Friday, September 10, 2010
Gilbert Harman's Examples
Consider Gilbert Harman's examples from his Thought. Does the subject know in each of the cases? Consider, further, the Sally's Textbook Example. Does Sally know in that case? Do any of these cases pose problems for the No Defeaters Theory? How about Feldman's Modest Proposal?
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The funny thing about the No Defeaters theory is that a true can at times be as miss leading as a lie, and the Harman (and bonus) examples show just that. In the second example you believe that Donald is in Italy and you are justified in that belief (you heard him say he was going to Italy and you went with him to the air port). Also your belief is also true so it seems that the No Defeaters theory works. Yet there is a problem while you were away on a Donald had some convincing letters sent to your house that would lead you to believe that he was not in Italy (if you read them). So while you do have Justified True Believe (JTB) there a fact that if you knew it would cause you to question your belief (the letters). So the No Defeaters theory fails here because there is a true proposition that lead to a false conclusion.
ReplyDeleteFeldman's Modest Proposal seems to work for this one. You have JTB and your justification for believing that Donald is in Italy does not rely on any falsehoods that are essential for the justification of the belief. Also I think that most people would have been fine with saying that you have knowledge in example two as long as you do not open those letters.
--Chad
example 1:
ReplyDeleteThe Tom example is extremely similar to Feldman’s The Grabit Case. In both examples, an outside source (thief’s mother) insists the observer has their facts wrong and that it was in fact, an evil twin who stole the book/tape. According to the ND theory, based on the truth that Tom’s mother made the statement, we have to reconsider our justified belief about the scenario.
With Feldman’s modest proposal, the observer can claim to know that Tom took the book. The observer’s justification for believing Tom took the book does not essentially depend on any falsehood (for we really don’t have all that much of a reason to believe Tom’s mother. First of all, if we knew Tom well, as the scenerio states, there’s a good chance we would have known about his twin or his trip. Second, why would a mom rat either son out?)
example 2:
Well, up until you open Donald’s letters, you can claim to know where Donald is, but post-letter, you can know longer claim you know if you ascribe to the ND theory.
Modest Proposal claims our knowledge is not based on any falsehood, you can still claim you know where Donald is.
example 3:
Same as above, it seems as though this is problematic for ND, but still intact after MP.
bonus: This changes it up....according to this example, by the ND theory Sally is justified (she currently has no reason to think otherwise, or, she has no defeaters).
Evaluating this example through the lens of MP would show Sally cannot claim to know about the battle. Sally does not know her text is riddled with misprints and so her justification (that the textbook told her so) essentially depends on a falsehood. (I kind of went back and forth on this one, because regardless, the battle of hastings was fought in 1066, which is not a falsehood, but Sally gained this information via a false medium, so I think we have to consider this example a problem for MP. Welp?
Chad, what do you think about the example with Sally?
ReplyDeleteI would agree with Chad here. Feldmans modest proposal seems to stand up to the Italy example, in this case the persons belief is not essentially based on a falsehood even though there is a defeater lurking around the corner. Also, maybe you know Donald is a habitual liar or you have good reason to think that the letters you read saying he was in SF could not possibly have been sent by him (say he sent you pictures of himself in Rome to your phone on the same day the letters were have said to be written). So you would technically still have a defeater in the letters but they are not a very strong defeater since you have reason to doubt them.
ReplyDeleteIn some of these cases it is clear to us, the readers, that there is a defeater or fact that if the character knew they would not believe what they do now. However, how are they to know about these potential defeaters? What if you threw away the letters from Donald without reading them; would they still count as defeaters to his knowing that Donald is in Italy or would they be obsolete since the chances of him getting those back and reading them are small once he has thrown them away? If a defeater is still 'out there somewhere' but the person who knows something has very little to no chance of ever learning of it, does it still count as a defeater? Thus I don't see how we could ever know something since we could never be 100% sure that we had found all the defeaters that were potentially out there to defeat any proposition. So I think the absence of defeaters as a condition for knowledge then makes knowledge only theoretically possible and not actually possible. Feldmans theory seems to work in spite of the defeaters problems since he does not depend on their absence for his definition of knowledge.