Knowledge as Understood True Belief
Knowledge can't be knowledge when it lacks understanding. Justification is not sufficient.
Knowledge as "Justified True Belief" has many problems including:
- Knowledge by coincidence/assumption
- Contingent knowledge (knowledge that we don’t know that we know)
- Knowledge without understanding (Knowledge via repetition)
- Uncertain use of “justification”
Examples and Illustrations
Mathematics and memorization:
Under K=JTB:
If you were taught to memorize Planck's constant: "6.62607004 × 10-34 m2 kg / s" by a professor of physics, you would be justified in believing that it's true. But do you have any idea what it means? And if not, do you really know that 6.62607004 × 10-34 m2 kg / s?
With K=UTB (Understood True Belief) you would have to understand the mathematics/physics used in this equation in order to claim knowledge.
Coincidental Knowledge:
Consider the famous Gettier example:
Smith has applied for a job, but, it is claimed, has a justified belief that "Jones will get the job". He also has a justified belief that "Jones has 10 coins in his pocket." Smith therefore (justifiably) concludes (by the rule of the transitivity of identity) that "the man who will get the job has 10 coins in his pocket."
“In fact, Jones does not get the job. Instead, Smith does. However, as it happens, Smith (unknowingly and by sheer chance) also had 10 coins in his pocket. So his belief that "the man who will get the job has 10 coins in his pocket" was justified and true. But it does not appear to be knowledge.”
With K=JTB it could and has been said that Smith has knowledge. He’s justified in his belief and coincidentally correct. However can it be said that has understands why the truth is true? If he does, then he has knowledge. If he doesn’t then he does not.
The Gettier case is also flawed, in my opinion, because it asserts knowledge about the future. There is no point in time where the statement “Jones will get the job” is true. This is because by the time Jones get’s the job it would be meaningless to say “Jones will get the job” and that statement during that time will have no truth value. The sentences “Jones got the job” and “I believe Jones will get the job” both have truth values and can’t very well be rephrased as Gettier cases.
Knowledge via authority:
Consider someone who’s confronted by Pythagoras and Anaximander around 530 BC. Pythagoras tells this person the earth is round, Anaximander says it’s flat. The person ultimately sides with Pythagoras although he felt both sides seemed almost equally as likely. Does this person have knowledge?
K=UTB would say “no.” Because he doesn’t understand why the Earth is flat, he just believes something an authoritative figure claimed, even though he could have just as easily believed Anaximander.
Knowledge via assumption:
Consider a man named John who plans on attending a basketball game with his friend. He tells his friend that everyone on both teams will be wearing Nikes. He knows that based off statistics this is most likely the case, and so is entirely justified in his belief.
However at the last second he has a family emergency and has to rush back home. A basketball player, Kobe, however planned on wearing a pair of Reeboks to honor his late grandfather (who also wore Reeboks) but accidently left them at his house (mansion). He borrowed a pair of his teammates Nikes instead.
Although John’s assumption ended up being right and he was justified in believing it, it hardly seems like anything predictive or assumptive can be considered knowledge unless it's grounded in a priori necessity.
Hi @stephenhenkel! It's nice to see that there are fellow philosophers on Steemit (I'm new here; wrote my first post yesterday).
The option of making understanding a requirement for knowledge is interesting. Personally, I have considered knowledge and understanding as separate, but that the compound of knowledge plus understanding is a lot more valuable than mere knowledge. You could perhaps even say that mere knowledge is overrated and what we really should be aiming for is understanding. As I wrote in my first post, what I find interesting is how the world works. What I mean is understanding and not just knowing a bunch of brute facts without understanding how they are related to each other - how things hang together.
I must admit that the Gettier problem is not something that I lie awake over at night. It just doesn't worry me as long as it is fruitful to continue to think of knowledge as justified, true, belief.
I knew someone who believed the same thing, or rather that there might be two types of knowledge-strong/soft. I'm much more comfortable saying there's knowledge (with requisite understanding) and true opinions.
If I believe someone upstairs is having sex because I hear a bed post thumping and it turns out I'm right, do I really know they're having sex, or was my opinion/guess coincidentally true? For me, I wouldn't know unless I had direct evidence of my belief--thus garnishing an understanding of that thought token.
There definitely is something to the distinction between knowledge and merely true opinion, but perhaps what is lacking in your example is not understanding but a sufficiently strong justification. You do have some justification for your belief that someone upstairs is having sex, but maybe this justification is not strong enough for your belief to be knowledge. So, perhaps knowledge could be understood as strongly justified, true, belief.
Is it really possible to understand a single belief in isolation? Maybe I'm mistaken, but I tend to think of understanding as involving many beliefs and pertaining to their interrelations.
I'm glad you ask! Understanding is where your justification for you belief is the thing that makes the belief true.
I don't like using "strong" and "weak" justification because "Knowledge is strongly justified truth" seems a bit odd. Understanding takes care of this by attaching a causal connection between the justification and the belief.
I'm not sure I understand how the justification for a belief can be what makes it true. In any case, that is not what I mean by "understanding".
What I have in mind is that "strong"/"weak" operates on the justification, and this is nothing more than the strength of an argument or piece of evidence. Some arguments (and pieces of evidence) are stronger than others, and when you have a strong argument (evidence) for your belief, and that belief is also true, then you have knowledge. At least, that's how I understand the "traditional" view of knowledge.
Let's take a basic example, 2+2=4.
If you memorize the sentence "two plus two equals four" but have no idea what makes it true (despite justifiably believing it via authority), I'd be hesitant to call it knowledge.
To have understanding, you're justification for believing 2+2=4 needs to be the thing that makes it true, i.e. that 2 and 4 are numbers, and that + is a mathematical operator for addition, etc. etc.
But if you just memorize the sentence "two plus two equals four" and you don't understand what it means, then do you really believe it? I agree that this is not knowledge, because belief is missing.
Because 2+2=4 is something that you can realise by reason alone, it is hard to see how you can fail to believe it without understanding it and being justified in the belief.
But isn't it otherwise with empirical knowledge?