Card 2.1 · Root II — Epistemology
Theories of Knowledge
What has to be added to a true belief to make it knowledge?
This question asks what separates knowing something from merely believing it, even when the belief happens to be true.
On this card
Where it sits
Under II. Epistemology. Contains 2.1.1 The Gettier problem. Borders 2.3 Structure of justification, 2.5 Truth.
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Narrower questions under this one:
The rival answers
| Position | The third ingredient |
|---|---|
| Justified true belief | Adequate reasons for the belief |
| Reliabilism | Production by a reliable process, whatever the believer can cite |
| Virtue epistemology | The belief's truth is creditable to the believer's intellectual character |
| Causal theory | The fact known caused the belief |
| Safety accounts | The belief could not easily have been false |
| Knowledge-first | Knowledge is basic and cannot be analysed into components |
Where do you stand?
What has to be added to a true belief to make it knowledge?
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Key figures
| Figure | Dates | Tradition | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plato | c. 428–348 BCE | Greek | Posed the question; true belief plus an account |
| Gautama (Akṣapāda) | trad. c. 2nd c. CE | Indian Nyaya | Valid cognition defined by its means of production |
| Ibn al-Haytham | c. 965–1040 | Islamic | Knowledge tested by controlled observation |
| Edmund Gettier | 1927–2021 | Analytic | Three pages that broke the standard analysis |
| Alvin Goldman | 1938–2024 | Analytic | Reliabilism |
| Timothy Williamson | b. 1955 | Analytic | Knowledge-first epistemology |
Talk about it here
Conversations about this question in Knowledge & belief:
- Knowledge-first epistemology is surrender dressed up as a theory 6 replies
- My father knew which cedar beam would split. He could never say how. Did he know? 6 replies
- Nāgārjuna asked what proves the means of knowledge. Is that Agrippa’s trilemma in Sanskrit? 6 replies
- Reliabilism has a machine problem: reliable prediction is not knowledge 6 replies
- I know within ten seconds whether a room will laugh, but I can’t say how. Does that count as knowing? 5 replies
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Connections
→ 2.1.1, 2.3 · ↔ 2.5, 2.2, 2.4, 6.17 · ◇ justified true belief, reliabilism, virtue epistemology, knowledge-first · ○ Axial Age; Modern; Table 3
→ depends on · ↔ borders: genuine overlap, neither prior · ◇ answered by: points from question to answers · ○ appears in: points to the timeline and the comparisons
The full card is in the book
In The Coordinates of Thought this card goes on to a worked example that sets the answers against one case, and to where the question touches daily life — page 86.