Introduction

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Epistemology is concerned with 3 primary questions:

• What is knowledge?
• How do we get knowledge?
• What justifies a belief and makes it knowledge?

Some background on Socrates

• ~470 - 399 BC
• Trial recounted by Plato in the Apology. Accused of "not worshipping the gods whom the State worships and of corrupting the youth."
• Events of his execution in Plato's Crito and Phaedo.

Some Background on Plato

• 428-348 BC
• Relatively wealthy student of Socrates
• Was present at the trial of Socrates
• Founded the Academy
• Opposed, as did Socrates, the Sophists.
• Most notable student was Aristotle
• His school, and his dialogues, demonstrate the dialectic. This dialetical method reveals the sense of Plato that knowledge is socially found and communicated.

Knowledge in the Theatetus (selection)

• Socrates pushes Theatetus to try to define the essence of knowledge -- that is, whatever makes all knowledge, knowledge.
• Theatetus's first answer is: knowledge is true belief.
• Socrates points out that sophists convince people using any demagogery available to them. If they convince, say, a jury to make a correct verdict, but do so with a false appeal, this definition would mean that the jury had knowledge.
• Theatetus and Socrates consider the idea that knowledge is true belief with an account (logos). They then consider (in this selection) two notions of "account" or logos:
  1. The account (logos) is knowing the primitive parts of a thing. But: Socrates points out that you don't really understand a primitive part unless you know its role in general.
  2. Another sense of account is being able to distinguish a thing. But: I am familiar with many things and am unable to say how they are unique! This definition also appears circular, since it seems to require that: knowledge about x = correct belief about x along with knowledge about what distinguishes x from other things.
• Socrates concludes that we do not yet know what knowledge is.
• HOWEVER: since Plato's time, philosophers have recognized that knowledge is (at least) justified true belief. The task then becomes discerning what justifies a true belief and makes it knowledge.

Internalism and Externalism
Some later philosophers rejected the idea that we need to be able to justify a belief in order for it to be knowledge, and proposed instead that if a true belief is acquired in a way that is reliable (for example) that is sufficient. This led to a useful distinction:

• (epistemic) Internalism: the view that, in order for a true belief to be knowledge, we must be able to explain why it is justified.
• (epistemic) Externalism: the view that a true belief can be knowledge even if we cannot explain why it is justified, if that belief arose in the right way. (This is typically because one might argue that the source of the belief is reliable, even if we do not know why.)