on Nov 4th, 2007Why K and the Man Who Shot JTB
The question comes up what is so important about “knowledge.” There are two possible answers that come to mind. Either knowledge has value in and of itself or it has value in relation to something else. If knowledge has value for its own sake than we say it has intrinsic value. The question arises whether anything actually has intrinsic value and if so, who to. We often consider gold to have intrinsic value, but it does not. Gold had value because we like it, we use it for technology and jewelry. We like gold for jewelry though because it is aesthetically pleasing. Perhaps beauty has intrinsic value. I think this is a knife edge example. Perhaps beauty is intrinsically valuable or perhaps we like it for other reasons. I might stop and notice a sunset because it is beautiful in and of itself, however that same sunset has a calming and inspirational effect on me. Maybe I like it just because it is beautiful, maybe I like it because of how it makes me feel. Either way, it seems like knowledge does not have value intrinsically. So what about my other possible value, relational value.
I might say Knowledge has value because I can use it to achieve my goals. Knowledge can have an utilitarian value. It seems obvious that the value of knowledge is a functional value. However, that doesn’t seem to be a satisfactory answer. We have a desire to know the truth, even when it is counter productive we wish to know the truth. You might question whether truth is ever counter productive and I would say yes. Truth can be disturbing and unsettling. If you are privy to a truth that is distracting when you don’t wish to be distracted than truth can be counter productive. If we ever desire to know the truth even when it might be counter productive to our goals than truth must have some value that is not utilitarian. If you wish to know truth when it will be painful than perhaps truth has some intrinsic value. There appears to be a dichotomy, however we can say that we desire to have knowledge. Whether for utilitarian reasons or because it has some other value we wish to have knowledge, to have access to truth. That leads us to our next topic: who killed justified true belief.
The year was 1963 and a mostly unremarkable philosopher published a short three page paper that changed epistemology as we know it. His name was Gettier and he invented (or at least drew attention to) what we now know as the Gettier problem. Gettier is a counter example to the Justified True Belief (JTB) definition of Knowledge. Gettier told a story of a person who had a justified true belief but did not have knowledge. He didn’t provide a new definition or answer any fundamental questions but he did change every thing for epistemologist (except perhaps the skeptics, we will get to them some time in the future). To illustrate a Gettier problem I will use the sheep in a field example.
Suppose you are driving along and look out your window. You see an object that looks like a sheep. You think to yourself that there is a sheep in that field. You have a belief and your visual evidence justifies. However, what you saw was not a sheep but rather a particularly shaggy haired dog. You would say that you have a justified false belief and that that does not fit the definition of knowledge. However imagine there was a sheep behind the shaggy dog. So in fact your belief that there is a sheep in that field is true. You have a justified true belief, however do you have knowledge? No.
By creating counter examples where there appears to be some form of luck that your justified belief is in fact true, Gettier brought an end to over two thousand years of JTB being the definition of knowledge. In the years that followed Gettier some people tried to argue against his counter example, some people have attempted to add some fourth condition to JTB to counteract Gettier and some have attempted to create a new definition of knowledge. Currently there does not appear to be a completely acceptable answer to Gettier, but hopefully next weekend we will get to look at a couple of attempts. I also hope to address internalism vs. externalism. Stay tuned it should be a fun ride.