Refining Justified True Belief Through Wittgenstein

Metaphysics & Epistemology
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I’m developing my account of epistemology one post at a time. Some questions will be answered as the thread progresses, particularly when I explain more of Wittgenstein’s role. I’ll be writing in numbered posts so readers can follow the argument as a connected whole.

I’ll try to keep the posts short and to the point.

Introduction

Before I give my account, I want to say something about why epistemology is important, especially to those who haven’t studied philosophy.

Epistemology is about knowledge, how we acquire it, and what justifies our claims to know. These questions come up in almost every area of our life. When we decide to believe a news report, trust someone’s advice, buy a used car, or accept a scientific claim, we’re relying on reasons/evidence for our judgment. Epistemology asks whether those grounds are good enough.

For e.g., suppose someone tells you that Toyotas are reliable. You probably would want to know whether they’ve owned one, worked on one, or are simply repeating something they heard. Their confidence doesn’t answer those questions. What matters is whether they’re in a position to know and whether you have reason to trust what they say.

We make judgments like this all the time. The same questions arise in discussions about politics, religion, history, and our personal experiences. What supports the belief? Does the evidence support what’s being claimed? Is there something we’ve overlooked that would make us reconsider?

This obviously doesn’t mean we have to investigate everything before accepting it. Much of what we know depends on other people, and we couldn’t get very far without trusting their testimony, and it’s true even in science. Good judgment is recognized when that trust is reasonable and when there’s a reason for further investigation.

It’s also important to distinguish knowing in the epistemic sense from knowing as an expression of a feeling, i.e., a conviction. A belief can be sincerely held and still be false. It can also be true without having a good reason. So, what’s the difference between believing something and epistemically knowing it?

That’s what I want to examine in this thread. As I’ve said before, all of us are philosophers, whether we’ve studied philosophy or not. We have views about reality, what we can know, right and wrong, and what matters in life. Those views have a direct effect on how we live, even when we haven’t examined them carefully. Epistemology helps us examine the grounds for what we believe and whether those grounds are sufficient to support our beliefs. The question isn’t whether we’re philosophers, but whether we do philosophy well.

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I’ll start: epistemology helps us examine the grounds for what we know. Although, I suppose one could say for that of which there is knowledge, all else remains mere belief.

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Forgive me for getting philosphical :slight_smile:

We can never truly know something

But a pragmatist will say that at some point in our enquiries we have enough knowledge to make a reasonably informed decision.

Thats a very limited answer - I have a very limited knowledge of the subject.

"The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook." — William James The Principles of Psychology (1890)

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I used believe because part of epistemology is examining whether our grounds for a belief are sufficient for knowledge; and that includes examining beliefs that are mistaken or not properly supported.

The account I’m developing in this thread is that knowledge is a form of belief. So examining the grounds for what we believe includes examining the grounds for what we know. The question is what distinguishes beliefs that amount to knowledge from those that don’t.

I’d also distinguish a well-supported belief that turns out to be false from an unsupported guess. Neither amounts to knowledge, but they aren’t the same in terms of justification. Calling both mere belief can obscure that difference.

Thanks for the post Mww.

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Ok. An account being developed, indicates an account not available for understanding. Which is fortunate for me, in that I cannot hold knowledge as a form of belief. Not that I couldn’t be persuaded by its rational validity, given a sufficiently developed account.

At any rate, I hope the thread draws proper attention.

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Exploring whether this is true will presumably be part of @Sam26 's inquiry. To help kick it off, I’ll ask: Are you stating this as a conclusion of some argument, or as a premise you think we need to start from when we look at what knowledge would consist of?

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if we know, how do we know that what we know is truth?

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Post 1

We already make distinctions between knowing, guessing, and being mistaken. I’ll begin with an everyday example.

Suppose I believe my car keys are on the kitchen counter. If I guess and happen to be right, I have a true belief, but getting it right by luck isn’t knowledge. If I’ve just placed them on the counter and can see them (sensory justification) in front of me, then I know where they are. If I’m relying on where I last saw them, but someone has moved them, I’m mistaken. But my confidence or conviction doesn’t make the belief true.

How do we account for these differences?

My definition of knowledge is the following: To know something is to believe what’s true, based on a sufficient and properly understood justification, in the absence of relevant defeaters.

By belief I mean taking something to be true. I’m not using the word to imply that someone is merely guessing or feeling uncertain. So, if I know my keys are on the counter, I also believe they’re on the counter. But my belief they’re there doesn’t mean that I know it. Knowledge includes belief, although belief alone isn’t sufficient. That’s different from saying that knowledge and belief are the same thing.

By justification, I mean the grounds we have for accepting a belief. In the example, seeing the keys gives me grounds that a mere guess doesn’t provide. Whether our grounds are sufficient is something we need to examine. Truth is also essential. Someone can have good reasons for a belief and still be mistaken. Know is a success word. If the belief is false, by definition, it isn’t knowledge.

I’ll also consider the Gettier challenge, viz., whether someone can have a justified true belief (JTB) and still lack knowledge. Before addressing Gettier, I want to be clear what I mean by a proper justification and the role of understanding.

Most of our knowledge about the world doesn’t involve absolute certainty. In other words, it rests on evidence that gives us sufficient reason to accept a belief while at the same time leaving room for the possibility of error. In this sense, our justification is only probabilistic. This doesn’t weaken the truth requirement. If we’re mistaken, we simply didn’t know. But the possibility of being mistaken doesn’t prevent us from claiming to know.

A relevant defeater is something that undermines the belief or the grounds for it. For e.g., a reliable report that someone has moved the keys would give me a reason to reconsider a belief based on where I last saw them, so relevant objections need to be addressed.

I’m putting forward a traditional account of knowledge as justified true belief by making clearer what proper justification requires. I call this account JTB+U, with the U standing for understanding. Understanding belongs within justification. It includes grasping what we’re claiming, how the concepts are used, and what would count as a mistake or a reason against the claim. Repeating the right words or reciting someone else’s reasons doesn’t demonstrate that we understand them.

My approach is influenced by the later Wittgenstein, especially his attention to how our words function in everyday life. I’ll examine five ways of acquiring knowledge (five language games), viz., testimony, inference, sensory experience, linguistic training, and pure logic. Testimony will receive special attention because so much of what we know comes from other people.

We’ll also examine when justification is sufficient and how we distinguish well-grounded beliefs from beliefs based on false grounds or luck. However, these requirements must leave room for ordinary knowledge. We don’t need to investigate every statement before accepting it. The checking should fit the context and the reasons for doubt.

Finally, I’ll consider where justification ends. This brings us to the background certainties, or hinges, that make justification and doubt possible, and to the different senses of certainty. Throughout the discussion, I’ll use ordinary examples and difficult cases to examine how well such an account works.

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Welcome ShedrachUG.

We need to distinguish knowing from claiming to know. If we actually know something, then it’s true, i.e., truth is part of the definition. But saying I know doesn’t establish that we really do know. The question is whether our claim to knowledge is justified by good reasons or good evidence.

For e.g., if I say my keys are on the counter, I can look and check. Other claims may depend on testimony, records, or reasoning (logic). These are ways of deciding whether what we believe agrees with the facts. Our confidence alone doesn’t settle it.

If you’re asking if we can guarantee that none of our checks could ever fail, that’s a demand for absolute certainty. My account doesn’t require that, although absolute certainty is knowledge. It requires truth and sufficient, properly understood justification. If we discover that we’re mistaken, we withdraw the claim to knowledge. And just because we’re open to correction that doesn’t mean we never knew anything in the first place.

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The argument is that we can enquire into the truth of something by testing and experience but we can never reach a point where we have complete confidence in our knowledge. All knowledge remains fallible.

That is not to claim that all knowledge is equally unreliable or equally reliable - testing and experience make knowledge more reliable.

At some point in our enquiries we may decide that it is more sensible to act according to our best knowledge as if it were true than to remain sceptical and not to act on it

These are the main tenets of pragmatism (Pierce, James, Dewey. Rorty and Putnam).

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So would you say that the only thing deserving of the term “knowledge” is infallible or certain knowledge? Is that what you meant by “truly know”?

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Post 2

I think my last post was a bit to long. I’ll try to keep the posts shorter.

The reason I draw on later Wittgenstein is his attention to how words function in everyday life. To understand what we mean by knowledge, we need to look at how we use the word know.

For e.g., someone might say, I know everything will work out, to reassure a friend. In this case, I know expresses confidence without the person having grounds sufficient for knowledge.

Compare that with, I know the train is scheduled to leave at 8:15. I checked the timetable. In this case we can examine the grounds. Did the person read it correctly? Was it the right train and date? There are ways to identify a mistake and correct the claim.

The words I know don’t, in themselves, tell us which use is involved. We have to consider the context and what the person is doing with those words.

My account concerns the use in which someone claims knowledge, where asking How do you know? calls for grounds supporting a claim. Looking at this use gives us a starting point for understanding justification.

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Post 3

I want to say a little more about belief, because we often use the word in a way that is contrasted with knowing.

For e.g., if someone says, I believe the meeting is tomorrow, they may be expressing their uncertainty. If they check the notice and say, Now I know it’s tomorrow, their grounds have changed. They haven’t stopped believing the meeting is tomorrow. Instead they now have a justification for claiming knowledge.

So, we need to distinguish that tentative use of I believe from the broader sense in which believing means believing something is true. It’s this broader sense I’m using in my account of knowledge.

A belief can be true or false, well supported or poorly supported. Knowledge, as I’m using it, includes belief but requires more. The belief must be true and properly justified, with the pertinent understanding. The difference between belief and knowledge doesn’t make them mutually exclusive. It means that believing something isn’t enough to claim that we know it.

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What about your knowledge of your own pain? That would rate as certain, would it not? Even if your pain was psychosomatic in origin, the fact of your feeling it would be certain. Then there’s knowledge of how to find your way home, cook, drive, dress — that’s know-how, procedural knowledge. Then there’s the pain of loss — you know how it feels to lose someone or lose a loved pet. That provides perspectival knowledge. There’s knowing how to play a sport, like tennis or chess, or you’re a well–drilled soldier who knows how to perform drills and maneuvers — that’s participatory knowledge.

Finally there’s most of what is talked about on this forum, ‘I know that P’. That’s propositional knowledge, which provides scope for endless argument.

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“And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived…” — King James Version (KJV). Genesis.

“Know” means: had sex with.

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If you mean that much of what we claim to be knowledge is fallible, I agree. But it doesn’t follow that we never know anything. The possibility of making a mistake isn’t quite the same as actually being mistaken. The reason much of our knowledge is fallible is that much of what we claim to know, including science, is probabilistic. That’s just the nature of inductive reasoning.

For e.g., I can know that my keys are on the counter because I’ve just put them there and can see them. That doesn’t require my eyesight or memory to be infallible. It requires the belief to be true and my grounds to be sufficient.

I agree that we need to recognize when further investigation is unnecessary. But having enough justification to make a reasonable decision isn’t necessarily the same as knowing. I might reasonably bring my umbrella without knowing it will rain.

Part of what I want to examine is how we make these distinctions. If we make absolute certainty a requirement for knowledge, we’ve set a standard that most knowledge claims was never meant to address.

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Yes, you’ve pointed out another use of the word.

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Mmm, I perhaps I mispoke. I meant simply that our knowledge of things is always fallible. By using the phrase “truly know” I might have implied that there was a deeper knowledge we couldn’t access. Some people do believe that but thats not what I meant.

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Who here knows how to ride a bike?

An account of knowing should be able to account for tacit knowledge, knowledge of how to do something. Usually philosophers like to reduce knowing how to do something to knowing that something is the case.

Here’s a hopefully provocative alternative: we can analyse knowing-that in terms of knowing-how; all knowledge as knowledge of how to do something.

If we understand meaning in terms of what we do with words, and it seems we must, something along these lines is inevitable; knowing that the keys are in the kitchen is just knowing how to do such things as retrieving the keys by going to the kitchen or telling someone where the keys are.

The Theaetetus account turns out to be peripheral; justification and belief are grounded in the enacting.

Probably not where Sam wants to go.

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Fair challenge.

Epitectus didn’t agree. For Epitectus pain is an impression. Knowledge relies on judgement. We often make poor judgements about pain. That it has harmed us when infact we may have suffered no real harm.

I’m not going to argue Epitectus’s point here. Its only intended to demonstrate that it is an open question as to whether self knowledge is reliable.