When is true belief knowledge?

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Title:

When is true belief knowledge?

Author:

Foley, Richard, 1947-

ISBN:

9780691154725

Personal Author:

Foley, Richard, 1947-

Publication Information:

Princeton : Princeton University Press, c2012.

Physical Description:

viii, 153 p. ; 22 cm.

Series:

Princeton monographs in philosophy

General Note:

Formerly CIP.

Contents:

An observation -- Post-gettier accounts of knowledge -- Knowledge stories -- Intuitions about knowledge -- Important truths -- Maximally accurate and comprehensive beliefs -- The beetle in the box -- Knowledge blocks -- The theory of knowledge and theory of justified belief -- The value of true belief -- The value of knowledge -- The lottery and preface -- Reverse lottery stories -- Lucky knowledge -- Closure and skepticism -- Disjunctions -- Fixedness and knowledge -- Instability and knowledge -- Misleading defeaters -- Believing that I don't know -- Introspective knowledge -- Perceptual knowledge -- A priori knowledge -- Collective knowledge -- A look back -- Epistemology within a general theory of rationality -- The core concepts of epistemology.

Subject Term:

Knowledge, Theory of.

Belief and doubt.

Copies:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Item Barcode	Shelf Number	Copy	Status
Searching... 1:IIEMSA	1:GEN-BOOK	33168025560596	121 F663W 2012	1	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

A woman glances at a broken clock and comes to believe it is a quarter past seven. Yet, despite the broken clock, it really does happen to be a quarter past seven. Her belief is true, but it isn't knowledge. This is a classic illustration of a central problem in epistemology: determining what knowledge requires in addition to true belief.

In this provocative book, Richard Foley finds a new solution to the problem in the observation that whenever someone has a true belief but not knowledge, there is some significant aspect of the situation about which she lacks true beliefs--something important that she doesn't quite "get." This may seem a modest point but, as Foley shows, it has the potential to reorient the theory of knowledge. Whether a true belief counts as knowledge depends on the importance of the information one does or doesn't have. This means that questions of knowledge cannot be separated from questions about human concerns and values. It also means that, contrary to what is often thought, there is no privileged way of coming to know. Knowledge is a mutt. Proper pedigree is not required. What matters is that one doesn't lack important nearby information.

Challenging some of the central assumptions of contemporary epistemology, this is an original and important account of knowledge.