to sight off and orientate oneself before starting the onward journey through the rest of epistemology. And I think this is particularly relevant with the term ‘knowledge’, as I think it is both central to the topic of epistemology, and surprisingly challenging to pin down.

Types of knowledge

As I have just mentioned, as soon as we start looking into word definitions we start to find that we often have less specificity than we might expect from our language (or at least this is certainly my perspective). The common English use of the verb ‘to know’, is an excellent example of this. Think about the differing ways that we use it:

• I know how to ride a bike
• I know who that person is
• I know that London is the capital of England

These are just a few examples of the verb ‘know’ being used in quite different ways. In the first example, often called ‘know-how’, we mean that we have knowledge of how to perform some sort of activity. This can be of varying complexity, from throwing a ball through to driving a car. My understanding is that these forms of knowledge have vast amounts of subconscious neurological input, with relatively little direct cognitive effort (at least when not actively learning) and huge amounts of computing power being done in the background by the various sensory and motor regions of the brain. You just innately ‘know’ how to do it, and your neurological algorithms need very little higher cognitive input once they have been activated (When was the last time you had to think about how to walk?). This is often termed ‘ability knowledge’.
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In contrast, the second two examples are often recognised as being different. Rather than being subconscious, they relate to a declarative sense of what we know about the world around us. As such , they are sometimes termed ‘contact with reality’ knowledge. The first example is described as ‘acquaintance knowledge’ - that is, you have a familiarity with this part of reality. This may be a person or place, and may still not be that explicit (in particular I am thinking of that sense of recognition that we get about someone’s face, without clearly remembering their name), although we may argue that this wouldn’t count as knowledge. However, it is the third example that I gave above that is the type of knowledge that we are particularly interested in here: propositional knowledge. This is knowledge about propositions, i.e. specific facts about the world, for which the knower does not have to have had direct experiential contact (unlike the other forms). These are discrete concepts that are able to be transferred between people and across time, and are a major component of what constitutes the repository of total human knowledge, as we might think about it. This is therefore identified as being a category of knowledge that is quite different. I find it fascinating that this distinction is something that is actually clearly built into many other languages. For instance, in German, the verb kennen refers to the knowledge of a place or person, whilst wissen refers to the propositional knowledge that we are interested in. However, in English we can continue whilst specifying the type that we mean, and for propositional knowledge we shall term it ‘know-that’.

The classical definition

With this clarification about the different terms of knowledge done, it seems a good time to break down the actual definition of what it is to ‘know-that’. Probably the most useful next step is to explore the ‘classical’ definition or knowledge, also termed the tripartite definition (named because it has three parts). In my reading I have seen it stated that this goes back to the time of Plato and Aristotle, giving you an idea of how long this definition has been used. This states that you only know something if:

1. It is true
   
2. You believe it
   
3. Your belief is justified
   

This is often summarised as justified true belief (or even JTB) and seemed to be a nice, concise exploration of what we mean by the term knowledge. 

Let’s work through it to understand it better. Firstly, everyone is in agreement that for you to know something it has to be true. That is, if a proposition is actually false, people would tend to agree that you didn’t actually know it. Similarly, there is generally consensus that you have to have a belief in it being true for you to know something. If you have no confidence, or even an active disbelief in something, then again, we would all be pretty confident that we don’t really know it. We might use a different word (hunch, suspicion) that might indicate some partial belief, but again this is different from knowledge. 

The final part of the definition is where all the trouble lies. I think of this as being the ‘anti-luck’ component. In essence, we can think of cases where someone believes something for a completely unjustified reason, and every so often may indeed actually be right. For example, a man believes that it will rain tomorrow because of a dream he had. If it does indeed rain (and he was someone that did truly believe in the predictive ability of dreams) then this would be a true belief. But we would all feel that it clearly isn’t knowledge, as the truth of it was predicated on some amount of luck (to a greater or lesser degree depending how much it rains where the gentleman lives). For knowledge to exist, we want something that can negate the presence of such luck in any true belief. The answer to this has been justification. That is, the application of a reasoned approach as to why you believe something to be true, thus transforming it from simple belief into knowledge. Now this all seems very reasonable, and indeed this was accepted as a basic truth until someone noticed that there was a problem.

Edmund Gettier

The next post will look at the problems that have been identified with the JTB definition by a philosopher called Edmund Gettier. Essentially, as we shall see, he gave some clear examples of how justification does not necessarily remove the luck from the scenario, thus creating situations where knowledge does not actually exist, despite a belief that is both true and justified. This has then triggered a whole crisis in the use of the JTB model of knowledge that is still being discussed amongst epistemologists, with a number of responses being created. I think that the problem of ‘Gettier cases’ (as they are known), provides a useful perspective from where we can look to gain further insights into the major challenges of what we actually know. This includes how we think about the degree of luck within our ‘knowledge’; the level and nature of justification that is felt to be acceptable; and how this then fits within our daily lives when we say that we ‘know’ something.

If you want to delve into this topic a bit more, I’ve added a number of links and resources below. This video series from wireless philosophy provides a nice introduction. In addition, for those of you with a particularly strong interest, the Coursera series ‘Introduction to Philosophy’ from the team at The University of Edinburgh is a great starting point. 
BW
​Tom

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Links & References

1. Lacewing, M. Philosophy for AS and A level: Epistemology and Moral Philosophy. Routledge. 2017. 
   
2. Epistemology. The Basics of Philosophy. https://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_epistemology.html
   
3. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Epistemology. 2020. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/
   
4. Wireless Philosophy. Philosophy - Epistemology. Youtube. 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_Y3utIeTPg&list=PLtKNX4SfKpzUxuye9OdaRfL5fbpGa3bH5&index=1
   
5. University of Edinburgh. Introduction to Philosophy. Coursera. ​