True Belief plus Adequate Information: strengthening Foley’s View
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15448/1984-6746.2015.3.24284Keywords:
Knowledge. Information. Relevance.Abstract
In When is Knowledge True Belief? (2012), Richard Foley offers an original and extraordinarily simple theory of knowledge which intends to overcome its rivals and reorient the theory of knowledge: a subject S knows some proposition p if and only if S truly believes that p and does not lack any important information. Michael Hannon, in his article “Is True Belief Knowledge Plus Adequate Information?” (2013), puts forward an objection to Foley’s view which charges him of offering a circular argument that fails to distinguish important information from unimportant information without ultimately making reference to knowledge. I believe the theory presented by Foley is on the right track; however, it is incomplete. In this article I present a subjective interpretation of epistemic relevance, originally proposed by Floridi, which is capable of complementing the view proposed by Foley and to reject the objection presented by Hannon.
Downloads
References
AUMANN, R. J. Agreeing to Disagree. In: Annals of Statistics, 4:6 (1976), p. 1236-1239. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1214/aos/1176343654
COHEN, J. Some Steps Towards a General Theory of Relevance. In: Synthese, 101 (1994), p. 171-185. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01064016
DRETSKE Fred. Knowledge and the Flow of Information. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1981.
FLORIDI, L. Information. In: FLORIDI, L. (ed.). The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Computing and Information. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004. p. 40-61. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/b.9780631229193.2003.00006.x
______. Outline of a Theory of Strongly Semantic Information. In: Minds and Machines, 14:2 (2004), p. 197-222. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/B:MIND.0000021684.50925.c9
______. The Logic of Being Informed. In: Logique et Analyse, 49:196 (2006), p. 433-460.
______. Understanding Epistemic Relevance. In: Erkenntnis, 69 (2008), p. 69-92. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-007-9087-5
FOLEY, R. When is True Belief Knowledge? Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2012. DOI: https://doi.org/10.23943/princeton/9780691154725.001.0001
GAIFMAN, H. A Theory of Higher-Order Probabilities. In: SKYRMS, B.; HARPER, W. (eds.). Causation, Chance and Credence. London-Ontario: University of Western Ontario Press, 1988. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2863-3_11
GETTIER, Edmund. Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? In: Analysis, 23 (1963), p. 121-123. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/23.6.121
GOLDMAN, Alvin. Discrimination and Perceptual Knowledge. In: The Journal of Philosophy, 73 (1976), p. 771-791. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/2025679
HANNOM, Michael. Is True Belief Knoeldeg Plus Adequate Information? In: Erkenntnis, 79:5 (2014), p. 1069-1076. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-013-9593-6
HARSANYI, J. Games with Incomplete Information Played by ‘Bayesian’ Players – Parts 1, 2, 3. In: Management Science, 14 (1968), p. 159-182, 320-334, 486-502. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.14.3.159
JAMES, W. The Will to Believe. In: New World, 5 (1896), p. 327-347.
LEHRER, Keith. Theory of Knowledge. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1990. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198248507.003.0011
LITTLE-JOHN, Clayton. Review: When is True Belief Knowledge? In: Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, (2012).
PRITCHARD, D. Epistemic Luck. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007. (Also PRITCHARD, D. Epistemic Luck. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.)
RADFORD, Colin. Knowledge – By Examples. In: Analysis, 27 (1966), p. 1-11. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/27.1.1
STRAWSON, P. Identifying Reference and Truth-Value. In: Theoria, 30 (2), p. 96-118. Reimpresso in: STRAWSON, P. Logicolinguistic papers. London: Methuen, 1971. p. 75-95.) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1755-2567.1964.tb00404.x
WILLIAMS, B. Deciding to Believe. In: WILLIAMS, B. (ed.). Problems of the Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973. p. 136-151. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511621253.011
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright
The submission of originals to Revista Veritas implies the transfer by the authors of the right for publication. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication. If the authors wish to include the same data into another publication, they must cite Revista Veritas as the site of original publication.
Creative Commons License
Except where otherwise specified, material published in this journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, which allows unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original publication is correctly cited. Copyright: © 2006-2020 EDIPUCRS</p
