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11. Knowledge Aims / A. Knowledge / 7. Knowledge First

[knowledge is a basic concept, not to be analysed]

11 ideas
20799 A grasp by the senses is true, because it leaves nothing out, and so nature endorses it [Zeno of Citium, by Cicero]
     Full Idea: He thought that a grasp made by the senses was true and reliable, …because it left out nothing about the object that could be grasped, and because nature had provided this grasp as a standard of knowledge, and a basis for understanding nature itself.
     From: report of Zeno (Citium) (fragments/reports [c.294 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - Academica I.42
     A reaction: Sounds like Williamson's 'knowledge first' claim - that the basic epistemic state is knowledge, which we have when everything is working normally. I like Zeno's idea that a 'grasp' leaves nothing out about the object. Compare nature with Descartes' God.
7154 We can't use our own self to criticise our own capacity for knowledge! [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: A critique of our capacity to know is nonsensical: how should the tool be able to criticise itself when it can, precisely, only use itself for the critique? It can't even define itself!
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[87])
     A reaction: I am inclined to answer that it seems impossible, but it happens. Thinking about ourselves is the hardest part of philosophy, but phenomenologists and others (starting with Descartes) have had an impressive crack at it. Nietzsche was good at it.
23888 Knowledge is beyond question, as an unavoidable component of thinking [Weil]
     Full Idea: The speaker refuses to pose the question of knowledge, since knowledge is a given that is mixed with thought, and that no thinking being can get away from.
     From: Simone Weil (Philosophy [1941], p.42)
     A reaction: On the whole I favour belief-first, but I take the primary purpose of minds to be navigation, and that needs facts, not hopeful beliefs. Weil's thought pushes me a bit towards the knowledge first view.
19512 Don't analyse knowledge; use knowledge to analyse other concepts in epistemology [Williamson, by DeRose]
     Full Idea: Williamson says that instead of being viewed as a concept to be analysed, knowledge should be seen as something useful in the analysis of all sorts of other concepts to epistemology - and to philosophy of mind as well.
     From: report of Timothy Williamson (Knowledge and its Limits [2000]) by Keith DeRose - The Case for Contextualism 1.8
     A reaction: I just don't believe this, because knowledge is obviously a complex state of mind, which invites breaking it down into ingredients. How could knowledge possibly be prior to truth?
19527 We don't acquire evidence and then derive some knowledge, because evidence IS knowledge [Williamson]
     Full Idea: When we acquire new evidence in perception, we do not first acquire unknown evidence and then somehow base knowledge on it later. Rather, acquiring new is evidence IS acquiring new knowledge.
     From: Timothy Williamson (Knowledge First (and reply) [2014], p.4)
     A reaction: This makes his point much better than Idea 19526 does.
19528 Knowledge is prior to believing, just as doing is prior to trying to do [Williamson]
     Full Idea: Knowing corresponds to doing, believing to trying. Just as trying is naturally understood in relation to doing, so believing is naturally understood in relation to knowing.
     From: Timothy Williamson (Knowledge First (and reply) [2014], p.4)
     A reaction: An interesting analogy. You might infer that there can be no concept of 'belief' without the concept of 'knowledge', but we could say that it is 'truth' which is indispensible, and leave out knowledge entirely. Belief is to truth as trying is to doing?
19529 Belief explains justification, and knowledge explains belief, so knowledge explains justification [Williamson]
     Full Idea: If justification is the fundamental epistemic norm of belief, and a belief ought to constitute knowledge, then justification should be understood in terms of knowledge too.
     From: Timothy Williamson (Knowledge First (and reply) [2014], p.5)
     A reaction: If we are looking for the primitive norm which motivates the whole epistemic game, then I am thinking that truth might well play that role better than knowledge. TW would have to reply that it is the 'grasped truth', rather than the 'theoretical truth'.
19530 A neutral state of experience, between error and knowledge, is not basic; the successful state is basic [Williamson]
     Full Idea: A neutral state covering both perceiving and misperceiving (or remembering and misrembering) is not somehow more basic than perceiving, for what unifies the case of each neutral state is their relation to the successful state.
     From: Timothy Williamson (Knowledge First (and reply) [2014], p.5-6)
     A reaction: An alternative is Disjunctivism, which denies the existence of a single neutral state, so that there is nothing to unite the two states, and they don't have a dependence relation. Why can't there be a prior family of appearances, some of them successful?
19531 Internalism about mind is an obsolete view, and knowledge-first epistemology develops externalism [Williamson]
     Full Idea: A postulated underlying layer of narrow mental states is a myth, whose plausibility derives from a comfortingly familiar but obsolescent philosophy of mind. Knowledge-first epistemology is a further step in the development of externalism.
     From: Timothy Williamson (Knowledge First (and reply) [2014], p.6)
     A reaction: Williamson is a real bruiser, isn't he? I don't take internalism about mind to be obsolescent at all, but now I feel so inferior for clinging to such an 'obsolescent' belief. ...But then I cling to Aristotle, who is (no doubt) an obsolete philosopher.
19536 Knowledge-first says your total evidence IS your knowledge [Williamson]
     Full Idea: Knowledge-first equate one's total evidence with one's total knowledge.
     From: Timothy Williamson (Knowledge First (and reply) [2014], p.8)
     A reaction: Couldn't lots of evidence which merely had a high probability be combined together to give a state we would call 'knowledge'? Many dubious witnesses confirm the truth, as long as they are independent, and agree.
19541 Rather than knowledge, our epistemic aim may be mere true belief, or else understanding and wisdom [Dougherty/Rysiew]
     Full Idea: If we say our cognitive aim is to get knowledge, the opposing views are the naturalistic view that what matters is just true belief (or just 'getting by'), or that there are rival epistemic goods such as understanding and wisdom.
     From: Dougherty,T/Rysiew,P (Experience First (and reply) [2014], p.17)
     A reaction: [compressed summary] I'm a fan of understanding. The accumulation of propositional knowledge would relish knowing the mass of every grain of sand on a beach. If you say the propositions should be 'important', other values are invoked.