Knowledge and JTB

Lecture 6 & 7

■ In this class, our journey of philosophy will begin by looking at some discussions and debates

related to epistemological issues.

● Epistemology, roughly, is the study of knowledge. Epistemology deals with the origin of

knowledge and the method of knowing something.

● Epistemology mainly focuses on the following four questions:

(1) What is knowledge?

(2) Can we know anything at all?
(3) How do we obtain knowledge?
(4) What is the limit of our knowledge?
In our first few lectures we will be concerned with the first question. Later on we will discuss the

second and the third questions.

█ What is knowledge?

● The first thing we need to know before we enter into the main discussion is: what kind of

knowledge we are talking about.

● Consider the following knowledge-claims:

(1) S knows that the earth is round.

(2) S knows [of/about] Mr. Barak Obama.
(3) S knows how to ride a bicycle.

► The kind of knowledge-claim made in (1) is called the Propositional Knowledge. Note that

here the knowledge-claim is made about a belief or judgment or proposition.

█ What is a proposition?

● A proposition or a belief is a linguistic expression that expresses a relation between two

concepts. In the example (1), we see that the expression appears after the “that” clause expresses

a relation between two concepts, namely the concepts of the “earth” and “roundness”.
● It is not the case that all linguistic expressions or sentences are [express] propositions. To
know whether or not a linguistic expression/sentence is [expresses] a proposition, we have a
TEST.

► The test is this: All propositions are either true or false. For example, “The earth is round” is
a sentence which is true. Hence, it is [expresses] a proposition. Again, “The President of
Bangladesh is a female person” is a sentence which is false. Hence, like the former sentence,
this sentence is [expresses] a proposition. But, there are sentences which are neither true nor
false. For example, the sentences “Give me a glass of water”, “Can you pass the salt”, etc. are
sentences which are neither true nor false. These are imperative sentences which are [do not
express] not propositions. These sentences express emotion/desire/request etc.

■ Debate about propositions:

● Some philosophers say that a linguistic expression/sentence like “The earth is round” is a
proposition. To them, a proposition is a specific kind of linguistic expression/sentence. But
there are other philosophers who think that the linguistic expression/sentence like “The earth
is round” is not a proposition but expresses a proposition. To them, it is not the linguistic
expression/sentence but the thought expressed by a specific kind of expression/sentence is
a proposition. Anyway, we can continue our present journey of philosophy without entering
into the deep of this debate.

► Anyway, it may be said that all propositions are sentences [all propositions are expressed by
sentences], but not all sentences are propositions [not all sentences express propositions].

● At any rate, it is clear that the knowledge-claim made in (1) is a claim about a proposition. So,
we call the kind of knowledge-claim made by it a propositional knowledge or, sometimes,
“know-that”.

■ The kind of knowledge-claim made in the sentence (2) does not involve a particular
proposition but an object which is claimed to be known by S. Here, what is claimed is the
following: S has some sort of direct or indirect acquaintance with the object in question,
namely Mr. Barak Obama. This kind of knowledge-claim is an example of knowledge by
acquaintance or object-knowledge.
● It may, however, be argued that one may know Mr. Barak Obama by knowing some
propositions about him, e.g. that he is the present president of USA; that he is a democrat; that
he is the husband of Mitchell, etc. But, we should also note that none of the propositions
mentioned is necessary to know Mr. Barak Obama. One may know Mr. Barak Obama
without knowing that he is the president of USA. For example, one of his childhood friends in
Malaysia may not know that he is now the president of USA, but he, in some way, knows Mr.
Barak Obama. The same is true of any particular proposition about Mr. Barak Obama. So, the
knowledge-claim made in (2) is not about any proposition but about the person/object of
knowledge. We call it knowledge by acquaintance or object-knowledge.

■ The knowledge-claim made in the last sentence, e.g. the sentence (3), is about a certain type of
competence or ability, not about a particular object or a particular proposition. This kind of
knowledge is called competence knowledge or performative knowledge or sometimes
“know-how”.

● It may be said that to know how to ride a bicycle is to know some propositions related to the
matter. But this is not true. Obviously, there are some propositions that are relevant to the
competence of riding bicycle. A physicist may tell you a number of propositions related to how
to ride a bicycle. These propositions may include propositions related to gravity, movements
of whiles, balance, etc. But you may know how to ride a bicycle without knowing any of
these propositions. And the physicist who knows all these propositions may not know
how to ride a bicycle. So, it is clear that competence knowledge or “know-how” is different
from propositional knowledge or “know-that” and knowledge by acquaintance.

■ The kind of knowledge we are concerned here is the Propositional Knowledge.

 Lecture-5

■ Various definitions of knowledge (since Greek period, particularly definitions appeared in

Plato’s Theaetetus)

█ Knowledge equals to perception.

● What is a perception?

► A perception refers to the interpretation of what we receive by our sensory organs. A

perception is the interpretation of sensation(s).

 Problems:

(1) Infants, animals perceive; but they do not have the kind of knowledge we are concerned with.
We are concerned with the sort of rational knowledge, not just the ability of perceiving
and making connection between two events.

(2) A Perception may not come with a belief or judgment or proposition. You may perceive
something without making a belief about it. Sitting in the classroom you perceive many
things but you form judgments only about few of them.

(3) One may perceive something which is not true. You may see (sensation) a piece of rope
and then your brain may interpret it as a snake (perception). In that case, you may make a
knowledge-claim that “I know that there is a snake”, but you actually do not know it as it is
actually false. Moreover, it may be the case that you perceive a snake but you don’t believe
(considering the circumstances) that there is a snake.

★ Lessons we learn from the above:

You know that p, in case

(1) You believe that p.

(2) p is true.
█ Knowledge equals to sincere judgments.

 Problems:

(1) A sincere judgment may be false. You bought a lottery ticket and sincerely believe that you
will win the prize. And, it may be false. But, as we have learned from the lesson discussed
earlier, that you know something only if the relevant proposition/belief/judgment is true. If
the relevant proposition is false, then that proposition cannot be considered as known. There
is no false knowledge.

Of course, sometimes we say that “I knew it, but later on it turned out to be false”. This is a
wrong knowledge-claim. The correct claim should be like this: “I thought I knew it, but later
on it turned out to be false”.

(2) A lucky guess may result a true sincere judgment, but that is not an instance of
knowledge. You bought a lottery ticket and sincerely started believing that it would win the
prize. Suppose it, actually, wins the prize. Still, it can’t be said that: “You knew that the
ticket would win the prize”. It is just a lucky guess, not an instance of knowing something.

(3) You have a standard deck of 52 cards. You pick up one of the cards; I make the judgment
that it is the king of spade. And, suppose, it is actually the king of spade. Here, although the
judgment I have made is true, it is not an instance of knowledge; it’s just another instance of
lucky guess. Again suppose, you pick a card from the standard deck of 52 cards, and I make
the judgment that the card you picked is the king of spade. But, actually it is not the king of
spade. Obviously, it is not an instance of knowledge as it is a false judgment. Now, suppose,
you picked up 51 cards one-by-one. Each time I made the same judgment that the card you
picked up was the king of spade. And each time my judgment turned out to be false. So, none
of these was an instance of knowledge. Now, this is the 52nd card you pick. I start thinking
about my previous failures. I consider that since the deck of cards is a standard deck
containing 52 cards, it must contain one king of spade; but the king of spade has not been
picked yet; this is the last card. Then I make the judgment that the card you picked is the king
of spade. This time I really know that the card you picked up is the king of spade.
► What makes the last example (example of knowing something) different from the ones
discussed earlier (examples that do not constitute genuine knowledge-claim)?

● In the previous examples, I didn’t have any reason in favor of the judgment I made. If you
asked me “Why do you think that it is the king of spade?”, I couldn’t give you an
account/justification/reason as a support to my judgment. But in the last case, I had good
reason/justification/account that supports my judgment. To answer your question, I could say
“see, the deck of card is standard; any standard deck of card contains one king of spade; you
didn’t pick the king of spade in previous 51 turns; so, in your last turn, it had to be the king of
spade”.

● That means that in the last case, I had an account/justification/reason that supported my
judgment.

★ The lesson we learn from the last example:

You know that p, in case:

(1) You have an account/justification/reason for believing that p.

 Now, by joining the lessons we have learned, we can make the following claim:

S knows that p, if and only if:

(1) S believes that p.

(2) p is true.

(3) S is justified for believing that p.

 So, we may define knowledge in the following way:

Knowledge is justified true beliefs.

► This is the JTB concept of knowledge.