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The Gettier problem
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I've been looking for an explanation of the meaning of knowledge and I've come across this video on Youtube :
PHILOSOPHY Epistemology: Analyzing A
Knowledge #1 (The Gettier Problem)
[HD]
What I can't understand is how can they (Gettier and Russell) say if someone does/doesn't know something even though they don't have a rigorous definition of knowledge?
What does it even mean to know something?
epistemology knowledge
edited 57 mins ago
Eliran H
3,98021133
asked 3 hours ago
Ashraf Benmebarek
212
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Ashraf Benmebarek is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
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up vote
4
down vote
favorite
I've been looking for an explanation of the meaning of knowledge and I've come across this video on Youtube :
PHILOSOPHY Epistemology: Analyzing A
Knowledge #1 (The Gettier Problem)
[HD]
What I can't understand is how can they (Gettier and Russell) say if someone does/doesn't know something even though they don't have a rigorous definition of knowledge?
What does it even mean to know something?
epistemology knowledge
edited 57 mins ago
Eliran H
3,98021133
asked 3 hours ago
Ashraf Benmebarek
212
New contributor
Ashraf Benmebarek is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
First off welcome to philosophy.SE. Who is "they" in your question?
– virmaior
2 hours ago
Thank you @virmaior
– Ashraf Benmebarek
2 hours ago
Its about proposing a technical definition and seeing if it lines up with our intuitions
– Not_Here
1 hour ago
add a comment |Â
up vote
4
down vote
favorite
up vote
4
down vote
favorite
I've been looking for an explanation of the meaning of knowledge and I've come across this video on Youtube :
PHILOSOPHY Epistemology: Analyzing A
Knowledge #1 (The Gettier Problem)
[HD]
What I can't understand is how can they (Gettier and Russell) say if someone does/doesn't know something even though they don't have a rigorous definition of knowledge?
What does it even mean to know something?
epistemology knowledge
edited 57 mins ago
Eliran H
3,98021133
asked 3 hours ago
Ashraf Benmebarek
212
New contributor
Ashraf Benmebarek is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
I've been looking for an explanation of the meaning of knowledge and I've come across this video on Youtube :
PHILOSOPHY Epistemology: Analyzing A
Knowledge #1 (The Gettier Problem)
[HD]
What I can't understand is how can they (Gettier and Russell) say if someone does/doesn't know something even though they don't have a rigorous definition of knowledge?
What does it even mean to know something?
epistemology knowledge
epistemology knowledge
edited 57 mins ago
Eliran H
3,98021133
asked 3 hours ago
Ashraf Benmebarek
212
New contributor
Ashraf Benmebarek is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
edited 57 mins ago
Eliran H
3,98021133
asked 3 hours ago
Ashraf Benmebarek
212
New contributor
Ashraf Benmebarek is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
edited 57 mins ago
Eliran H
3,98021133
edited 57 mins ago
Eliran H
3,98021133
edited 57 mins ago
Eliran H
3,98021133
3,98021133
asked 3 hours ago
Ashraf Benmebarek
212
New contributor
Ashraf Benmebarek is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
asked 3 hours ago
Ashraf Benmebarek
212
asked 3 hours ago
Ashraf Benmebarek
212
212
New contributor
Ashraf Benmebarek is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
New contributor
Ashraf Benmebarek is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
Ashraf Benmebarek is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
First off welcome to philosophy.SE. Who is "they" in your question?
– virmaior
2 hours ago
Thank you @virmaior
– Ashraf Benmebarek
2 hours ago
Its about proposing a technical definition and seeing if it lines up with our intuitions
– Not_Here
1 hour ago
add a comment |Â
First off welcome to philosophy.SE. Who is "they" in your question?
– virmaior
2 hours ago
Thank you @virmaior
– Ashraf Benmebarek
2 hours ago
Its about proposing a technical definition and seeing if it lines up with our intuitions
– Not_Here
1 hour ago
First off welcome to philosophy.SE. Who is "they" in your question?
– virmaior
2 hours ago
First off welcome to philosophy.SE. Who is "they" in your question?
– virmaior
2 hours ago
Thank you @virmaior
– Ashraf Benmebarek
2 hours ago
Thank you @virmaior
– Ashraf Benmebarek
2 hours ago
Its about proposing a technical definition and seeing if it lines up with our intuitions
– Not_Here
1 hour ago
Its about proposing a technical definition and seeing if it lines up with our intuitions
– Not_Here
1 hour ago
add a comment |Â
2 Answers
2
active
oldest
votes
up vote
1
down vote
The basic concept of "knowledge" is admittedly vague in contemporary philosophy; but it goes back to a much more crisp classical distinction between "opinion" (doxa) and "knowledge" (episteme). The basic idea was that there are lots of things you might think are true, like "Socrates is a coward" that you've heard from other people, or guessed based on trivial evidence, or that come down matters of interpretation, where (a) different people, and especially different groups of people, consistently disagree, proving (b) most people's opinions can't be right (because they are incompatible) and perhaps no one's are, as demonstrated by the fact that (c) insofar as we ever get a reality-check, these opinions frequently turn out to be false.
The contrast was supposed to be with knowledge-types like geometry, where you start from indisputable premises and move on to deduce equally-indisputable conclusions from them.
That's the starting point. But since Plato people have been asking the exact question you have: is it possible to say "I know X" or even to say "He doesn't know X, that's just his opinion" if you can't explain what knowledge is - and not just in the negative sense (i.e., explaining what mere opinion is) or an ostensive sense ("It's like geometry") but by defining it?
One (minimalist) answer to this is that knowledge is a belief that you have reasons to have (i.e. it's not a totally arbitrary opinion) and is also true (i.e. it's not an error). This answer seems plausible because it fits with the way we use the concept (or you could say: with our intuitions about it, with what we want to be able to do with it) but it's not a perfect fit. When someone like Gettier attacks justified-true-belief, he doesn't need to provide an alternative because he is criticizing it on the same terrain that its advocates defend it. You might as well say to them: "You say that knowledge is justified true belief, but how can we evaluate this claim before you first define knowledge, so we can see whether your proposal flows from the definition?" Well, that proposal is their definition, and they defend it not based on its fit not with some hypo-definition but its fit with our feelings about the meaning of the word; and that is exactly where Gettier says it fails.
(By the way, it's possible you might be a bit of a nominalist - that is, you don't care what knowledge "really means" so long as we define it and agree on how we're going to use it before we start arguing. That's perfectly fine, but you'll have to learn to translate these realist-framings of philosophical debates into something else: e.g. instead of "Does knowledge = justified true belief?", "Does the set of justified true beliefs have any special epistemological properties that differentiate them from unjustified false beliefs or justified true beliefs?")
answered 2 hours ago
guest1806
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The two questions you have asked interested Plato to the extent that he invented the inquiry of epistemology in order to answer them.
The first question: "How can one know any characteristics of a thing if one does not know what that thing is?" appears right at the start of Meno when Meno nearly accosts Socrates, demanding to know how virtue is acquired by men.
Socrates chides Meno for presuming to know what virtue itself is, claiming that he, himself, has no clear idea and so cannot answer how it is acquired. This astonishes Meno, who chides Socrates for ignorance on a matter of basic gentlemanly knowledge.
But Socrates drives his point home by asking if anyone could know whether Meno were rich or good looking without knowing who Meno, in fact, is. Meno admits that a person lacking acquaintance with him could not know such characteristics as whether he were rich or handsome.
Socrates seems to prove to Meno that knowledge of a thing is necessary for knowledge of the characteristics of that thing. So, Socrates would echo your question, "How can we make claims about knowing things when we do not know precisely what knowledge even is?"
To ameliorate that difficulty, Socrates suggests that he and Meno search together for knowledge of virtue in order to determine how it is acquired by men.
A definition of virtue is more elusive than expected and results in a separate inquiry into the distinction between true opinion and knowledge. Socrates claims that when true opinion is based on causal reasoning, it is knowledge. This seems to be the origin of the justified-true-belief definition of knowledge.
In his Theaetetus, however, Plato has Socrates explore the JTB definition in great detail, eventually rejecting it with what I consider the presentation of a Gettier case.
So, Plato seems to have had similar questions to the ones you pose here, and seems to have struggled to more than one answer to them in the case of "What is knowledge?"
Your first question: "How can we make claims about knowledge when we do not know what knowledge is?" seems to highlight our ability to intuit the nature of a thing without a fully articulated definition of it. We intuit that Gettier cases are not knowledge from some internal conviction we have of what real knowledge is. Neither Plato nor Gettier completely accounts for this.
Your second question: "What does it mean to know something?" seems to be an ongoing one. Some additional criterion seems to be required to augment JTB, or some refinement of what is meant by justification.
Karl Popper argues that knowledge is not a belief at all, but an object in the world. We do not seem, however, to have reached the end of epistemology, so apparently, Sir Karl has not definitively solved the problem, as he claims.
answered 2 hours ago
Charles Gray
312
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Charles Gray is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
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2 Answers
2
active
oldest
votes
2 Answers
2
active
oldest
votes
active
oldest
votes
active
oldest
votes
up vote
1
down vote
The basic concept of "knowledge" is admittedly vague in contemporary philosophy; but it goes back to a much more crisp classical distinction between "opinion" (doxa) and "knowledge" (episteme). The basic idea was that there are lots of things you might think are true, like "Socrates is a coward" that you've heard from other people, or guessed based on trivial evidence, or that come down matters of interpretation, where (a) different people, and especially different groups of people, consistently disagree, proving (b) most people's opinions can't be right (because they are incompatible) and perhaps no one's are, as demonstrated by the fact that (c) insofar as we ever get a reality-check, these opinions frequently turn out to be false.
The contrast was supposed to be with knowledge-types like geometry, where you start from indisputable premises and move on to deduce equally-indisputable conclusions from them.
That's the starting point. But since Plato people have been asking the exact question you have: is it possible to say "I know X" or even to say "He doesn't know X, that's just his opinion" if you can't explain what knowledge is - and not just in the negative sense (i.e., explaining what mere opinion is) or an ostensive sense ("It's like geometry") but by defining it?
One (minimalist) answer to this is that knowledge is a belief that you have reasons to have (i.e. it's not a totally arbitrary opinion) and is also true (i.e. it's not an error). This answer seems plausible because it fits with the way we use the concept (or you could say: with our intuitions about it, with what we want to be able to do with it) but it's not a perfect fit. When someone like Gettier attacks justified-true-belief, he doesn't need to provide an alternative because he is criticizing it on the same terrain that its advocates defend it. You might as well say to them: "You say that knowledge is justified true belief, but how can we evaluate this claim before you first define knowledge, so we can see whether your proposal flows from the definition?" Well, that proposal is their definition, and they defend it not based on its fit not with some hypo-definition but its fit with our feelings about the meaning of the word; and that is exactly where Gettier says it fails.
(By the way, it's possible you might be a bit of a nominalist - that is, you don't care what knowledge "really means" so long as we define it and agree on how we're going to use it before we start arguing. That's perfectly fine, but you'll have to learn to translate these realist-framings of philosophical debates into something else: e.g. instead of "Does knowledge = justified true belief?", "Does the set of justified true beliefs have any special epistemological properties that differentiate them from unjustified false beliefs or justified true beliefs?")
answered 2 hours ago
guest1806
3516
add a comment |Â
up vote
1
down vote
The basic concept of "knowledge" is admittedly vague in contemporary philosophy; but it goes back to a much more crisp classical distinction between "opinion" (doxa) and "knowledge" (episteme). The basic idea was that there are lots of things you might think are true, like "Socrates is a coward" that you've heard from other people, or guessed based on trivial evidence, or that come down matters of interpretation, where (a) different people, and especially different groups of people, consistently disagree, proving (b) most people's opinions can't be right (because they are incompatible) and perhaps no one's are, as demonstrated by the fact that (c) insofar as we ever get a reality-check, these opinions frequently turn out to be false.
The contrast was supposed to be with knowledge-types like geometry, where you start from indisputable premises and move on to deduce equally-indisputable conclusions from them.
That's the starting point. But since Plato people have been asking the exact question you have: is it possible to say "I know X" or even to say "He doesn't know X, that's just his opinion" if you can't explain what knowledge is - and not just in the negative sense (i.e., explaining what mere opinion is) or an ostensive sense ("It's like geometry") but by defining it?
One (minimalist) answer to this is that knowledge is a belief that you have reasons to have (i.e. it's not a totally arbitrary opinion) and is also true (i.e. it's not an error). This answer seems plausible because it fits with the way we use the concept (or you could say: with our intuitions about it, with what we want to be able to do with it) but it's not a perfect fit. When someone like Gettier attacks justified-true-belief, he doesn't need to provide an alternative because he is criticizing it on the same terrain that its advocates defend it. You might as well say to them: "You say that knowledge is justified true belief, but how can we evaluate this claim before you first define knowledge, so we can see whether your proposal flows from the definition?" Well, that proposal is their definition, and they defend it not based on its fit not with some hypo-definition but its fit with our feelings about the meaning of the word; and that is exactly where Gettier says it fails.
(By the way, it's possible you might be a bit of a nominalist - that is, you don't care what knowledge "really means" so long as we define it and agree on how we're going to use it before we start arguing. That's perfectly fine, but you'll have to learn to translate these realist-framings of philosophical debates into something else: e.g. instead of "Does knowledge = justified true belief?", "Does the set of justified true beliefs have any special epistemological properties that differentiate them from unjustified false beliefs or justified true beliefs?")
answered 2 hours ago
guest1806
3516
add a comment |Â
up vote
1
down vote
up vote
1
down vote
The basic concept of "knowledge" is admittedly vague in contemporary philosophy; but it goes back to a much more crisp classical distinction between "opinion" (doxa) and "knowledge" (episteme). The basic idea was that there are lots of things you might think are true, like "Socrates is a coward" that you've heard from other people, or guessed based on trivial evidence, or that come down matters of interpretation, where (a) different people, and especially different groups of people, consistently disagree, proving (b) most people's opinions can't be right (because they are incompatible) and perhaps no one's are, as demonstrated by the fact that (c) insofar as we ever get a reality-check, these opinions frequently turn out to be false.
The contrast was supposed to be with knowledge-types like geometry, where you start from indisputable premises and move on to deduce equally-indisputable conclusions from them.
That's the starting point. But since Plato people have been asking the exact question you have: is it possible to say "I know X" or even to say "He doesn't know X, that's just his opinion" if you can't explain what knowledge is - and not just in the negative sense (i.e., explaining what mere opinion is) or an ostensive sense ("It's like geometry") but by defining it?
One (minimalist) answer to this is that knowledge is a belief that you have reasons to have (i.e. it's not a totally arbitrary opinion) and is also true (i.e. it's not an error). This answer seems plausible because it fits with the way we use the concept (or you could say: with our intuitions about it, with what we want to be able to do with it) but it's not a perfect fit. When someone like Gettier attacks justified-true-belief, he doesn't need to provide an alternative because he is criticizing it on the same terrain that its advocates defend it. You might as well say to them: "You say that knowledge is justified true belief, but how can we evaluate this claim before you first define knowledge, so we can see whether your proposal flows from the definition?" Well, that proposal is their definition, and they defend it not based on its fit not with some hypo-definition but its fit with our feelings about the meaning of the word; and that is exactly where Gettier says it fails.
(By the way, it's possible you might be a bit of a nominalist - that is, you don't care what knowledge "really means" so long as we define it and agree on how we're going to use it before we start arguing. That's perfectly fine, but you'll have to learn to translate these realist-framings of philosophical debates into something else: e.g. instead of "Does knowledge = justified true belief?", "Does the set of justified true beliefs have any special epistemological properties that differentiate them from unjustified false beliefs or justified true beliefs?")
answered 2 hours ago
guest1806
3516
The basic concept of "knowledge" is admittedly vague in contemporary philosophy; but it goes back to a much more crisp classical distinction between "opinion" (doxa) and "knowledge" (episteme). The basic idea was that there are lots of things you might think are true, like "Socrates is a coward" that you've heard from other people, or guessed based on trivial evidence, or that come down matters of interpretation, where (a) different people, and especially different groups of people, consistently disagree, proving (b) most people's opinions can't be right (because they are incompatible) and perhaps no one's are, as demonstrated by the fact that (c) insofar as we ever get a reality-check, these opinions frequently turn out to be false.
The contrast was supposed to be with knowledge-types like geometry, where you start from indisputable premises and move on to deduce equally-indisputable conclusions from them.
That's the starting point. But since Plato people have been asking the exact question you have: is it possible to say "I know X" or even to say "He doesn't know X, that's just his opinion" if you can't explain what knowledge is - and not just in the negative sense (i.e., explaining what mere opinion is) or an ostensive sense ("It's like geometry") but by defining it?
One (minimalist) answer to this is that knowledge is a belief that you have reasons to have (i.e. it's not a totally arbitrary opinion) and is also true (i.e. it's not an error). This answer seems plausible because it fits with the way we use the concept (or you could say: with our intuitions about it, with what we want to be able to do with it) but it's not a perfect fit. When someone like Gettier attacks justified-true-belief, he doesn't need to provide an alternative because he is criticizing it on the same terrain that its advocates defend it. You might as well say to them: "You say that knowledge is justified true belief, but how can we evaluate this claim before you first define knowledge, so we can see whether your proposal flows from the definition?" Well, that proposal is their definition, and they defend it not based on its fit not with some hypo-definition but its fit with our feelings about the meaning of the word; and that is exactly where Gettier says it fails.
(By the way, it's possible you might be a bit of a nominalist - that is, you don't care what knowledge "really means" so long as we define it and agree on how we're going to use it before we start arguing. That's perfectly fine, but you'll have to learn to translate these realist-framings of philosophical debates into something else: e.g. instead of "Does knowledge = justified true belief?", "Does the set of justified true beliefs have any special epistemological properties that differentiate them from unjustified false beliefs or justified true beliefs?")
answered 2 hours ago
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answered 2 hours ago
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answered 2 hours ago
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answered 2 hours ago
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3516
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The two questions you have asked interested Plato to the extent that he invented the inquiry of epistemology in order to answer them.
The first question: "How can one know any characteristics of a thing if one does not know what that thing is?" appears right at the start of Meno when Meno nearly accosts Socrates, demanding to know how virtue is acquired by men.
Socrates chides Meno for presuming to know what virtue itself is, claiming that he, himself, has no clear idea and so cannot answer how it is acquired. This astonishes Meno, who chides Socrates for ignorance on a matter of basic gentlemanly knowledge.
But Socrates drives his point home by asking if anyone could know whether Meno were rich or good looking without knowing who Meno, in fact, is. Meno admits that a person lacking acquaintance with him could not know such characteristics as whether he were rich or handsome.
Socrates seems to prove to Meno that knowledge of a thing is necessary for knowledge of the characteristics of that thing. So, Socrates would echo your question, "How can we make claims about knowing things when we do not know precisely what knowledge even is?"
To ameliorate that difficulty, Socrates suggests that he and Meno search together for knowledge of virtue in order to determine how it is acquired by men.
A definition of virtue is more elusive than expected and results in a separate inquiry into the distinction between true opinion and knowledge. Socrates claims that when true opinion is based on causal reasoning, it is knowledge. This seems to be the origin of the justified-true-belief definition of knowledge.
In his Theaetetus, however, Plato has Socrates explore the JTB definition in great detail, eventually rejecting it with what I consider the presentation of a Gettier case.
So, Plato seems to have had similar questions to the ones you pose here, and seems to have struggled to more than one answer to them in the case of "What is knowledge?"
Your first question: "How can we make claims about knowledge when we do not know what knowledge is?" seems to highlight our ability to intuit the nature of a thing without a fully articulated definition of it. We intuit that Gettier cases are not knowledge from some internal conviction we have of what real knowledge is. Neither Plato nor Gettier completely accounts for this.
Your second question: "What does it mean to know something?" seems to be an ongoing one. Some additional criterion seems to be required to augment JTB, or some refinement of what is meant by justification.
Karl Popper argues that knowledge is not a belief at all, but an object in the world. We do not seem, however, to have reached the end of epistemology, so apparently, Sir Karl has not definitively solved the problem, as he claims.
answered 2 hours ago
Charles Gray
312
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Charles Gray is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
add a comment |Â
up vote
0
down vote
The two questions you have asked interested Plato to the extent that he invented the inquiry of epistemology in order to answer them.
The first question: "How can one know any characteristics of a thing if one does not know what that thing is?" appears right at the start of Meno when Meno nearly accosts Socrates, demanding to know how virtue is acquired by men.
Socrates chides Meno for presuming to know what virtue itself is, claiming that he, himself, has no clear idea and so cannot answer how it is acquired. This astonishes Meno, who chides Socrates for ignorance on a matter of basic gentlemanly knowledge.
But Socrates drives his point home by asking if anyone could know whether Meno were rich or good looking without knowing who Meno, in fact, is. Meno admits that a person lacking acquaintance with him could not know such characteristics as whether he were rich or handsome.
Socrates seems to prove to Meno that knowledge of a thing is necessary for knowledge of the characteristics of that thing. So, Socrates would echo your question, "How can we make claims about knowing things when we do not know precisely what knowledge even is?"
To ameliorate that difficulty, Socrates suggests that he and Meno search together for knowledge of virtue in order to determine how it is acquired by men.
A definition of virtue is more elusive than expected and results in a separate inquiry into the distinction between true opinion and knowledge. Socrates claims that when true opinion is based on causal reasoning, it is knowledge. This seems to be the origin of the justified-true-belief definition of knowledge.
In his Theaetetus, however, Plato has Socrates explore the JTB definition in great detail, eventually rejecting it with what I consider the presentation of a Gettier case.
So, Plato seems to have had similar questions to the ones you pose here, and seems to have struggled to more than one answer to them in the case of "What is knowledge?"
Your first question: "How can we make claims about knowledge when we do not know what knowledge is?" seems to highlight our ability to intuit the nature of a thing without a fully articulated definition of it. We intuit that Gettier cases are not knowledge from some internal conviction we have of what real knowledge is. Neither Plato nor Gettier completely accounts for this.
Your second question: "What does it mean to know something?" seems to be an ongoing one. Some additional criterion seems to be required to augment JTB, or some refinement of what is meant by justification.
Karl Popper argues that knowledge is not a belief at all, but an object in the world. We do not seem, however, to have reached the end of epistemology, so apparently, Sir Karl has not definitively solved the problem, as he claims.
answered 2 hours ago
Charles Gray
312
New contributor
Charles Gray is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
add a comment |Â
up vote
0
down vote
up vote
0
down vote
The two questions you have asked interested Plato to the extent that he invented the inquiry of epistemology in order to answer them.
The first question: "How can one know any characteristics of a thing if one does not know what that thing is?" appears right at the start of Meno when Meno nearly accosts Socrates, demanding to know how virtue is acquired by men.
Socrates chides Meno for presuming to know what virtue itself is, claiming that he, himself, has no clear idea and so cannot answer how it is acquired. This astonishes Meno, who chides Socrates for ignorance on a matter of basic gentlemanly knowledge.
But Socrates drives his point home by asking if anyone could know whether Meno were rich or good looking without knowing who Meno, in fact, is. Meno admits that a person lacking acquaintance with him could not know such characteristics as whether he were rich or handsome.
Socrates seems to prove to Meno that knowledge of a thing is necessary for knowledge of the characteristics of that thing. So, Socrates would echo your question, "How can we make claims about knowing things when we do not know precisely what knowledge even is?"
To ameliorate that difficulty, Socrates suggests that he and Meno search together for knowledge of virtue in order to determine how it is acquired by men.
A definition of virtue is more elusive than expected and results in a separate inquiry into the distinction between true opinion and knowledge. Socrates claims that when true opinion is based on causal reasoning, it is knowledge. This seems to be the origin of the justified-true-belief definition of knowledge.
In his Theaetetus, however, Plato has Socrates explore the JTB definition in great detail, eventually rejecting it with what I consider the presentation of a Gettier case.
So, Plato seems to have had similar questions to the ones you pose here, and seems to have struggled to more than one answer to them in the case of "What is knowledge?"
Your first question: "How can we make claims about knowledge when we do not know what knowledge is?" seems to highlight our ability to intuit the nature of a thing without a fully articulated definition of it. We intuit that Gettier cases are not knowledge from some internal conviction we have of what real knowledge is. Neither Plato nor Gettier completely accounts for this.
Your second question: "What does it mean to know something?" seems to be an ongoing one. Some additional criterion seems to be required to augment JTB, or some refinement of what is meant by justification.
Karl Popper argues that knowledge is not a belief at all, but an object in the world. We do not seem, however, to have reached the end of epistemology, so apparently, Sir Karl has not definitively solved the problem, as he claims.
answered 2 hours ago
Charles Gray
312
New contributor
Charles Gray is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
The two questions you have asked interested Plato to the extent that he invented the inquiry of epistemology in order to answer them.
The first question: "How can one know any characteristics of a thing if one does not know what that thing is?" appears right at the start of Meno when Meno nearly accosts Socrates, demanding to know how virtue is acquired by men.
Socrates chides Meno for presuming to know what virtue itself is, claiming that he, himself, has no clear idea and so cannot answer how it is acquired. This astonishes Meno, who chides Socrates for ignorance on a matter of basic gentlemanly knowledge.
But Socrates drives his point home by asking if anyone could know whether Meno were rich or good looking without knowing who Meno, in fact, is. Meno admits that a person lacking acquaintance with him could not know such characteristics as whether he were rich or handsome.
Socrates seems to prove to Meno that knowledge of a thing is necessary for knowledge of the characteristics of that thing. So, Socrates would echo your question, "How can we make claims about knowing things when we do not know precisely what knowledge even is?"
To ameliorate that difficulty, Socrates suggests that he and Meno search together for knowledge of virtue in order to determine how it is acquired by men.
A definition of virtue is more elusive than expected and results in a separate inquiry into the distinction between true opinion and knowledge. Socrates claims that when true opinion is based on causal reasoning, it is knowledge. This seems to be the origin of the justified-true-belief definition of knowledge.
In his Theaetetus, however, Plato has Socrates explore the JTB definition in great detail, eventually rejecting it with what I consider the presentation of a Gettier case.
So, Plato seems to have had similar questions to the ones you pose here, and seems to have struggled to more than one answer to them in the case of "What is knowledge?"
Your first question: "How can we make claims about knowledge when we do not know what knowledge is?" seems to highlight our ability to intuit the nature of a thing without a fully articulated definition of it. We intuit that Gettier cases are not knowledge from some internal conviction we have of what real knowledge is. Neither Plato nor Gettier completely accounts for this.
Your second question: "What does it mean to know something?" seems to be an ongoing one. Some additional criterion seems to be required to augment JTB, or some refinement of what is meant by justification.
Karl Popper argues that knowledge is not a belief at all, but an object in the world. We do not seem, however, to have reached the end of epistemology, so apparently, Sir Karl has not definitively solved the problem, as he claims.
answered 2 hours ago
Charles Gray
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answered 2 hours ago
Charles Gray
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answered 2 hours ago
Charles Gray
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answered 2 hours ago
Charles Gray
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Charles Gray is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
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Ashraf Benmebarek is a new contributor. Be nice, and check out our Code of Conduct.
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First off welcome to philosophy.SE. Who is "they" in your question?
– virmaior
2 hours ago
Thank you @virmaior
– Ashraf Benmebarek
2 hours ago
Its about proposing a technical definition and seeing if it lines up with our intuitions
– Not_Here
1 hour ago