AnlamK comments on Conceptual Analysis and Moral Theory - Less Wrong

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

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (456)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 16 May 2011 01:18:16PM *  19 points [-]

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

There is a reason why the Gettier rabbit-hole is so dangerous. You can always cook up an improbable counterexample to any definition.

For example, here is a counterexample to Nozick's definition as you present it. Suppose that I have irrationally decided to believe everything written in a certain book B and to believe nothing not written in B. Unfortunately for me, the book's author, a Mr. X, is a congenital liar. He invented almost every claim in the book out of whole cloth, with no regard for the truth of the matter. There was only one exception. There is one matter on which Mr. X is constitutionally compelled to write and to write truthfully: the color of his mother's socks on the day of his birth. At one point in B, Mr. X writes that his mother was wearing blue socks when she gave birth to him. This claim was scrupulously researched and is true. However, there is nothing in the text of B to indicate that Mr. X treated this claim any differently from all the invented claims in the book.

In this story, I am S, and P is "Mr. X's mother was wearing blue socks when she gave birth to him." Then:

  1. P is true. (Mr. X's mother really was wearing blue socks.)

  2. S believes that P. (Mr. X claimed P in B, and I believe everything in B.)

  3. If it were the case that (not-P), S would not believe that P. (Mr. X only claimed P in B because that was what his scrupulous research revealed. Had P not been true, Mr. X's research would not have led him to believe it. And, since he is incapable of lying about this matter, he would not have put P in B. Therefore, since I don't believe anything not in B, I would not have come to believe P.)

  4. If it were the case that P, S would believe that P. (Mr. X was constitutionally compelled to write truthfully about what the color of his mother's socks were when he was born. In all possible worlds in which his mother wore blue socks, Mr. X's scrupulous research would have discovered it, and Mr. X would have reported it in B, where I would have read it, and so believed it.)

And yet, the intuitions on which Gettier problems play would say that I don't know P. I just believe P because it was in a certain book, but I have no rational reason to trust anything in that book.


ETA: And here's a counterexample from the other direction — that is, an example of knowledge that fails to meet Nozick's criteria.

Suppose that you sit before an upside-down cup, under which there is a ping-pong ball that has been painted some color. Your job is to learn the color of the ping-pong ball.

You employ the following strategy: You flip a coin. If the coin comes up heads, you lift up the cup and look at the ping-pong ball, noting its color. If the coin comes up tails, you just give up and go with the ignorance prior.

Suppose that, when you flip the coin, it comes up heads. Accordingly, you look at the ping-pong ball and see that it is red. Intuitively, we would say that you know that the ping-pong ball is red.

Nonetheless, we fail to meet Nozick's criterion 4. Had the coin come up tails, you would not have lifted the cup, so you would not have come to believe that the ball is red, even if this were still true.

Comment author: AnlamK 17 May 2011 09:19:52PM *  2 points [-]

There is a reason why the Gettier rabbit-hole is so dangerous. You can always cook up an improbable counterexample to any definition.

That's a very interesting thought. I wonder what leads you to it.

With the caveat that I have not read all of this thread:

*Are you basing this on the fact that so far, all attempts at analysis have proven futile? (If so, maybe we need to come up with more robust conditions.)

*Do you think that the concept of 'knowledge' is inherently vague similar (but not identical) to the way terms like 'tall' and 'bald' are?

*Do you suspect that there may be no fact of the matter about what 'knowledge' is, just like there is no fact of the matter about the baldness of the present King of France? (If so, then how do the competent speakers apply the verb 'to know' so well?)

If we could say with confidence that conceptual analysis of knowledge is a futile effort, I think that would be progress. And of course the interesting question would be why.

It may just be simply that non-technical, common terms like 'vehicle' and 'knowledge' (and of course others like 'table') can't be conceptually analyzed.

Also, experimental philosophy could be relevant to this discussion.

Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 17 May 2011 09:55:07PM *  3 points [-]

There is a reason why the Gettier rabbit-hole is so dangerous. You can always cook up an improbable counterexample to any definition.

That's a very interesting thought. I wonder what leads you to it.

Let me expand on my comment a little: Thinking about the Gettier problem is dangerous in the same sense in which looking for a direct proof of the Goldbach conjecture is dangerous. These two activities share the following features:

  • When the problem was first posed, it was definitely worth looking for solutions. One could reasonably hope for success. (It would have been pretty nice if someone had found a solution to the Gettier problem within a year of its being posed.)

  • Now that the problem has been worked on for a long time by very smart people, you should assign very low probability to your own efforts succeeding.

  • Working on the problem can be addictive to certain kinds of people, in the sense that they will feel a strong urge to sink far more work into the problem than their probability of success can justify.

  • Despite the low probability of success for any given seeker, it's still good that there are a few people out there pursuing a solution.

  • But the rest of us should spend on our time on other things, aside from the occasional recreational jab at the problem, perhaps.

  • Besides, any resolution of the problem will probably result from powerful techniques arising in some unforeseen quarter. A direct frontal assault will probably not solve the problem.

So, when I called the Gettier problem "dangerous", I just meant that, for most people, it doesn't make sense to spend much time on it, because they will almost certainly fail, but some of us (including me) might find it too strong a temptation to resist.

*Are you basing this on the fact that so far, all attempts at analysis have proven futile? (If so, maybe we need to come up with more robust conditions.)

*Do you think that the concept of 'knowledge' is inherently vague similar (but not identical) to the way terms like 'tall' and 'bald' are?

*Do you suspect that there may be no fact of the matter about what 'knowledge' is, just like there is no fact of the matter about the baldness of the present King of France? (If so, then how do the competent speakers apply the verb 'to know' so well?)

Contemporary English-speakers must be implementing some finite algorithm when they decide whether their intuitions are happy with a claim of the form "Agent X knows Y". If someone wrote down that algorithm, I suppose that you could call it a solution to the Gettier problem. But I expect that the algorithm, as written, would look to us like a description of some inscrutably complex neurological process. It would not look like a piece of 20th century analytic philosophy.

On the other hand, I'm fairly confident that some piece of philosophy text could dissolve the problem. In short, we may be persuaded to abandon the intuitions that lie at the root of the Gettier problem. We may decide to stop trying to use those intuitions to guide what we say about epistemic agents.