The Meaning of Knowledge
The lucid ideas in philosophy:
- Know
- Believe
- Proposition
- Justification
Assertion: a linguistic act that has a truth value.
Truth value: the state of being either true, or false, or indeterminate.
Proposition: the content of your assertion.
Belief: propositional attitude of truth.
Justification: evidence or other support, for your belief.
The traditional definition of knowledge:
Knowledge: Justified, True, Belief.
Edmund Gettier proposed Gettier Cases for situations in which one can have justified true belief, but not knowledge. We can encounter the truth, but do not have the knowledge.
Karl Popper introduce science vs. pseudo-science:
- Freud used past to predict the present, always managed to read past different to maintain confirmation of his theory.
- Einstein predicted the future states of affairs.
Science disconfirms, pseudoscience confirms. Irrefutable theory is not science.
Modern scientific method: testable, refutable, and falsifiable.
For Popper, knowledge was about probability and contingency. We only believe things we have reasons for.