Re: Knowledge and Belief

[John Cowan <cowan>]

Rob Zook wrote:

> Gettier counterexamples? Could you elaborate on this a bit? Some belief
> may be false for another, but people do not generally accept beliefs
> which they find false. So saying the truth value can seem independant
> of the justification seems misleading, at best.

For this purpose, I take "true" and "false" to be absolute, not relative
to the believer/knower.

> I believe that we define knowledge as a true belief, because people
> do not generally accept false beliefs. Someone may accept a belief which
> I find false, but that does not make it false in any absolute sense that
> the other must acknowledge.

Correct.  I was saying that "justified true belief" is INSUFFICIENT for
"knowledge", not that it is not necessary.  Not all justified true beliefs
count as knowledge.

> >The crew of a yacht left Boston on 7 November 1918 with the justified
> >false belief that the Great War was over, based on newspaper reports.
> 
> False according to what? It certainly seemed true to them.

Yes, but they were mistaken, although relying on what seemed like a reliable
source.  They were justified in believing what was printed in the
newspapers, but in this case it happened to be false.  The armistice
did not come until 11/11/18.

> >They arrived in Bermuda on 12 November, by which time the false belief
> >had become true.  But they had *learned* nothing in the interim, so
> >their belief was still not knowledge.
> 
> But for them, the truth value never changed.

But on being better informed, they would say "Well, we thought we knew
the war was over, but really, we didn't know" --- because the grounds of
belief didn't support the statement no matter how true it might have been.

-- 
John Cowan                                      cowan@ccil.org
                e'osai ko sarji la lojban.