We're working from significantly different notions of belief. That alone could be the culprit in much of the possible confusion and/or misunderstanding.

I'm still struggling to understand how you ground the claim that the person does not believe that a broken clock is working.

What I don't understand about your position is that after you say that the broken clock can't lend epistemic justification, why the need to say more? I mean, doesn't that fully explain the justification failure? — fiveredapples

I don't think it does when the failure was a result of false belief that goes unaccounted for.

That's seems to me to be a common denominator in both Gettier cases as well.

I'm still struggling to understand how you ground the claim that the person does not believe that a broken clock is working. — creativesoul

Of course, we should be clear about the difference between (A) "He doesn't have a belief about the clock's working or not" and (B) "He believes the clock is not working." Sometimes (B) is stated as "He doesn't believe the clock is working," which sounds like (A) -- but it's not.

I'm saying he doesn't have a belief about the reliability of the clock he's looking at. You're saying that he must have a belief that it's working, or that it's not working. This is what I disagree with.

Why must we attribute to him a belief? Isn't there a difference between having a hunch, an opinion, and a belief? Does taking something for granted constitute having a belief?

I don't think it does when the failure was a result of false belief that goes unaccounted for. — creativesoul

Yes, but why insist on the existence of this belief? If we take away this alleged belief in the clock's working, then we still explain the justification failure by saying broken clocks don't lend epistemic justification for knowledge. Then what philosophical work is the belief you're attributing to him doing to explain the epistemic failure? Ostensibly, no philosophical work, so it looks not just unnecessary but wrong.

Denying that he believes a broken clock is working neglects both, the fact that the clock is broken, and the fact that reading clocks is a traditional practice that is steeped in belief. It consists of belief. If he did not believe that a broken clock was working he would not have looked at one as a means to know what time it was. But, that's exactly what he did.

Of course, we should be clear about the difference between (A) "He doesn't have a belief about the clock's working or not" and (B) "He believes the clock is not working." Sometimes (B) is stated as "He doesn't believe the clock is working," which sounds like (A) -- but it's not. — fiveredapples

Neither of which properly accounts for his belief that a broken clock is working. He looks at a clock. He believes that working clocks are reliable. He believes he knows what time it is, but he does not...

Because he mistakenly believes that that broken clock is working(which is clearly shown by his trust in using it), and false belief does not count as acceptable ground upon which to infer knowledge.

We also know that broken clocks are not acceptable justificatory ground for claiming to know what time it is.

...what philosophical work is the belief you're attributing to him doing to explain the epistemic failure? — fiveredapples

His belief IS the focus. Focusing upon the fact that the clock is broken neglects to consider that he had false belief to begin with.

Neither of which properly accounts for his belief that a broken clock is working. — creativesoul

First of all, he doesn't believe that a broken clock is working. He believes falsely that the clock is working. Those two statements are different. But nevermind the difference. Why think he falsely believes that the clock is working? Do we need to attribute to him a belief here?

Neither of which properly accounts for his belief that a broken clock is working.
— creativesoul

First of all, he doesn't believe that a broken clock is working. He believes falsely that the clock is working. Those two statements are different. But nevermind the difference. Why think he has a belief? — fiveredapples

The clock is broken. He believes it's working. He believes that a broken clock is working.

The belief that approach fails to take proper account of his belief, because he does not know and/or believe that it's broken. But it is. I suspect such lines of thought(belief that) are underwriting your approach here, with all the talk about propositional attitudes ans such.

As I said, we're working from significantly different notions of belief.

I'm appreciative of the thought provoking nature of this exchange.

:smile:

The clock is broken. He believes it's working. He believes that a broken clock is working. — creativesoul

No. That's not right. He falsely believes that the clock is working. You must capture the content of his belief, which is 'the clock is working'. The fact that it's not working is not part of his belief, so you can't include it in the content, or in the that-clause (which states the content of his belief).

What you're doing is leading you to confusion and mistakes.

I'll leave this for while...

:smile:

Yeah, just step away from it for a while. You'll see the difference later.

This is a strange way to phrase it. It seems like you are misunderstanding the Russell scenario. The man has successfully satisfied JTB. He has a belief. The belief is true. And the belief is justified. If you think knowledge is JTB, then you must conclude that the man has knowledge. You seem not to appreciate this fact. You're wanting to object that he doesn't have knowledge because he was looking at a broken clock. But you can't make that objection if you subscribe to JTB. — fiveredapples

I think you are missing the fact that if the clock has stopped working then the belief, although true, is not justified. You might want to say that he is justified in believing that his belief is justified, but that belief is not true, since the clock is not, contrary to his perfectly natural expectation, working.

Also, earlier you mentioned "Warranted True Belief" as an alternative to JTB. I'm not seeing any significant differences, on the face of it, between the two terms.

Edit; I note that @creativesoul has already mounted a similar objection.

Trusting clocks is not always automatic, to be as clear as possible. — creativesoul

I agree. It's an intermediate phenomenon. But trusting language (as you did when you wrote the sentence above) is usually at least as automatic as trusting a clock usually is.

Being-in-a-world and being-with-others is (in an important sense) prior to the subject that examines her mind and questions her beliefs. We live in a world with others of spoons, stairs, books, and clocks. They don't exist primarily as objects for ratiocination but as 'transparent' tools-in-use through which we see our thousand worldly purposes. Language, I'm claiming, has this tool-in-use kind or mode of being.

Along these lines, our 'blind' know-how concerning words like 'know' is prior to our retrospective attempt to define 'knowledge' so that the definition fits our intuition.

Note the difference between "he believes a broken clock is working" and " He believes the following: "A broken clock is working"". Of course the latter is an absurdity, a contradiction and the former seems to be a form of expression which carries a lingering ambiguity. You could have said "He believes that a clock, which happens not to be working, is working", which is unambiguous.

In any case, on the basis of what I have read, we seem to be in agreement, and I believe we are also in agreement that the Gettier cases are red herrings, and do not constitute legitimate objections to the idea of knowledge as JTB.

I think you are missing the fact that if the clock has stopped working then the belief, although true, is not justified. — Janus

You're repeating my own position to me. I said he's not justified under my conception of knowledge. I said he is justified under JTB. If you think he isn't justified under JTB, then you don't understand JTB.

You might want to say that he is justified in believing that his belief is justified,

Well, I personally would never want to say that. I was characterizing creativesoul's position.

but that belief is not true, since the clock is not, contrary to his perfectly natural expectation, working.

This tells me you don't understand either JTB or our intuitions of knowledge. Whether he's justified or not has nothing to do with whether his belief is true or not.

Also, earlier you mentioned "Warranted True Belief" as an alternative to JTB. I'm not seeing any significant differences, on the face of it, between the two terms.

Warranted True Belief is supposed to take into consideration the source of the belief. So, while under JTB, the man in the Russell example has justification, under WTB he would not.

Trusting clocks is not always automatic, to be as clear as possible.
— creativesoul

I agree. It's an intermediate phenomenon. But trusting language (as you did when you wrote the sentence above) is usually at least as automatic as trusting a clock usually is.

Being-in-a-world and being-with-others is (in an important sense) prior to the subject that examines her mind and questions her beliefs. We live in a world with others of spoons, stairs, books, and clocks. They don't exist primarily as objects for ratiocination but as 'transparent' tools-in-use through which we see our thousand worldly purposes. Language, I'm claiming, has this tool-in-use kind or mode of being.

Along these lines, our 'blind' know-how concerning words like 'know' is prior to our retrospective attempt to define 'knowledge' so that the definition fits our intuition. — softwhere

Yes. And that's a way to show Heiddy's relevance...

Well at least you've granted that the person has some belief or other about the clock.

That's a start.

Would you further concur that the belief is about a particular clock; the one he used as a means to tell time?

He believes that it's 3 PM. And he came to believe that it's 3 PM by looking at a particular clock, a particular broken clock.

You're repeating my own position to me. I said he's not justified under my conception of knowledge. I said he is justified under JTB. If you think he isn't justified under JTB, then you don't understand JTB. — fiveredapples

How do you decide whether a belief is justified? Can a belief be justified and yet untrue? Does 'justified' mean, to you, merely something like understandable (given the circumstances or context)? If so, then knowledge would be understandable true belief. How would understandable differ from warranted then?

This tells me you don't understand either JTB or our intuitions of knowledge. Whether he's justified or not has nothing to do with whether his belief is true or not. — fiveredapples

What does it have to do with then according to you?

I would prefer to do away with what seems
to be your sense of 'justified' because it is too subjective, and say that knowledge is belief in what is true for true reasons.

Yes. And that's a way to show Heiddy's relevance... — creativesoul

Right. Heidegger, indeed. But (and I hope you'll agree) not on his authority but rather on his successful unconcealment of the phenomenon. Since I've been exposed to Heidegger, I find myself discovering his insights in less explicit form in Hegel and Feuerbach. How does language exist? The basic insight seems to be that we are social on a deeper level than we are individual. So analyses that start from an isolated subject gazing at pure meanings, while possibly illuminating, are also trapped within a tradition obsessed with an epistemological problem while neglecting an ontological one.

What say you?

How do you decide whether a belief is justified? — Janus

That depends on which conception of knowledge you're talking about. For JTB, you're justified if you use one of the prescribed methods (or sanctioned methods) for acquiring true beliefs. For our example, visual observation of a clock's minute and hour hands, provided you know how to read a clock, is a sanctioned method by which to form a true belief about the time. This is what the man does in the Russell example, so he is justified, according to JTB.

For my intuitions of knowledge, that's not enough. The clock would also have to be working and keeping the correct time. So, for my intuitions, he's not justified, as there are two parts to justification under this conception: the method and the source.

Can a belief be justified and yet untrue?

For JTB, yes, but it wouldn't count as knowledge.
For my intuitions, I'm not sure. Let me think about it.

Does 'justified' mean, to you, merely something like understandable (given the circumstances or context)?

For JTB, justified simply means that you used one of the prescribed (or sanctioned) methods for acquiring true beliefs. It doesn't guarantee you truth, though, which is why you can be justified and have a false belief.

For me, it involves using a very reliable method for acquiring true beliefs (pretty much like in JTB) and satisfying certain criteria with regard to the source of your belief. In the Russell example, the man's source was a broken clock, which fails to satisfy the source criteria, however that gets spelled out.

If so, then knowledge would be understandable true belief.

Well, I didn't agree that "justified" means something like "understandable," so this doesn't apply to me.

Perhaps we should (as some of us already are?) think of justification in terms of convention. A false belief is justified if it is obtained according to certain conventions. Even if I am wrong, my excuse for thinking I was right is good in the eyes of the community.

Specifying these conventions is an infinite task. If I had reason to think the clock was broken, I lose the justification of my false belief. I should have known better. Or perhaps I act on news from a source that I should have known was not to be trusted. Then my actions are not justified. If we zoom on all the beliefs that would have warned me away from the broken clock or bad source of news, we repeat this logic. At some point explicit justification is revealed as an infinite and therefore impossible task.

Moreover we can question whether the words we use tend to have pure meaning for an ideally aware subject or (more likely the case) we largely employ these words with the mindlessness of a knife used to slice tomatoes. Perhaps we retrospectively falsify our thinking when asked for reasons. Perhaps we mostly glide on the surface of the world, responding with skill to the demands of the day.

Well yeah, because in using knowledge terms you are referring to your knowledge. What else could you be doing with those terms? — Harry Hindu

That's the intention, but there is no guarantee of success. Compare with using the word "raining". Alice might look out the window and say, "It's raining" when it's not raining (e.g., she instead sees water from a hose).

Her use is justifiable, but unsuccessful.

But you're not taking this to it's ultimate conclusion and that is how do we know that the aliens know the truth? How do you know that you have acquired the truth when you only have justifications to go on? Again, as you are defining it, you'd need to know that your knowledge is true, not only justified, in order to use the term "knowledge" correctly. — Harry Hindu

The justified claim only needs to be true in order to use the term "knowledge" correctly or successfully. It is the same in this respect to the use of the word "raining" above.

If you're not referring to your knowledge when using knowledge terms, then what do you mean when you use the terms? — Harry Hindu

The intention is to refer to knowledge. The reality may be different.

When I say "use" I mean making a particular sound or scribble to refer to the information one possesses about a particular state-of-affairs, like the steps one takes to tie their shoes, and the reasons why one should tie their shoes. What do you mean by the word "use"? — Harry Hindu

Employing words to accomplish things, such as communicating something about the world. Whether that use is successful or not depends on a lot of things coming together in the right way.

This seems to arrive at a problem regarding the origen and/or content of belief. It presupposes that all belief is premiss based. I've an issue with that as a result of the fact that premisses themselves are belief.

Seems to me that it would have to be the case that some rudimentary belief are not premiss based. If they need to be in order to qualify as being well grounded then such belief cannot count... by definition alone... for if the definition is good... they do not have what it takes. — creativesoul

Bob looks at the clock and forms the belief that it is 3pm. That's a basic or rudimentary belief with no implication that he needed another belief prior to forming that belief, which would just result in an infinite regress.

However we can nonetheless investigate the premises of Bob's belief. Those premises emerge as part of our analysis, not something we need to suppose were Bob's beliefs at that time.

I would prefer to do away with what seems
to be your sensr of 'justified' because it is too subjective, and say that knowledge is belief in what is true for true reasons. — Janus

Can we ever confidently label something knowledge, by this definition? We can certainly evaluate justifications, but how do we evaluate 'true' if not via justification?

I also think that much contemporary thinking about knowledge confuses two distinct questions. "When do we have knowledge?" and "what 'is' knowledge?" Even if we can agree about when we have knowledge, that doesn't necessarily tell us what knowledge itself is. — Bartricks

A case can be made that knowledge isn't something other than our conventional use of the word 'knowledge.' To learn a language is to learn how to use many words in the context of living in a shared world. Just because 'knowledge' is a noun doesn't mean there's a definite entity called 'knowledge.'
This also applies to 'reason' (used as a noun).

While philosophers have often trafficked in decontextualized essences, other philosophers have pointed out the problems with this approach. We can imagine Descartes trying to achieved certainty. Only his doubting voice is certain. At least this doubting voice exists. But this doubting voice speaks a language learned in a world with others. It's already in the world, intelligible to others, the product of convention. The signifier is arbitrary, conventional. What are the consequences of all this?

All testing, all confirmation and disconfirmation of a hypothesis takes place already within a system. And this system is not a more or less arbitrary and doubtful point of departure for all our arguments: no, it belongs to the essence of what we call an argument. The system is not so much as the point of departure, as the element in which arguments have their life. — Wittgenstein

This 'element' is being-in-a-language-with-others, which includes knowing how to use 'knowledge.' Only too late do philosophers arrive to (try to) decide what knowledge 'really' is.

There is...something that average everyday intelligibility obscures... that it is merely average everyday intelligibility...This is what Heidegger called 'the perhaps necessary appearance of foundation....What gets covered up in everyday understanding is not some deep intelligibility as the tradition has always held; it is that the ultimate 'ground' of intelligibility is simply shared practices...This is the last stage of the hermeneutics of suspicion. The only deep interpretation left is that there is no deep interpretation. — Dreyfus

<emphasis mine>

'No deep interpretation' doesn't mean we shouldn't further clarify our existence. Indeed, suggesting that 'knowledge' refers to no essence is part of that project.

I don't all claim that this is a final word on the matter. On the contrary...

Fiveredapples has given an eloquent defense of his position, but my position is much simpler. I'm sticking to JTB as the definition of knowledge. I don't see any good reason to give it up. The clock was broke, therefore the person wasn't justified in their belief that the time was X. If they weren't justified, then they failed to meet the definition of knowledge under JTB. Gettier fails for similar reasons.

The justified claim only needs to be true in order to use the term "knowledge" correctly or successfully. It is the same in this respect to the use of the word "raining" above. — Andrew M

Right. So how do you know that you or someone else is using the term, "knowledge" correctly, so say things like, "I/You are using the term, "knowledge" correctly."?