H2_Knowledge_and_Inquiry_Summary

H2 Knowledge and Inquiry Summary   Prepared by Quince Pan (17A15)     Dear reader,     I tried to be as comprehensive as I could in my coverage   of the topics, but when the philosophy gets too dense   and deep, I stopped following it down the rabbit hole.   The pursuit of knowledge is best done when sanity is   preserved. For the A-Levels, this should be enough.     All the best!     Quince :D         Youth should be awed, possessed, as with a sense   Religious, of what holy joy there is   In knowledge if it be sincerely sought   For its own sake — in glory, and in praise,   If but by labour won, and to endure.     William Wordsworth   The Prelude ​ (1805)       Basic Epistemology   https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/   Definition of   knowledge   Justified, True Belief (JTB)   or Power, if you are Foucault   Sources of   knowledge   Perception, Reason, Introspection, Memory, Testimony   Theories of truth   Correspondence Theory of Truth   A belief is true if it corresponds to reality.   Problems:   ● Taking one step back: is the correspondence theory (a belief is true if it   corresponds to reality) true? If yes, what in reality does it correspond to?   ● Ethical statements don’t correspond to any fact. They are values.     Coherence Theory of Truth   A belief is true if it fits in a consistent web of beliefs.   Problems:   ● A belief can cohere with other beliefs and yet have no real evidence to support it.     Pragmatic Theory of Truth (William James)   A belief is considered true if it enables us to make accurate predictions of the future   experiences. Seeking correspondent truth is futile, so this is the best bet.   Problems:   ● Unreasonable beliefs can work. Pragmatism ignores causation, so coincidences   can be truths. (e.g. Every Tuesday, a bird shits on a rubbish bin. Also, the trash   gets cleared every Tuesday. The belief that “the trash is magically cleared   because the bird shits on the rubbish bin” works as an explanation.)   ● Past scientific paradigms “worked”, but have since been disproven.     Instrumentalist Theory of Truth (John Dewey)   A belief is true if it is useful and fecund.   Problems:   ● Effectively, truth is replaced by utility.

● Knowledge is a means to an end, not an end in itself.   Gettier problem   Edmund Gettier (1963)   The Gettier problem is a major challenge to JTB and internalist theories of justification.     Bertrand Russell’s Broken Clock (1948)   A clock ran out of battery and stopped at 12:15 pm. One week later, coincidentally also at   12:15 pm, someone looked at the clock, and concluded that it is 12:15 pm now (which is   actually true). Does this person know that it is 12:15 pm by looking at the broken clock?     Attempts to resolve the Gettier problem:   ● JTB+X definitions of knowledge   ● JTB, with externalist justification   ● Fallibilism: justification is impossible   Theories of   justification   Agrippa’s Trilemma   All justification has one of the following problems:   1.