Epistemology is the branch of Philosophy that deals with the nature and construction of Knowledge. Theories of Knowledge, which comprise the field of epistemology, attempt to uncover the meaning of this term that we use almost in an offhand manner in day to day conversations. “I knew you were going to say that!” is the common response to an expected answer. Of course we all know that the Sun will rise tomorrow. The question really is what does it mean to know something? And what is knowledge?
Knowledge as Justified True Belief (JTB)
The definition of Knowledge that has survived most successfully in my opinion is that of Knowledge as Justified True Belief. There are three conditions for anything then to classify as knowledge. Firstly, I must believe it. Secondly it must be true. Lastly, I must be able to justify my belief. There are major problems with this definition from my perspective. Deciding on whether something is true or not attains a high degree of subjectivity in certain regions of knowledge construction and getting beyond the belief stage is difficult. An example would be deciding whether there is too much salt in a dish or a greenish-blue colour is really green or blue. You would need to establish stringent and specific standards so as to objectively define a truth, such as concentration of salt and the wavelength of light reflected in the above two cases. These axiomatic standards are arbitrary for the most part and would only serve to complicate our body of knowledge if we set out to define standards in order to be able to answer every subjective question.
The definition of Knowledge that has survived most successfully in my opinion is that of Knowledge as Justified True Belief. There are three conditions for anything then to classify as knowledge. Firstly, I must believe it. Secondly it must be true. Lastly, I must be able to justify my belief. There are major problems with this definition from my perspective. Deciding on whether something is true or not attains a high degree of subjectivity in certain regions of knowledge construction and getting beyond the belief stage is difficult. An example would be deciding whether there is too much salt in a dish or a greenish-blue colour is really green or blue. You would need to establish stringent and specific standards so as to objectively define a truth, such as concentration of salt and the wavelength of light reflected in the above two cases. These axiomatic standards are arbitrary for the most part and would only serve to complicate our body of knowledge if we set out to define standards in order to be able to answer every subjective question.
The second major problem with knowledge as JTB is deciding on what justification counts as sufficient. Justification in society very often comes in a historical context – this is how it has been happening over years, so this is how it will happen now/tomorrow. This mode of argumentation is not airtight. One black swan and the claim that all swans are white falls flat. Inductive justifications are not black and white, but shades of grey – probabilistic. Another famous justification – because he said so. Even if he has college degrees and experience to back his claim, he can still be wrong. It is a fallacious appeal to authority (despite its prevalence in society). So what degree (pun unintended) of justification counts as enough? Another arbitrary standard to answer the question?
Lets say we define our standards and now adopt the definition of knowledge as JTB. The problem is that it still fails as an airtight classification of knowledge/Knowledge (a capital K denotes absolute Knowledge and a lowercase k every other kind). How? Two words – Gettier Problem.
A Defintion of Knowledge?
A few of us over millenia have tried to define knowledge. It is possibly an indication of the difficulty of this endeavour that most of us presume to know what it is. If Socrates were alive and went on a journey across the world asking every person for a workable definition, I can say with reasonable conviction that he would find not one answer he could not decimate. Given that, I don't suppose to be able to come up with a satisfactory definition. In fact, I do not think that one definition of knowledge is possible. Knowledge is like ice cream, and there's more than one flavour of that around; in fact, I counted 53 flavours in Ben and Jerry's ice cream tub selection alone. Why do I say that? Substantiation for that claim in Part II after looking at the nature of knowledge...
(Then again I can I really claim to know there are 53 flavours there? Not really. I believe there are 53 commercially available flavours of Ben and Jerry's ice cream tubs because that's what I counted on the website - only as accurate as my math and their representation.)
No comments:
Post a Comment