Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Conceptual Analysis and Moral Theory - Less Wrong

60 Post author: lukeprog 16 May 2011 06:28AM

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Comment author: Oscar_Cunningham 16 May 2011 11:56:23AM *  4 points [-]

PS: Very Tarskian and Bayesian of them, but are you sure they didn't say, "A belief in X is knowledge if one would never have it whenever not-X"?

I'm thinking of Robert Nozick's definition. He states his definition thus:

  1. P is true
  2. S believes that P
  3. If it were the case that (not-P), S would not believe that P
  4. If it were the case that P, S would believe that P

(I failed to remember condition 1, since 2 & 3 => 1 anyway)

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 16 May 2011 09:57:35PM *  2 points [-]

(3) If it were the case that (not-P), S would not believe that P

(4) If it were the case that P, S would believe that P

I'm genuinely surprised. Condition 4 seems blatantly unnecessary and I had thought analytic philosophers (and Nozick in particular) more competent than that. Am I missing something?

Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 17 May 2011 12:07:58AM *  0 points [-]

Your hunch is right. Starting on page 179 of Nozick's Philosophical explanations, he address counterexamples like the one that Will Sawin proposed. In response, he gives a modified version of his criteria. As near as I can tell, my first counterexample still breaks it, though.

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