PHIL220 - Knowledge, Explanation and Understanding Lachlan Hines June 21, 2014 1
Contents I Knowledge 4 1 Overview 5 1.1 Intro.................................. 5 1.1.1 Knowledge.......................... 5 1.1.2 Explanation.......................... 5 1.1.3 Understanding........................ 5 1.2 Readings................................ 5 1.3 Knowledge............................... 6 1.4 Justification.............................. 6 2 The Disease of Scepticism 7 2.1 What is Knowledge.......................... 7 2.2 Justification.............................. 7 2.2.1 Rene Descartes (1595-1650)................. 8 2.2.2 Meditations on First Philosophy.............. 8 3 The Structure of Knowledge 10 3.1 High Expectations.......................... 10 3.2 Lockes Arguments.......................... 11 3.2.1 Argument 1.......................... 11 3.2.2 Argument 2.......................... 11 3.2.3 Argument 3.......................... 11 3.2.4 Argument 4.......................... 11 3.3 The Structure of Knowledge..................... 11 4 Gettier Problems 13 4.1 Gettier s First Case.......................... 13 4.2 Gettiers Second Case......................... 13 4.3 Responses............................... 14 4.4 Possible Criteria........................... 14 II Explanation 16 5 Science, Pseudoscience and Explanation 17 5.1 The Demarcation Problem...................... 17 5.2 Lakatos................................ 17 5.3 Thagard on Astrology........................ 17 5.4 Carnap on Science/Pseudoscience.................. 17 6 Explanation in Science 18 6.1 The Classic View of Explanation.................. 18 6.2 The Deductive-Nomological Model................. 18 6.2.1 Problems with the DN-model................ 18 7 Narrative Explanation 19 2
8 Truth and Explanation 21 8.1 A Simple Theory of Truth...................... 21 8.2 Does Truth Matter?......................... 21 8.3 Cartwright s Argument........................ 22 8.4 The Scarcity of Laws......................... 22 8.5 Combining Laws........................... 22 9 Realism and Anti-Realism 23 9.1 Why Anti-Realism.......................... 23 9.1.1 Classical Empericism..................... 23 9.2 Are Neutrino s Real?......................... 24 9.3 Why Realism............................. 24 9.3.1 The Miracle Argument.................... 24 9.4 Convergent Realism......................... 24 10 Objectivity 25 10.1 Kinds of Objectivity......................... 25 10.1.1 Objectivity and perspective................. 25 10.1.2 Objectivity and Preference................. 25 10.1.3 Objective Procedures.................... 25 10.2 Objectivity in Science........................ 25 10.3 Thomas Khun............................. 26 III Understanding 28 11 What is Understanding 29 11.1 Understanding and Unity...................... 29 11.2 Knowledge Without Understanding................. 29 11.3 Understanding and Necessity.................... 30 11.4 The Value of Understanding..................... 30 11.4.1 Transparency......................... 30 11.4.2 Mirroring........................... 30 11.4.3 Achievement......................... 30 11.5 Understanding and Instruction................... 30 12 Why? 31 12.1 The Evolution of Science....................... 31 12.1.1 The Tracking Hypothesis.................. 31 12.1.2 Other Origins?........................ 32 12.2 Explanation and Babies....................... 32 12.3 The Argument............................ 32 3
1 Overview 1.1 Intro 1.1.1 Knowledge What is knowledge? How do we get it? What di culties might we encounter along the way? 1.1.2 Explanation What is an explanation? What are di erent ways of explaining things? Explanations can be hard to explain themselves There are multiple types of explanations which we ll be exploring. E.g, equations and diagrams When are explanations good explanations? Conspiracy theories are a great example of competing explanations. 1.1.3 Understanding When do we understand something? Maybe when we know it? Maybe when we can explain it? What is the value of understanding? Why is it important? How does it help us? Why do we crave these three things as a species? How did that evolve? 1.2 Readings Read carefully and slowly. Take your time and digest properly. Always ask yourself what the argument is. If you don t understand something, try and explain to yourself why you don t understand. Talk to others in the class and feel free to ask Patrick for help if you know why you don t understand. Come to class with these questions about the readings. It ll help the entire class to understand better. Someone else probably won t understand either, probably half of the class. All of the authors have spent plenty of time thinking about KEU but they MAY BE WRONG! We need to be sure we understand them, but their writing are not gospel. We try and give our friends positive feedback, think the same way about the readings. These are carefully thought out, try to appreciate it and work out where and why they are wrong if we believe that they are. 5
2 The Disease of Scepticism 2.1 What is Knowledge We are focusing on propositional Knowledge in this subject. Examples of propositional knowledge include knowledge that 2+2=4 and that fire melts snow. We must ask when we know a something? When do we actually have knowledge. We can describe knowledge as follows (though it is not the only way): I am right to say that I know S when: 1. I believe S. (Belief) 2. S is true. (Truth) 3. I have good reasons for believing S. (Justification) Suppose it s true that Roberto Luongo was traded to the Panthers last week. Sandy has never heard of Luongo, or the Panthers, and has no opinions about any trades last week. Sandy clearly doesn t know Luongo was traded as she doesn t have any beliefs about the trade. Suppose that the Earth isn t flat, but Kim thinks that is is. Kim will say, Yes, the Earth is definitely flat. After all, it looks flat. Yet Kim doesn t know that the earth is flat, because the Earth is not flat. Her belief is not true. Kim does know that she believes that the Earth is flat, she does not however, know that the Earth is flat. This is an important distinction. Suppose Kim believes that a flipped coin will land heads, and it does. Kim might have known, maybe the coin was weighted, or both sides were heads, but if the coin was a normal coin, flipped fairly, she just got lucky. Knowledge requires justification, normally in the form of evidence, but we must ask ourselves what kind of evidence is actually su cient. From this, we can say that Knowledge requires justified, true beliefs. Maybe we can have a JTB and still not have knowledge? We ll look at that in the next lecture but for now, we re going to look at justification 2.2 Justification The problem of scepticism is that Knowledge requires justification, but none (or few) of our beliefs have the right kind of justification. Ergo, we can t have knowledge. There are three main forms of justification: 1. Perceptual evidence (we see or hear something). 2. Rational/logical evidence (one belief logically flows from another). 3. Evidence from authority (somebody who is probably correct on a topic, tells us something about that topic). One might wonder if there are other types of evidence, but they shall not be covered here. Some people would consider evidence from authority to be a subset of perceptual evidence, though it is easy to make a clear distinction between the. Some people would count memory as a fourth form of justification. There is some current argument over whether it counts as perceptual evidence or not. 7
2.2.1 Rene Descartes (1595-1650) Descartes has the unenviable position of being a very famous person, who most people use as an example of somebody who was wrong about a lot of things (though on in philosophy). He was a mathematician, scientist, soldier and philosopher. He was one of the first people to start dissecting humans, at a time when such actions were frowned. He published on geometry, optics, meteorology and physiology. He wasn t associated with a university (which did exist by this time) but was supported by wealthy patrons. He is often called the father of modern philosophy. He travelled to Sweden in 1649 to tutor the Queen, he died of pneumonia whilst he was there. 2.2.2 Meditations on First Philosophy The first meditation is Descartes seeing how many of his beliefs could be demolished. He wanted to build his knowledge from first principles. He eventually concluded that the only opinion he could not doubt, was that he thought. He then concluded that if he was a thinking being, he had to exist. He wrote this meditation because he wanted his knowledge of the sciences to be something that would last. He wanted to answer scientific questions in such a way, as that they would be easily trusted. He believed that he had to set things on a solid foundation before he could begin to build up a body of knowledge. He was worried that some of his beliefs would turn out to be false, and he wanted to work out which beliefs were reliable. It is important to note here, that Descartes was not being sceptical, he was trying to cure what he called the disease of scepticism. He set out to demolish all of his current beliefs. He dumped all of his beliefs, then sorted through them in an attempt to put the good beliefs back in his mind, as you might do with a basket of apples when you know some are rotten. Descartes decided to attempt to cure the strongest form of scepticism possible, as such, he imagines an evil demon that is trying to trick him. He sets out to see what the demon cannot possibly be tricking him about. This is called the method of radical doubt. Descartes did not believe that the demon actually existed, he merely used this demon as a device to help him solve his problem (much like Maxwell and his entropic demon). The pragmatic response to Descartes meditation is that if we are being deceived, then we have no idea what the world is really like, so the best thing to do is act as if the world really is at it seems. In Descartes second meditation, he sets out to find what he cannot deny. He concludes that if he is being deceived, then he must exist. He says, I am, I exist is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind. This is often worded as I think there I am. Descartes has reached this point by use of a conjunctive syllogism. The argument is known as the cogito. Now that I know that I exist, I have to ask some more questions: 8