Abstract
I introduce and defend an argument against the popular view that anything falling short of knowledge falls short in value. The nature of belief and cognitive psychological research on memory, I claim, support the argument. I also show that not even the most appealing mode of knowledge is distinctively valuable.
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Notes
When BonJour (2010: 58–61) for example attacks fallibilism, he crucially and without explanation assumes knowledge is the “epistemic summum bonum.” Anything short of it lacks its value. And, for example, when Pritchard (2007: 87) originally names the secondary value problem, he just takes it as a given that there is a problem here to solve. For other value problems concerning knowledge, see Pritchard (2007).
For famous rejection of this traditional view, see Williamson (2000: Chap. 1).
A referee suggests that my slogan here is threatened by a kind of case Kvanvig (2014: 188) discusses, where forming a belief will eliminate one’s evidence for it. You might be in a position to know that you’ve never considered q. But if you form the belief that you’ve never considered q, you’ll thereby consider q, eliminating your evidence for the belief. I think this sort of case interestingly reveals that there are propositions one can be in a position to know, but cannot know. Knowledge requires belief and justification, and in these cases forming belief eliminates justification. Still, I think my conditional about being in a position to know holds: if you would just believe that p (on your justification), then you’d know that p. The cases in question are simply ones where the conditional’s antecedent cannot be satisfied. Since the belief would eliminate its justification, it cannot be formed on its justification. I thank the referee for encouraging reflection here.
Williamson (2000: 95) would strike the parenthetical from my conditional: “If one is in a position to know, and one has done what one is in a position to do to decide whether p is true, then one does know p.” Unfortunately, this attributes knowledge in cases where one ultimately “decides” based on mere desire, bias, fear, etc.
Being in a position to know and dispositional belief have knotted connections with tacit belief, inactive belief, implicit belief, and a disposition to believe. This isn’t the place to unravel the knots.
Cf. Bergmann (2005: 421), Huemer (1999: 356 n. 15) and Moser (1989: Chap. 1). One might deny that dispositional belief requires this. An ordinary subject may have never occurrently believed that she was born after her grandfather. Nonetheless, it seems plausible that she dispositionally believes it. However, it may be more plausible that the subject simply has a disposition to believe she was born after her grandfather—she is all set to believe it—and, strictly speaking, does not yet dispositionally believe it. This option is attractive in part because it prevents an explosion of beliefs. It prevents the ordinary, finite-in-mind subject from counting as believing indefinitely many propositions, such as that she was born after her grandfather had been alive for a minute, that she was born after her grandfather had been alive for a half a minute, that she was born after her grandfather had been alive for a quarter of a minute, etc.
Still, suppose dispositional belief does not require prior occurrent belief. Exactly what does it require, then? The complete answer is far from clear. As a result, there will be cases where something counts as dispositional belief, and cases where something nearly counts as dispositional belief, but we won’t be able to tell which cases are which. The difference will be hard to detect and apparently trivial. It won’t split the cases into groups that seem importantly different, or even relevantly different. If offered to be in one group or the other, we’d have no preference. The difference between dispositionally knowing and being in a position to know, then, can be hard to detect and apparently trivial, tracking no preferences. This supports P1. Thanks to a referee for pressing me to clarify several points here.
Cf. Kvanvig (2003), who claims that knowledge and Gettiered belief differ only in some trivial property that could not explain a difference in their value.
Carter et al. (2013), Fantl and McGrath (2009), Pritchard (2007, 2010), and Williamson (2000), for example, nowhere even implicate that they might have intended such a limit. And Kvanvig’s (2009: 345–6) discussion of the value of knowledge covers the occurrent/dispositional distinction for beliefs, but doesn’t apply it to knowledge; apparently, there’s no need to use that distinction to qualify any evaluation of knowledge.
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Acknowledgments
For helpful comments and conversation I thank Earl Conee, Brian Cutter, Trent Dougherty, John Greco, Jon Kvanvig, Jon Matheson, Kevin McCain, Andrew Moon, an anonymous referee, and an audience at the 2015 Southern Epistemology Conference. I wrote this paper while supported by a grant from the Templeton Religious Trust. The views expressed in this paper do not necessarily reflect the views of the Templeton Religious Trust.
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Frise, M. No need to know. Philos Stud 174, 391–401 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0688-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0688-1