Knowledge

In order for knowledge to be knowledge, does it have to be true, or in other words, when something that everyone today believes to be true turns out to be wrong next year, was it not knowledge?

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Thetraditional account of knowledge is that truth is one of three necessaryconditions for knowledge. The other two are belief and justification. On thisaccount, if X knows that p, then (1) X believes that p, (2) X is justified inbelieving p, and (3) p is true. Thus if a widely held justified beliefturned out to be false, then the belief would not count as knowledge. Of course there is much work to be done inspelling out what we are to understand by belief, justification, and truth. A great deal ofattention to this definition and the question of its adequacy followed EdmundGettier’s paper “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” (Analysis 23 ( 1963): 121-123; available online at http://www.ditext.com/gettier/gettier.html)

Like most philosophers (though perhaps not most historians and sociologists of science), I think that knowledge requires truth, but it remains possible for someone to know something at one time and not to know it at a later time.

Knowledge requires belief as well as truth, so a simple way that knowledge can be lost is if a person knows something but later for whatever reason stops believing it.

Knowledge also requires warrant, and warrant may be lost. One possible example is where the warrant is forgotten. Suppose I prove a mathematical theorem. At that point I know that theorem to be true, but later I forget not only the proof but that I ever had a proof, though I retain the belief in the theorem. Here I would say (though I can imagine some philosophers resisting this) that I no longer know. Or maybe I don’t forget the warrant, but I acquire additional evidence that goes against my belief. Thus suppose I remember the proof, but it was quite tricky, and one day a much better mathematician that I am confidently tells me that he has a proof that the statement I believed is false. As it happens, I was right and Mr Big Shot Mathematician was wrong, but his testimony ought to give me pause, so that I am not longer warranted in my true belief and so no longer know it.

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