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Ideas for 'The Gettier Problem', 'Objects and Persons' and 'Internalism Exposed'

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5 ideas

13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 1. Justification / a. Justification issues
The 'warrant' for a belief is what turns a true belief into knowledge [Merricks]
     Full Idea: The 'warrant' for a belief is that, whatever it is, that makes the difference between mere true belief and knowledge.
     From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §7.II)
     A reaction: Hence a false belief could be well justified, but it could never be warranted. This makes warrant something like the externalist view of justification, a good supporting situation for a belief, rather than an inner awareness of support for it.
13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 2. Justification Challenges / b. Gettier problem
A Gettier case is a belief which is true, and its fallible justification involves some luck [Hetherington]
     Full Idea: A Gettier case contains a belief which is true and well justified without being knowledge. Its justificatory support is also fallible, ...and there is considerable luck in how the belief combnes being true with being justified.
     From: Stephen Hetherington (The Gettier Problem [2011], 5)
     A reaction: This makes luck the key factor. 'Luck' is a rather vague concept, and so the sort of luck involved must first be spelled out. Or the varieties of luck that can produce this outcome.
13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 3. Internal or External / a. Pro-internalism
We can't only believe things if we are currently conscious of their justification - there are too many [Goldman]
     Full Idea: Strong internalism says only current conscious states can justify beliefs, but this has the problem of Stored Beliefs, that most of our beliefs are stored in memory, and one's conscious state includes nothing that justifies them.
     From: Alvin I. Goldman (Internalism Exposed [1999], §2)
     A reaction: This point seems obviously correct, but one could still have a 'fairly strong' version, which required that you could always call into consciousness the justificiation for any belief that you happened to remember.
Internalism must cover Forgotten Evidence, which is no longer retrievable from memory [Goldman]
     Full Idea: Even weak internalism has the problem of Forgotten Evidence; the agent once had adequate evidence that she subsequently forgot; at the time of epistemic appraisal, she no longer has adequate evidence that is retrievable from memory.
     From: Alvin I. Goldman (Internalism Exposed [1999], §3)
     A reaction: This is certainly a basic problem for any account of justification. It will rule out any strict requirement that there be actual mental states available to support a belief. Internalism may be pushed to include non-conscious parts of the mind.
Internal justification needs both mental stability and time to compute coherence [Goldman]
     Full Idea: The problem for internalists of Doxastic Decision Interval says internal justification must avoid mental change to preserve the justification status, but must also allow enough time to compute the formal relations between beliefs.
     From: Alvin I. Goldman (Internalism Exposed [1999], §4)
     A reaction: The word 'compute' implies a rather odd model of assessing coherence, which seems instantaneous for most of us where everyday beliefs are concerned. In real mental life this does not strike me as a problem.