THE PROBLEM WITH KNOWLEDGE

Prerequisite: Necessity Vs Truth

Knowledge has historically, and is still commonly, been defined as "justified true belief" (JTB). This is to say if you believe something to be true, are justified in this belief, and if it is true, you "have" knowledge. If you "have" knowledge than you presumably "have true belief", which is to say you "have truth". The problem here is you could never fully satisfy, in your mind, the conditional "if it is true". For something to be true, the contrary must be coherent. If the contrary is coherent, it "can be the case". If it "can be the case", one could not totally rule out that one was not out of accord with the truth.

If we "have" truth, it is to say that we cannot be wrong about the truth. If this is the case, then what we "have" is not truth, but what we would call a necessity, where the contrary is impossible. Therefore, when it is claimed that one "has" truth, they are stating that they "have" truth and not truth (a necessity) at the same time, in the same sense, which is a contradiction.

When one asks, "How do you know...?", what one is requesting, if they are being coherent, is "What justification do you have to believe something is true?". One could give a justification, however, according to the common definition of "knowledge" (JTB or reliably produced true belief), that is not enough. One must not only give justification for the belief, but demonstrate in some way that the belief is impossibly false, so that it "must be true". This is a contradiction, for to be a truth, the contrary to the truth (a falsity) must be possible. In order to be coherent, a belief can only make claim to what might be the truth, not what is the truth. 

Our "beliefs that things are true" do not graduate into truths. We can not say, "I only had a belief that X was true, but now I can say that the belief (that X is true) is true", or "I don't just believe it, I know it". To say this, one implies that there was some justification that ultimately satisfied in there mind that they could not be wrong, which is in contradiction to what a truth is. We can say, "I had a belief that X was true, but now I am more confidence through further justification to believe X is true". X may very well be true, but it is not due to any amount of justification or confidence in X that it is true.

For the term "knowledge" to be useful and coherent, one may define it as "an arbitrary level of confidence in the source(s) of one's justification". The only difference between "knowledge" and "belief" is an arbitrary confidence level. One could say that they believe the temperature outside is 50 degrees but do not "know" it, while another could have the same source of justification for believing the temperature outside is 50 degrees, yet say that they "know" it. Their acceptable level of confidence in their justification differs, and is uniquely arbitrary for each person.


August 2019