Re: Russell diagnosis.

On Thu, 13 Nov 2008 18:41:44 -0800 (PST), Bill Taylor
<w.taylor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> said:
Chris Menzel <cmen...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Daryl McCullough <stevendaryl3...@xxxxxxxxx> said:

Kid: I know what's wrong: the warning light doesn't work.

Cute. And that's *very* close to the sig-line I had from "Dr
Strangelove"
"The auto-destruct mechanism blew itself up!"

Thus, he truly believed there was something wrong with the car and
was justified in so believing, since, other things being equal,
warning lights are usually reliable indicators of trouble. So the
traditional definition of knowledge -- justified true belief -- seems
to be satisfied.

I don't think the "traditional" definition is too troubled by this.

Well, it is if it is supposed to provide an intuitively adequate account
of knowledge, i.e., one whose conditions for knowledge are satisfied,
for an agent S and proposition P, if and only if it is intuitively the
case that S knows P. In the case in question, the traditional
conditions for knowledge seem to be satisfied but, intuitively, it is
not the case that the guy knows the car is broken.

On one level, what you say about the reliability of indicator lights
is correct, and so he is "justified".

But on another level, he didn't know this particular light was on the
blink (HAH!), so was unjustified.

Right, one of the main upshots of so-called Gettier cases like this was
to refocus work in epistemology on the nature of justification, as an
obvious path to a solution here is to come up with a reasonable
definition of justification on which the warning light did *not* in fact
provide adequate justification for the true belief of the guy in the
story to count as knowledge.

There will be debate about which takes precedence in the traditional
definition, but your comment that...

intuitively, he didn't really *know*

...suggests that you take the latter case to be more appropriate.
I imagine that would also be the more popular view.

So the traditional definition of knowledge appears to be flawed.

I hold that it IS flawed, but not for your example's reason.
In fact, IMHO, it is "not even wrong". That traditional definition
is a bad category mistake, (or as I prefer to name it, context error).

There is, IMHO, almost no connection between knowledge and belief.
One is in Popper's 3rd world, and the other in his 2nd.

However, to elaborate on this fully, would need a whole paper,
or perhaps even a conference!

There's been more than a few of both on this topic!

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: David Grossmann/David Mooney
    ... :> It says that knowledge is a sum of three things: a belief, reason ... :> Justification exists for one and not the other. ... :> of a truth, and my knowledge that my justified belief is knowledge. ... Tower of Babel -- side-issues compared to the core of religion anyway ...
    (soc.culture.jewish.moderated)
  • Re: Hmm - heres a topic to spark off a nice social commentary thread..
    ... from mine; or is something like condition satisfied by utilitarian assumptions on your part; or is the reason that you don't object to similar challenges coming your way something quite different, such as a matter of taste? ... Question for Gray--are you writing on the assumption that at some point I asked Alma to justify her feelings? ... Technically I suppose you are telling Brian that you were challenging the justification of Alma's feelings, rather than making that challenge directly to her. ... "But secondly, there is the sort of feeling that you were expressing, namely a moral intuition concerning whether a particular action would be good or ill to undertake. ...
    (rec.arts.sf.composition)
  • Re: OT: Latest deception by Bush/Cheney
    ... There has to be *some* theoretical justification ... whether it is reason or communicative ... believing in an afterlife, I would be living a life of "bad faith" (to crib ... beliefs, however, by an appeal to some claim to know ultimate truth, relying ...
    (rec.music.classical.recordings)
  • Re: Israel Suspends Ties With Vatican
    ... concept A because of justification B. Well, ... Is the existence of God one of them? ... I gave non-religious instances of that -- mathematical postulates ... And for the same reason, ...
    (soc.culture.jewish.moderated)
  • Re: Can any Darwinist in this Forum....
    ... personal reason for wishing evolution not to be ... profession has treated _stasis_ in the fossil record. ... disinchantment with this aspect of evolution. ... readers to infer that this was a justification for your position, ...
    (talk.origins)