Like many words, the term
‘knowledge’ is used in different ways by different people. To some it presents
the idea of being totally sure of something, but what we are totally sure about
changes over time, for example, it would be said that in the Middle Ages people
‘knew’ that the Sun went around Earth, and that they ‘knew’ that diseases were
caused by bad smells, and they ‘knew’ that there were witches who could perform
evil spells. Meanwhile, today we ‘know’ that Earth goes around the Sun, and we
‘know’ that diseases are caused by bacteria and viruses, and we ‘know’ that
witchcraft is not real. When we are using the word ‘know’ in this way it seems that
‘knowledge’ is basically just what is strongly believed or widely believed. Arguably
this is not the best characterisation of knowledge, for surely for something to
be known it has to at the very least be true: you cannot ‘know’ that bad smells
cause diseases when they do not. Someone who has very strong beliefs about
something and feels totally sure can by no means be guaranteed to have
knowledge of what in fact is the case.
According to Wikipedia knowledge is
defined as “(i) expertise, and skills acquired by a person through experience
or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject; (ii)
what is known in a particular field or in total; facts and information; or
(iii) be absolutely certain or sure about something.”[1]
This definition is often stated in Theory of Knowledge essays, and more often
than not it is stated unreflectively and without comment, but it still leaves
much to be desired, for example, it could be said that the people of the Middle
Ages were absolutely certain and sure that the Earth was the centre of the
universe and that the Sun went around the Earth, but now we know this to be
false: their certainty was misguided. And as for the other definitions these do
not give us a precise formulation for when we can say that a person knows
something, and when we can say they do not.
Gilbert Ryle argued that there are two different kinds of
knowledge, and he made an important distinction between “knowing how” and
“knowing that.”[2] The
latter form of knowledge relates to specific facts which can be known such as
“the battle of Hastings was in 1066” and “water is H2O”; such facts
can easily be communicated with language and written down. However, when it
comes to “knowing how” we are not referring to the kinds of knowledge which can
be written down as true or false statements, instead we are talking about
things such as “knowing how to swim” or “knowing how to drive”; these are
skills. You cannot learn how to swim or drive purely from reading a book
describing how these things are done, at best any books on these topics can
only give you rough ideas; a driving manual may well advise you not to break
the speed limit, but it cannot tell you how to correctly operate the clutch in
a traffic jam – that takes first hand practice.
It is this “knowing how” which seems most related to the “expertise and
skills” that Wikipedia refers to.
In many ways it may be argued
that “knowing how” is more relevant to art and ethics than to other more
factual and objective subjects such as mathematics and science. It is the second form of knowing, “knowing
that”, which has received the most attention in epistemology – that is, the
philosophical study of knowledge and how it is acquired. According to the Greek philosopher Plato knowledge is “Justified True
Belief”[3]
(JTB). It is important to analyse each individual part of this definition:
When we say the word ‘belief’ we
often link it closely with religion, and with the idea of faith; faith is seen
as the opposite of knowledge because with faith there is no particular reason
to think that something is true, you are simply trusting. But Plato was using the word in a particular
way: to believe something is simply to think that it is true. The reasons why
you believe it to be true are a separate matter, so you can say “I believe I
own a red car” and “I believe that many Chinese people speak Mandarin” just as
easily as you can say “I believe in Father Christmas” or “I believe the world
is flat.”
Plato’s next condition is that in
order for something to be knowledge it must be true. This means that any false
belief is not knowledge, so the people of the Middle Ages did not ‘know’ that witches
existed and could perform magic matter how sure they were of it, they simply
had a false belief.
Plato’s third condition is that
the belief must be justified. Having a true belief is not by itself enough to
guarantee that you have knowledge. Suppose I were to randomly say “I believe
the Queen is wearing red today.” It may well be that I happen to be correct,
but since this is just a guess we can hardly say that I had any knowledge about
the Queen’s attire. What I need is a good reason to think that she is wearing
red today: a justification. If I had just met the Queen and seen her for
myself, or if I had just seen her live on the television, then it could be said
that I have a good justification for my belief. However, some justifications
are not worthy of being taken seriously, for instance, if I were to say “I
think the Queen is wearing red today because I saw her in a dream last night
and she was wearing red” we can hardly say that this is a good justification
for my belief, so even if I happen to be right it cannot be said that I have
knowledge, all I have is a guess based on flimsy evidence.
There are objections to Plato’s
view that knowledge is Justified True Belief, however, even if we are to accept
JTB as the correct definition for knowledge this still leaves us with two key
questions to answer:
1) What is truth?
2) What makes a good justification?
What is truth?
The
question “what is truth?” may seem like an easy question to answer at first,
but there are actually several different theories as to what makes something
true, such as correspondence to facts, coherence, and pragmatism, and there are
also relativistic notions of truth which hold that the truth can vary and that
truth, like beauty, can be in the eye of the beholder. Whilst a philosopher like Aristotle[4] would
say that the world is a particular way and our words can either correspond to
it or not (i.e. we can either describe it accurately or inaccurately), a
relativist like Protagoras[5] would say that what is true and false
comes down to the way you see the world, or as he puts it “Man is the measure
of all things.” In modern times Michel
Foucault has stated that: “truth is linked in a circular relation with
systems of power which produce and sustain it, and to effects of power which
induces and which extend it.”[6]
What he means by this is that what is true, or at least, what is considered to
be true, is largely down to those in power to decide, particularly since they
control our views with clever usage of language and the media.
What makes a good justification?
The question “what makes a good
justification?” is perhaps the most important in Theory of Knowledge. This is
where our investigation lies, in seeing what kinds of evidence are needed
before we can declare a belief to be definitely true, or at least, probably
true. As you will discover, many thinkers argue that the kinds of evidence
needed varies depending on which Area of Knowledge we are talking about, for
example, that we cannot expect the same forms of argumentation and evidence to
be used in ethical discussions as are used in scientific discussions.
There are many problems to be
faced when confronting the questions of what makes a good justification for a
belief, and one of the most notable problems comes from the philosopher Rene Descartes who asked his readers to
imagine that the whole world was simply an illusion in their minds, like a
dream, created by a malignant demon.[7] If
this indeed were to be the case then surely the result would be that
practically everything you believe is actually a lie, a web of falsehoods, and
therefore, surely you know nothing? This idea was brought to life vividly in
the film The Matrix where we meet
Thomas Anderson; Anderson believes he is living in America at the end of the 20th
century, when in fact he is living in the 22nd century inside a
virtual reality environment created by machines which have enslaved the human
race. Practically everything he believes to be true is in fact a fabrication.
Realistically, how do we know that this isn’t happening to us right now? This
bring us to the possibility that absolutely nothing can be known for certain, a
view which is known as Scepticism. Descartes took the view that whilst science
could not be trusted, because it relies on Perception, knowledge such as
mathematics and logic can be absolutely trusted because it is based on
Reasoning.
There is also this following problem
based on the work of Edmund L. Gettier:
suppose that you hear a police siren, and so you conclude that there is a
police car outside of your house, and suppose that there is indeed a police car
outside. Surely you have a Justified True Belief – you have a true belief and a
good reason to believe it. But now suppose that the police car outside is
actually silent, and that the siren you heard was featured on a TV programme
that your brother was watching in a neighbouring room. Surely, even though you
have a Justified True Belief, you do not have knowledge because it is only a
coincidence that your belief happens to be right?[8]
Many complicated theories have
been drawn up to try to combat this problem from Gettier, such as The Causal
Theory of Knowledge and The Conditional Theory of Knowledge. Let it suffice to
say that knowledge is not straightforward, and what can seem so well justified
and obvious might sometimes turn out to be false. Perhaps we can know nothing
for sure because the truth will always elude us, but surely we can at the least
say that we can distinguish between beliefs that are well judged and justified,
and those which are not? In many ways
this ‘good judgement’ is the true object of Theory of Knowledge: to teach the
skill of knowing when to believe, when not to believe, and when to withhold
judgement and wait for further evidence.
Bibliography / References
[2]
cf. Gilbert Ryle, Knowing How and Knowing
That.
[3] cf.
Plato’s Protagoras dialogue.
[5] cf.
Joshua Mark, Protagoras – Man Is The
Measure of All Things: http://www.suite101.com/content/protagoras-man-is-the-measure-of-all-things-a92771
[6] Michel
Foucault, Truth and Power, quoted on http://toprovenothing.blogspot.co.uk/2008/02/foucault-powerknowledge-truth-and-power.html
[7] cf. Glyn
Hughes, The Condensed Edition of Rene
Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy: http://www.btinternet.com/~glynhughes/squashed/descartes.htm
[8] Edmund L
Gettier, Is Justified True Belief
Knowledge? http://www.ditext.com/gettier/gettier.html
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