In the interest of "academic credibility," it might be worthwhile to examine a philosophical problem that has some traction among the tenured watchdogs of higher education. And since epistemology is still regarded among their breed as a respectable category of thought, I turn to my friend and former teacher Eric Schwitzgebel for raw material.
Eric has recently coauthored a paper, along with Blake Myers-Schutz, challenging the traditional assumption that believing something is a necessary condition for knowing that thing. Their argumentative strategy is straightforward: devise a number of thought experiments in which people's intuitions pull in opposite directions concerning the attribution of knowledge and belief to one and the same person. In each of those experiments, many people are inclined to attribute knowledge but not belief. The absence of consensus on the matter might be the product of ignorance concerning the purely technical definition of knowledge as justified, true belief, but instead of marking this as an occasion for indoctrinating the laity, Eric and Blake seize it as an opportunity to work toward a reformed definition of knowledge.
Their reformation derives from what they call the capacity-tendency account of the relation between knowledge and belief, according to which knowledge implies a capacity for truth not necessarily present in belief, while belief implies a tendency toward certain behavior not necessarily present in knowledge. Knowledge is truth-dependent; belief depends on fidelity to a dispositional stereotype for having that belief. But since dispositional stereotypes vary more than truth, it follows that there would be less agreement in the attribution of belief as compared to knowledge.
Having separated knowledge from belief, however, Eric and Blake stop short of accounting for its relative consistency. Moving ahead, knowledge reconnects with belief at a deeper level, where tendency spreads out and surpasses human behavior. For if humans have a tendency to behave according to dispositional stereotypes, the same can also be said about the world at large. One forms the basis for the attribution of belief, the other for the attribution of law. Law is nothing other than inhuman belief. Knowledge then emerges as attunement between inhuman belief, on the one hand, and a human tendency toward certain behavior that may or may not count as belief, on the other.
Their reformation derives from what they call the capacity-tendency account of the relation between knowledge and belief, according to which knowledge implies a capacity for truth not necessarily present in belief, while belief implies a tendency toward certain behavior not necessarily present in knowledge. Knowledge is truth-dependent; belief depends on fidelity to a dispositional stereotype for having that belief. But since dispositional stereotypes vary more than truth, it follows that there would be less agreement in the attribution of belief as compared to knowledge.
Having separated knowledge from belief, however, Eric and Blake stop short of accounting for its relative consistency. Moving ahead, knowledge reconnects with belief at a deeper level, where tendency spreads out and surpasses human behavior. For if humans have a tendency to behave according to dispositional stereotypes, the same can also be said about the world at large. One forms the basis for the attribution of belief, the other for the attribution of law. Law is nothing other than inhuman belief. Knowledge then emerges as attunement between inhuman belief, on the one hand, and a human tendency toward certain behavior that may or may not count as belief, on the other.
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