Richard the Farmer

He believed it to be the case.
He has a good relevant reason for the belief.
It was the case.

This is 'justified true belief'

But...did he really 'know' it?

For a start, Farmer Richard says that he wants to be 100% certain that Doris is in the field, but we cannot be 100% certain about anything if we allow for various unpredictable circumstances, such as his mistaking a black and white piece of paper for his cow.

Obviously, there is no purpose to a word if it refers to something that is impossible, and so there would be no purpose in having the word 'know' mean '100% certainty'.

It is like with the colour black. We originally gained the meanings of our words by referring to objects in the world which we had categorised on some easily observable basis. So, black was a category of observable characteristics.

We eventually understood this phenomenon to come about due to a lack of reflectivity of all wavelengths of light.

Then, we understood that no object reflects completely no light, and so we occasionally hear people claiming that various objects that in the vernacular we refer to as black, are not black.

This is a terrible misuse of language caused by skipping back and forth between technical and common usage, and the progression of those usages.

Back to knowledge.. The farmer has used the basis of viewing what appeared to be his cow in the field for the formation of a belief, being that his cow is in the field.

Had the cow not been in the field when the dairyman checked, and he had shown Farmer Richard the piece of paper Farmer Richard may have been a little red in the face. I contend, though, that he would probably have still felt that he had falsely known.

This, I think, is a key point. Can we allow 'false knowledge'?

If not, since we have already established that 100% certainty is impossible, then we have to disallow knowledge.

The JTB model should be fine with this, because while it might not be 'knowledge', it is still the best thing we can have.

False knowledge articles...

60 popular pieces of false knowledge


Have a leisurely read - it will take a long time if you follow the links - of this...