The Metaphysics of Philosophy, Knowledge and Morality Chapter 7

Chapter 7

True and justified belief

Gábor Forrai arguably wrote the most comprehensive modern book about knowledge (Contemporary Views on Knowledge). In it, he lists every possible model of knowledge, with arguments for and against each. It turns out that for every argument in favour of knowing something, there is an equally valid counter-argument. On balance, we don't ever have true and justified beliefs, or at least we can't demonstrate that they are true and justified beliefs.

Example: you are standing at the edge of a field and you see a group of whitish wooly, distincly sheep-looking animals. You surmise that they are sheep. You supposedly have a true and justified belief if they are sheep, your eyesight is good enough, and you correctly spot the tell-tale signs that distinguish sheep from other animals. So far so good. Now, suppose someone dressed dogs in sheep hide just to trick you. In this case your eyesight may be correct, you may spot the sheep-specific hide, so you may be justified in thinking that they are sheep, yet you don't have a true belief, because they're actually dogs. Suppose someone dressed sheep in dog hide and something's telling you they're actually sheep, but you can't really say what makes you think so. In that case, you have a true, but unjustified belief. Let's say it's getting dark, you can barely make out the contours of some animals in the field, you suppose they are sheep, and your guess turns out to be correct. In this case again, you have a true but unjustified belief. Now, someone hid the sheep in the field and is projecting a perfectly life-like holographic image of some other sheep and you fall for the trick. You think they are sheep and you can also list the sheep-specific features that make you think so. Do you have a true and justified belief?

Hang on a minute, you might say, can we talk about true and justified belief without defining what these terms mean? You are right, there is an implicit problem here. We have an intuitive idea about what is "true", what is "justified" and what is "belief" for everyday purposes, but we have no ultimate idea of what these are in the ultimate scheme of things (if any). Elevating common-sense knowledge to a seemingly scientific level and then resorting to the everyday common-sense meaning of words (i.e. you know what I'm talking about, don't you?) is a contradiction in terms. In our everyday common-sense world we sort of believe we know things as they sort of truly are and we sort of believe our sort of true sort of knowledge is sort of justified, but that's as good as it gets. Also, how can we assess whether a belief is true and/or justified without someone who has the perfect knowledge of things as they are? Since no being within our reach has this kind of knowledge, any assessment of "truth" and "justification" is impossible.

In conclusion, we don't have ultimately true and justified beliefs about anything. Is that a problem? Yes, if you're looking for ultimate knowledge or pretend to have it. It's not a problem if you're ready to admit that "true", "justified" and "belief" are just poorly understood, vague and unscientific everyday terms.