In Knowledge And Skepticism, Nozick Provides An Explanation Of Knowledge... Essay - 2,943 words

In Knowledge and Skepticism, Nozick provides an explanation of knowledge as tracking, of how belief should and should not vary with the truth of what is believed. Nozick pursues this explanation to reveal that global skeptical arguments do not follow from particular skeptical possibilities. Nozick offers an account of propositional knowledge based on tracking, interestingly without inclusion of the traditional justification condition. Noting that a subject S may arrive at the belief that p via multiple methods or ways of believing, and that Knowledge is a particular way of being connected to the world, having a specific real factual connection to the world: tracking it. In Philosophical Explanations, Robert Nozick spells out his four requirements for knowledge. His requirements are created as a direct response to Edward Gettiers examples of the failure of Justified True Belief to be sufficient conditions for knowledge. According to Nozick, S knows that p, if the following conditions are satisfied:1) p is true; 2) S believes that p; 3) If p weren't true, S wouldnt believe that p; 4) If p were true, S would believe that p.


Nozicks account of knowledge employs the use of subjunctive conditionals in the formulation of the final two conditions. Nozick explains: This subjunctive condition is not unrelated to the causal condition. Often, when the fact that p (partially) causes someone to believe that p, the fact also will be causally necessary for his having the belief - without the cause, the effect would not occur. Nozicks forth condition leads him to deny known logical implication (closure principle). Stroud observes that, if the closure principle is in fact correct, tracking is not necessary for knowledge. From here, Stroud suggests that we qualify the closure principle rather than, like Nozick, reject it, since, when properly qualified, the closure principle rules out accidental acquisition of true belief as knowledge.


Stroud opts not to qualify tracking since it is prima facie possible that some method M is a reliable way for S to acquire knowledge that p in actual circumstances. However, it would not be reliable if not-p, in which case M might mislead S to believe that p. Stroud thus concludes that, by accepting the closure principle as sufficient for knowledge, and since inference preserves truth, Nozicks reply to skepticism does not follow.Several commentators argue that tracking, and specifically condition 3, is not necessary for knowledge. Stroud suggests that tracking is not necessary because the tracking conditionals do not hold with, for example, true beliefs not gained via any method (such as those Nozick labels central to our life-activities). He also offers a proposition in which S knows without satisfying the two subjunctive conditionals: If S believes that p, where p is 'It is true of some of S's beliefs about beliefs (call them meta-beliefs) that S might not have such meta-beliefs', then, intuitively at least, S can know that p, contrary to Nozick's diagnosis since condition 3 fails (in that even if S had no such meta-beliefs, S would still, in a relevant possible world, believe as such). Strouds moral from this example is that knowing is not always a matter of accepting, not always something we can control; since Nozick's tracking conditions restrict knowledge to knowledge subject to our acceptance (via the counter-factual possibilities), his conditions are not necessary.


Luper-Foy constructs a similar proposition, where q is S does not believe everything. S here knows that q, even though S's knowledge violates condition 3 (which demands that, in the case where S believes everything, S would not believe that S believes everything: which is to say, S does and does not believe everything). Nozicks subjunctive conditional can be expressed by a notion of possible worlds. Two possible worlds differ from one another in that the complete set of truth-values of all specific propositions are not identical; as long as at least one proposition is true in one world which is false in a second, those two worlds are different possible worlds. A subjunctive conditional is a conditional of form if it were the case that p then q would be the case, whether or not the antecedent is false. As we saw, it would be silly to assert a material conditional counterfactually; so counterfactual conditionals tend to be subjunctive.


This has led to confusing usage in which subjunctives are called counterfactuals regardless of the truth value of the antecedent p. On the other hand, according to Stalnakers definition, a conditional acts just like a material conditional when the antecedent p is true. For when p is true, the closest possible world to the actual world that satisfies p is the actual world itself, and hence the truth of the conditional depends only on whether q is true in the actual world. In the following example, if p then q is true in w because q is true at w. Because p is true at w, w1 is not even consulted. Also, such conditionals do not suffice to handle the brain in the vat example considered above. For if I am a brain in a vat who believes that I am, then the counterfactual if I were to be a brain in a vat I would believe it is true on Stalnakers account because the antecedent and consequent are both true. Nozick wanted to say that this conditional is false.


The central claim of externalism: what makes the difference between mere true belief andknowledge (or belief and justified belief) is a kind of condition which need not be accessible to the subject. Possible externalist candidate is Nozicks tracking condition in terms of counterfactuals, an acquired by a reliable method condition. Externalism need not deny the relevance of the kind of condition internalism favours, e.g. proofs and reasons; these can be seen as special cases the externalist conditions. According to Craig, the externalist does not say the extra condition must be inaccessible, only that it need not be accessible. His points in favour of externalism are that internalism unfairly skews the whole debate its way by posing the question about the extra condition in a first person way. This may be natural but it inevitably encourages us to think of kinds of things which are available from this first person perspective and to overlook factors which may be accessible only from a 3rd person perspective.


But K is a notion having a central role in such 3rd person contexts. Craig offers and defends a plausible theory of why it is that knowledge matters. Here is how he introduces the basic idea of his theory. Human beings need true beliefs about their environment, beliefs that can serve to guide their actions to a successful outcome. They have on-board sources, eyes and ears, powers of reasoning, which give them a primary stock of beliefs. According to Craig, the concept of knowledge has the function of picking out those potential informants upon whom we can rely in forming our beliefs.


Of course, once we have the concept, we can employ it for purposes other than the one for which it was designed, and we can fail to employ it successfully for the purposes for which it was designed. But to understand why knowledge matters, we should look at what the concept of knowledge is f Not many critics could defend Craigs hypothesis against all objections, or rehearse his detailed defense of it. The objections are so obvious that it may seem that Craigs hypothesis wrongly classifies thermometers as knowers, and wrongly fails to classify as knowers those whose knowledge is not publically detectable as such. Craig avoids the first problem by appealing to the distinction between reliance upon an informant and reliance upon other sources of information. This distinction is grounded in our interest in cooperation and communication: reliance upon an informant can be part of cooperation or communication with that informant, but no such thing is true of reliance upon other sources of information. Informants can take the credit or blame for the information that they provide, but sources of information cannot.


Craig avoids the second problem by appealing to the necessarily social nature of the concept of knowledge. For the concept to be of value in communication, we must be able to share access to the instantiation of the property it signifies. However, Craigs methods of objection to Nozicks theory are fruitful at least in three ways. First, on the proposed generalization of Craigs hypothesis, Ss belief that p has some positive epistemic status just in case S is a creditable informant with respect to the issue whether p. But if S is a creditable informant, then there is something about her that makes her so. This helps to account for the widespread intuition that to possess an epistemic status with respect to a particular proposition p is a matter of basing ones acceptance of p on better or worse ground ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

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Essay Tags: nozick, informant, craig, conditional, tracking

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