ABSTRACT: WHEN IS TRUE BELIEF KNOWLEDGE?
(PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2012)
Someone glances at a clock that is not working and comes to believe it is quarter past seven. It in fact is quarter past seven. Her belief is true, but it isn’t knowledge. Out of this classic example comes the classic philosophical problem of determining what must be added to a true belief in order to make it into a plausible candidate for knowledge.
In a provocative new book, When Is True Belief Knowledge?, Richard Foley argues that the solution to this problem is to be found in the observation that whenever someone has a true belief but does not know, there is some significant aspect of the situation about which she lacks true beliefs --- something important that she doesn’t quite “get.”
This is seemingly a modest point, but Foley shows it has the capacity to reorient the theory of knowledge. Contemporary theory of knowledge is driven by stories. The practice is to tell a tiny story, use it to elicit an intuition about whether the subject has or lacks knowledge, and then draw a moral for the theory of knowledge. All these stories can be understood as attempts to draw attention to some aspect of the situation about which the character of the story lacks true beliefs and to suggest that this aspect is in some way important. To the degree that we the audience are convinced that the missing information is in fact important, our intuition is that the character has a true belief but does not know.
Whether a true belief counts as knowledge thus hinges on the importance of the information one has and lacks. This means that questions of knowledge cannot be separated from questions about human concerns and values. It also means that contrary to what is often presupposed, there is no privileged way of coming to know. Knowledge is a mutt. Proper pedigree is not required. What matters is that one not lack important nearby information.