The Tripartite Theory of Knowledge

The tripartite theory of
knowledge
Michael Lacewing
enquiries@alevelphilosophy.co.uk
Three types of knowledge
• Acquaintance knowledge
– I know Oxford
• Ability knowledge
– I know how to ride a bike
• Propositional knowledge
– I know that elephants are heavier than mice.
• A proposition is a declarative statement, or more
accurately, what is expressed by a declarative statement
– Propositions can go after the phrases ‘I believe that…’ and
‘I know that…’
• We are only discussing propositional knowledge.
Justified true belief
• ‘I know that p’:
– The proposition ‘p’ is true;
– I believe that p; and
– My belief that p is justified.
• I know that p if these three conditions
are fulfilled. And these conditions are
fulfilled if I know that p.
Necessary and sufficient
conditions
• Each condition is necessary for
knowledge
– You can’t have knowledge without each
condition being true.
• The three conditions together are
sufficient for knowledge
– You don’t need anything more for
knowledge than each condition being true.
• So knowledge and justified true belief
are the same thing.
Is justification necessary?
• Is knowledge more than true belief?
– True beliefs can be held on irrational grounds
(prejudice) or just be lucky guesses (astrology)
– Knowledge needs a reason, evidence –
justification.
• However, we sometimes use the word ‘know’
to mean ‘believe truly’
– But this doesn’t capture what we mean by
knowledge, strictly speaking.
Is truth necessary?
• Could knowledge be justified belief?
• We don’t normally say someone can know what is
false
– E.g. ‘I know that flamingos are grey’ – no, I don’t – I’m
mistaken (I think I know, but I’m wrong).
• But did people used to ‘know’ that the Earth is
flat?
• What about our ‘knowledge’ of Newtonian physics?
– This is, strictly speaking, false, but works well when not
moving at speeds close to the speed of light.
Is truth necessary?
• Newtonian physics is roughly true
– We know them, roughly speaking.
• However, the Earth is not even roughly
flat
– People did not know the Earth is flat –
they were mistaken.
Doing away with truth?
• Kuhn (The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions): science proceeds by
replacing one ‘paradigm’ by another
– We can’t compare the two paradigms so
as to say that one is false, the other true
– Because changes in paradigms involve new
concepts
– And there is no ‘theory-neutral’ way of
describing the evidence.
Doing away with truth?
• How scientists describe what they observe depends on the
concepts they use.
• The main concepts of a paradigm acquire their meaning in
relation to the paradigm as a whole.
• Therefore, a different paradigm, even if it uses the same term,
interprets the concept differently, because it plays a new and
different role.
• Therefore, different paradigms are talking about different
things.
• There is no neutral way of describing the world.
• Therefore, we cannot compare different paradigms’ claims to
say that one is more ‘correct’ or ‘true’ than another, as they
could both be correct in their own terms.
Objection
• We cannot explain science’s success unless we think it
is getting closer to objective truth
– Reply: science keeps solving puzzles that face it, but isn’t
getting ‘closer’ to ‘the truth’.
• There have been no paradigm shifts
– There is always overlap in methodology and evidence, so we
can always compare paradigms.
• We can’t talk about Truth – independent of our
concepts; but we can talk about truth – claims that are
true or false.
• Knowledge can still be justified true belief.
Is belief necessary?
• Example: John is very nervous in an exam, and
has no confidence in his answers. But his
answers are correct, and through his learning,
not luck
– John knows the answer, but doesn’t believe the
answer.
• Reply
– John doesn’t know the answer
– John does know the answer and has an unconscious
belief.
Is belief necessary?
• Williamson: knowledge is not a type of belief.
• Compare perception and hallucination
– You only see the tea on the table if the tea is on
the table; perception is ‘factive’
– Hallucinating the same scene is a completely
different type of mental state
– Perception is not hallucinating + extra conditions.
• Knowing is also factive (p is true), belief is
not factive.
Knowledge and belief
• Every attempt to add conditions to belief to turn it into
knowledge has failed.
• Knowledge is unanalysable
• There are different kinds of knowing – perceiving,
remembering…
• We should understand belief in terms of knowledge
• To believe that p is to take p to be true, i.e. to treat p as
if you know that p.
• Objection: when I make a mistake, I think I know that
p, but only believe that p – why, if knowledge is not
belief?

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