"Scot McDermid" <scotmc@SAVEattTHEbi.SPAMcom> wrote in message news:<VSyRa.83145$H17.23125@sccrnsc02>...
I was the guy (goof??) who brought up knowledge as a
"justified true belief" in the first place.
No; that definition has been brought up before in this thread:
<quote>
"George Dance" <georgedance@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:6312c50b.0307080830.6d2493e2@posting.google.com...
there's an onus on
me to give some coherent operational definition of knowledge, of my
own.
So, I'd like to cite this one, with one change [noted by the
ellipsis]:
"Roughly, S knows that P [...] only if:
1. S believes that P.
2. P is true.
3. S's belief that P is justified."
(Pojman, /What Can we Know?/, Wadsworth 2000)
</quote>
and Skeptic has already disproven it, by the simple expedient of
'demonstrating' (in his own unique way) that "it is true that..."
means the same thing as "a catholic claims that...":
<quote; emphasis added>
"Bill Gates" <billg@microsaused.com> wrote in message news:<DxCOa.10086$ye4.10482@sccrnsc01>...
Ah so. You like this one since it fits with yours and Richardson's apology
for saying *it is true that* God exists is "justified" by revelation.
"*A catholic claims that* revelation is a source of justification." --
Richardson
</quote>
I looked up the reasons
for the three criteria. Here is what I found:
(i) X is true.
(i) Since we cannot know something false, P's being true is a necessary
condition for P's being known. That is, someone cannot be said to know
something false. For example, no one knows that the Earth is flat or
that
2+2=5. While someone might believe these things, one cannot know them.
P's being true is not a sufficient condition for P's being know because
surely
there are a lot of unknown true propositions.
[Look at it this way: if person P claims to "know X" but we know that X is
a bunch of crap then we would say that P only thinks but doesn't "know".]
(ii) P believes X
(ii) Since we cannot know something we don't believe, P's being believed
is a necessary condition for P's being known.What exactly it is to
believe
a proposition is addressed in philosophy of mind. Here, we should think
of belief as this: `S believes that P' is true iff P, when asked "Is P
true?",
can honestly say "Yes." For example, it is true that I believe my cat has
blue eyes iff if you ask me "Does your cat have blue eyes?" and I answer
"Yes." However, just because I believe something, it doesn't follow that
I know it. First, I might believe something false, and truth is a
necessary
condition for knowledge. Second, even if I have a true believe it may not
constitute knowledge. For example, suppose I read my horoscope and it
says "Today is your lucky day." So, I run our and buy a lottery ticket. I
believe that I am going to win the lottery. Suppose also that my belief
is
true (a really am going to win). Still, we wouldn't want to say I know
that
I am going to win the lottery because my true belief is based on faulty
evidence, or it is just a lucky guess.
(iii) belief in X is justified.
(iii) To rule out "lucky" true beliefs form counting as knowledge, we add
the
condition that only those true beliefs that are supported by evidence,
reason,
or justification count as knowledge.Thus, S's being justified in believing
that
P is a necessary condition for S knowing that P.
.
