Knowledge Grounded on Pure Reasoning

Minds and Machines - MIND MACH, 1997

Every belief has a life that goes from the agent having the belief now, the transmission of the belief to other agents, and the persistence of the belief through time. In this article we propose the idea that the belief can be said to be successful in relation to any of these respects. We will call them, respectively, the first, second, and third person perspective on knowledge and investigate the requisite properties of these three perspectives. We do not base our approach on the notion of truth as is common, or on the notion of justification, which is another basis. Our concern is not with knowledge as corresponding to truth but knowledge as corresponding to stable belief.

Inquiry, 2019

Does knowledge entail belief? This paper argues that the answer depends on how one interprets 'belief'. There are two different notions of belief: belief as such and belief for knowledge. They often differ in their degrees of conviction such that one but not both might be present in a particular case. The core of the paper is dedicated to a defence of this overlooked distinction. The first two sections present the distinction. Section 3 presents two cases which are supposed to back up the claim that there is an important distinction here while section 4 offers some explanations concerning the structure of these cases. Section 5 adds further considerations in support of the core thesis, and section 6 discusses objections. The distinction is important as such but also has interesting implications concerning the much discussed 'entailment thesis' according to which knowledge entails belief. It is argued here that even if knowledge entails belief-for-knowledge, it does not entail belief-as-such. This constitutes an interesting middle position and compromise in the philosophical debate about the entailment thesis. One further implication of this paper is that the discussion about the entailment thesis needs to take degrees of conviction seriously. Still another implication is that epistemic contextualists can deal very well with the relevant phenomena.

Journal of Fundamental and Applied Sciences, 2016

Contemporary philosophy in the west has begun with emphasizing "subjectivism" and the theory of "knowledge". Discussing the nature of knowledge leads inevitably to investigating the nature of "belief". However, it is important to note that knowledge is always something more than mere belief. To demarcate between truthful and untruthful belief we must have certain criteria. In this essay, an analytical approach has been adopted to first present a historical review of the meanings of "knowledge" and then to discuss the three parameters of knowledge (belief, truth, justification) in contemporary epistemology. The main ideas with regard to truthful belief and epistemological justification are investigated within the framework of two approaches: foundationalism and coherentism.

American Philosophical Quarterly

Knowledge is factually grounded belief. This account uses the same ingredients as the traditional analysis—belief, truth, and justification—but posits a different relation between them. While the traditional analysis begins with true belief and improves it by simply adding justification, this account begins with belief, improves it by grounding it, and then improves it further by grounding it in the facts. In other words, for a belief to be knowledge, it’s not enough that it be true and justified; for a belief to be knowledge, it must be justified by the facts. This account solves the Gettier problem. Gettierized beliefs fall short of knowledge because, albeit true and justified, they are not grounded in the facts. This account also elucidates why knowledge attributions are sensitive to epistemic standards. It’s because whether we take a belief to be grounded in the facts is sensitive to epistemic standards.

2007

Some of the few who endorse some such requirement are Fumerton [1995], Bonjour [1998], Wright [2004a]-but not without qualification. 2 For instance Van Cleve [1984], Greco [1999]. 1 This proposition is, at least at the face of it, not equivalent to the proposition (1) and (2) epistemically support (3). The latter proposition is about an epistemic supportrelation, not about a logical relation. But I think that some of the things said in this chapter about L apply to the latter proposition too. But there are very important differences between the two [cf. Cohen, 1998], so that they must be properly treated separately. I discuss similar issues with respect to the proposition about epistemic support in chapter 4. 2 "equivocation" may be understood as designating the fact that the same linguistic expression in two different premises stands for two different concepts. In this sense the mental process of inferring cannot show "equivocation". But whenever we fall prey to an "equivocation", it is also true that our reasoning is defective. It is this defect in reasoning that I call equivocation. 3 I discuss the relation between evidence and attitudes in section 2.2. 4 I sometimes express this fact by saying that the subject "has justification for (3)" or that for the subject "(3) has positive epistemic status". 5 I express the fact that the subject believes (3) for her good epistemic reason sometimes by saying that she "justifiably believes (3)" or that she "is justified in believing (3)". Furthermore, the subject's believing (3) for her good epistemic reason in N , involves the fact that I express by saying that the subject "bases her belief in (3) on her beliefs in (1) and (2)". See below in the text. 12 Furthermore Fumerton does not distinguish between E makes probable P and E supports/justifies P. In his commentary to Fumerton [1995], Stewart Cohen [1998] objects to taking the latter two propositions to be equivalent.

2009

The paper explicates a new way to model the context-sensitivity of 'knows', namely a way that suggests a close connection between the content of 'knows' in a context C and what is pragmatically presupposed in C. After explicating my new approach in the first half of the paper and arguing that it is explanatorily superior to standard accounts of epistemic contextualism, the paper points, in its second half, to some interesting new features of the emerging account, such as its compatibility with the intuitions of Moorean dogmatists. Finally, the paper shows that the account defended is not subject to the most prominent and familiar philosophical objections to epistemic contextualism discussed in the recent literature.

1986

By treating belief as a modality and combining this with problems about constant truth tellers and constant liars (knights and knaves) we obtain some curious epistemic counterparts of undecidability results in metamathe* matics. Godel's second theorem gets reflected in a logician who cannot believe in his own consistency without becoming inconsistent. Lob's theorem reflects itself in a variety of beliefs which of their own nature are necessarily self-fulfilling.

Philosophy Psychiatry Psychology, 2008

Philosophical Writings, 2014

It is largely admitted that the tripartite conception as Justified True Belief knowledge implying truth is possible but truth is not recognisable per se, that is, knowledge implying self-awareness of having the truth (which is not to be conflated with certainty) is impossible. Borrowing from the theory of meaning I intend to redefine knowledge with the immanence principle and the implicitness principle, which impose the recognisability of the knowledge conditions. Second, I argue that since truth is not directly recognisable it must be inferred. Hence, knowledge is the product of an inference from a belief and a justification to the truthascription of the henceforth-acknowledged belief. The seminal Gettier problems take thus an almost trivial aspect, or at least it is no obstacle to the possibility of knowledge thus defined.