Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Lesson 1.2: Thinking About Knowledge
13 Plays13 days ago
When a society tears itself apart over beliefs it cannot justify, philosophy steps in to ask what it really means to know anything at all.
Topics explored
- The 16th and 17th centuries were marked by intense religious fanaticism and violence (e.g., the Peasant Rebellion, Münster, the Thirty Years’ War).
- These events pushed thinkers to demand firmer foundations for belief—not mere authority or dogma.
- But agreement proved impossible: philosophers disagreed sharply about what counts as justification and what a belief must rest on to be considered rational.
- Meanwhile, ancient texts and ideas—especially from Plato and the skeptics—were being rediscovered, raising old questions in a new era.
- The lesson introduces epistemology, the study of knowledge, and frames the central issue: What makes a belief justified?
- Plato’s Justified True Belief (JTB) theory sets the stage, but Agrippa’s Regress Argument challenges whether justification is possible at all (the setup for the next steps in the course).
- Pyrrhonian skepticism reappears as a powerful alternative: suspend judgment to achieve ataraxia, tranquility free from dogmatic conflict.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Epistemology
00:00:01
Speaker
Hi everyone and welcome back to this introductory course on philosophy.
What is Epistemology?
00:00:08
Speaker
The first chunk of this course is dedicated to a field of philosophy known as epistemology.
00:00:16
Speaker
Epistemology is just a fancy label. ah What it really means is that we are thinking about knowledge. So that's what we're going to over the next couple of lessons. We will actually begin with some ancient takes on knowledge because they are very influential. So we'll be in ancient Greece.
00:00:38
Speaker
And then we will move into the early modern
Historical Context and Religious Influences
00:00:41
Speaker
period. We're talking about 1500, 1600.
00:00:45
Speaker
thereabouts. And so yeah, let's get started with a little bit of historical context for the early modern period, and then we'll zoom back into the ancient world. So let's start with story time.
00:01:09
Speaker
So again, we are looking at the 16th and 17th centuries primarily in this course, but to understand them, we need to do two things.
00:01:20
Speaker
First, you have to understand what's going on in those years. And second, you have to understand ancient views on knowledge, which will be sort of, you know, explored once more in Europe during this time period.
Impact of Religious Conflicts on Philosophy
00:01:35
Speaker
But let's begin with the historical context here in story time. And it turns out that this time period, many historians of philosophy have recognized, is sort of the high watermark of religiosity, religious fanaticism, and religious violence in parts of Western Europe.
00:01:57
Speaker
Let me give you a couple of events that will kind of show you that things were pretty tense in this time period, religiously speaking. Let's begin with the German Peasant Rebellion in 1524.
00:02:12
Speaker
Now what you have to know for context for this is that a couple of years earlier, 1517, the Protestant Reformation had begun with Martin Luther posting his 95 theses and all that.
00:02:29
Speaker
I talk about that in my philosophy of religion course so I won't talk about that much here. What you need to know is that now many people were interpreting the Bible for themselves and that is different before this time period. The Catholic Church sort of only ran masses in Latin and most people didn't speak Latin and they had, you know, all the Bibles were not in the languages that people would speak, right? Not vernacular languages. The Bibles were also in Latin.
00:03:03
Speaker
So the whole idea here is that now people were reading the Bible for themselves. Bibles were being printed in English and German and what have you. And so some people saw the language of the Bible and they saw what their society looked like.
00:03:19
Speaker
And they thought that the Bible suggests a much more egalitarian picture than the world that they're currently living in. And so what they did is they revolted against you know the authority
Philosophical Responses to Religious Wars
00:03:33
Speaker
figures.
00:03:33
Speaker
The basic idea here that you want to realize is that this was very much religiously motivated. a sort of Protestant interpretationist ethos was what was fueling the Germans' sense of indignation.
00:03:52
Speaker
And on the other side, by the way, this is a time period where Christians are doing horrible things to other Christians. The Catholics who believed in the traditional authority of the church, they took part in suppressing this rebellion. So you can see tensions on both sides of the aisle here, if you want to think about it that way.
00:04:15
Speaker
How about the Munster Rebellion? Well, once more, people were interpreting the Bible for themselves. And what happened in Munster is that some people decided, you know what?
00:04:27
Speaker
I think the Bible says that we ought to live communally. So they tried this out in Munster. They actually chased out the authorities of the town and started living communally. And they had no private property and all that.
00:04:44
Speaker
But next thing you know, is some of the leaders of this rebellion, they decided we have to also share spouses and things got freaky and well, you know,
00:04:58
Speaker
The authority figures, the traditional authority figures, they were chased out, but they got some help from neighboring ah towns and and principalities.
00:05:10
Speaker
And they were able to break back into the town of Munster and take control back from these rebellious thinkers. And once again, this was a religiously motivated event.
00:05:24
Speaker
On the one hand, some people were interpreting the Bible in a radically ah different way. Maybe it's accurate, but it was very different than the way society was at the time. And on the other side of things, the more traditionalist people were interpreting the Bible the way it had been interpreted for a long time.
00:05:45
Speaker
And so they felt justified in suppressing this rebellion as well. Maybe the most dramatic example of religious violence is the Thirty Years' War.
00:05:56
Speaker
If you are not familiar with this event, it's sometimes called Europe's tragedy. Basically, Protestants and Catholics fought it out for a couple of decades.
00:06:07
Speaker
And the death toll at the end of it all was pretty gnarly. i mean, we're talking about maybe 50% of the population eradicated in parts Germany.
00:06:19
Speaker
you know eradicated in some parts of germany That's obviously not good. That is tragic and scary and maybe in a sense disappointing because again, these are Christians killing other Christians.
00:06:36
Speaker
And so what some thinkers began ponder ponder is something like this, right? These events inspired these thinkers to argue that our beliefs need to be supported by more than just faith and dogma.
00:06:53
Speaker
Again, Christians were doing horrible things to other Christians because they believed on faith that their views were the right ones and the other people's views were wrong.
00:07:05
Speaker
And so these philosophers started to realize that blind fanaticism is probably not a good idea. Blind fanaticism leads to bloodshed.
00:07:17
Speaker
And so how do you fix this? Well, the thought was among some thinkers that you need to get rid of religious dogmatism. You can't just assert something and believe it willy-nilly.
00:07:32
Speaker
You have to defend your beliefs and you do that by setting up a strong, rational foundation for what you believe. And so that is the project that many philosophers of this time period
Core Epistemological Questions
00:07:47
Speaker
were it taking up. And they wanted to help people, right? They thought to themselves, we can maybe avoid some of the massacres that we've been seeing that are in recent historical memory by simply really being careful about what we believe by having rational justifications for what we believe.
00:08:10
Speaker
Now, the problem is that they sharply disagreed, these philosophers, on what those rational foundations for our beliefs ought to be.
00:08:22
Speaker
In other words, mean, they couldn't even agree on what it means to justify a belief. What counts as a justification? What's the ideal way to justify our beliefs?
00:08:36
Speaker
Funnily enough, these debates, as these philosophers were having them, they sort of rhymed with some debates that were happening in the ancient world or that had happened in the ancient world.
00:08:48
Speaker
In fact, as these thinkers collided, you could see that old ideas were stirring beneath the surface. Because it turns out that the questions that haunted these philosophers, they had already been asked long, long time ago.
00:09:09
Speaker
in a world that was just beginning to be rediscovered by them. Of course, we're speaking of the ancient world. And so today, the rest of this lesson, we will cover some ancient views on knowledge. And then after this, we'll jump into views from the early modern period. So let's get into some important concepts so you can understand these ancient views Let's begin with the branch itself.
00:09:41
Speaker
Epistemology is a branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and limits of knowledge. So that means that epistemic philosophers cover questions like, what is truth?
00:09:53
Speaker
What is knowledge? How do we know what we know? What are the limits to what we can know? As we know, philosophy has different has been different things at different times. I should stress that to today, the way that epistemic philosophers are to sort of see their job is that they're looking at the best belief-forming practices.
00:10:18
Speaker
In other words, they're looking for what the right method for acquiring true beliefs is. There's lots of views and we will cover a couple from the early modern period, but that's the basic idea of epistemology today.
00:10:35
Speaker
Now we will cover ancient views in this lesson, but after this lesson, it's gonna be a lot more similar to the more modern takes.
Plato's JTB Theory and Examples
00:10:45
Speaker
Okay, here's the very next thing wanna do.
00:10:49
Speaker
and it's a little bit of food for thought because I want you to realize just how weird this whole practice is. It is not normal to think about knowledge. It just, here's the whole idea, I guess, if I could say it in a nutshell.
00:11:07
Speaker
we tend to think maybe be implicitly without even realizing that we already know what knowledge is because we sort of see the world and you know our minds sort of auto-correct this for us. We don't actually think to ourself, how do I know what I know? We just kind of implicitly, automatically, mechanically impose upon reality a way of looking at the world.
00:11:37
Speaker
So it actually takes some effort to think about epistemology, but we'll have to focus on arguments for and against certain views to see whether or not they're good.
00:11:48
Speaker
By the way, everything I'm saying is exactly in line with what Richard DeWitt says in his introduction to the history and philosophy of science.
00:11:59
Speaker
everything that I said right now, DeWitt says as well that we tend to take epistemic matters for granted. We don't put much thought into them. So he actually says that we don't even notice that our dictionaries are guilty of circular reasoning. Let's just say that you go to your dictionary and you want to see what the definition of truth is.
00:12:22
Speaker
And it says, well, you know, you know want to know what the truth is. It's just facts. That's what the truth is. Okay. Fair enough. So then you flip over to the entry for fact, because maybe you don't know what facts are.
00:12:35
Speaker
And you know what it says? Things that are true. hope you can see that that is not very helpful at all. That is defining things in a circular way.
00:12:47
Speaker
You're defining one definition in terms of a second and that second one in terms of the first one. That doesn't work unless you already know the definition of one of those terms.
00:12:59
Speaker
I hope you can see that. Well, the term knowledge is perhaps even trickier because knowledge assumes that A, you know what truth means.
00:13:12
Speaker
and b that you have some theory for when a human mind has captured the truth. In other words, when you're thinking about knowledge, you have to explain at least two things.
00:13:24
Speaker
What is truth and what does it mean for someone to say they know the truth, that they have access to this truth? So we're going talk about that and we're going to look at two views on that matter.
00:13:40
Speaker
The first theory that we'll be covering is again, very old. It's so old, in fact, it comes from Plato. It comes from one of his dialogues actually.
00:13:52
Speaker
And so we're talking at least 2300 years ago. Now, let me put an asterisk on this comment real quick. I should say that it is not clear that Plato actually believed this view.
00:14:08
Speaker
Plato is kind of a slippery fish. So let me tell you a little bit about him. Plato is probably Socrates' most famous student. Here we can see Plato at the seat of this bed when Socrates is about to drink the hemlock because he was put to death.
00:14:29
Speaker
Plato, by the way, in this picture should be a young man, but whatever, let's not talk about that. I'll put a video up so you can kind of see why this image describes or depicts Plato as ah an older man. He would have been a young man when he was Socrates' student. In any case,
00:14:48
Speaker
Plato wrote in dialogue form. He had little philosophical plays, if you want to put it that way. And it is not exactly clear what he meant by these plays. did he Was he trying to get you to think about things, not really press any one view upon you, but sort of get you to explore different philosophical ideas?
00:15:12
Speaker
Or was he in fact trying to tell you what he believed and you actually have to listen to one of the characters to figure out what Plato believed? Or maybe he had different views in the beginning. He had one set of views and later on he had a different set of views.
00:15:28
Speaker
Who knows? There's a lot of debate about what Plato really believed. We will have a lesson on Plato eventually, but for now, let's just kind of leave them shrouded in mystery. That's very befitting for a Plato.
00:15:43
Speaker
And instead, just think about his view, which we will call the JTB theory of knowledge. Correction, let's think about this view, right? It's not necessarily Plato's.
00:15:55
Speaker
Okay, let's talk the way epistemic philosophers talk. It's very technical, and then I'll give you a more down-to-earth way of thinking about this, but let's start with this technical version.
00:16:09
Speaker
A subject S knows a proposition P, a thought P, if and only if P is true. This proposition, this thought is true.
00:16:24
Speaker
S, this subject actually believes that proposition P. And S is justified in believing that proposition p Okay, so you can think of this like a list of criteria.
00:16:40
Speaker
The thought actually has to be true. The person actually has to believe that thought. And the person has to have good reasons for believing that thought. So in other words, knowledge is justified true belief.
00:16:55
Speaker
Now I know what you want. You want an example. I'll give you an example. Let's think here about Lisa Simpson. Now if you don't know about The Simpsons, here's what you need to know.
00:17:07
Speaker
Lisa is a very studious girl. She's always reading a book and she does very well in school.
00:17:16
Speaker
Let's say we go up to Lisa and we ask something like, hey, Lisa, what do you know? And Lisa says to us, I know a neutral carbon atom has four valence electrons.
00:17:29
Speaker
Very cool, maybe a strange thing to say, but hey, we asked a strange question. So we wanna test this knowledge claim. And so if we're following the JTB theory, the subject is Lisa. So in that sentence, I refers to the subject Lisa.
00:17:50
Speaker
And the proposition is what comes after know that. So in this case, a neutral carbon atom has four valence electrons. That is a full declarative thought. That means it is either true or false. And so now we can actually use the JTP theory as sort of a checklist.
00:18:12
Speaker
Okay, first question. Is the proposition P true? Is it true that a neutral carbon atom has four valence electrons? Well, that is in fact true. Now you can either take my word for it or go ask your chemistry teacher. Trust me, I am not the person to ask how this works. But that criterion is definitely checked off. That is true.
00:18:38
Speaker
What's next? Does S believe P? In other words, does Lisa actually believe the proposition neutral carbon atom has four valence electrons?
00:18:50
Speaker
Well, that is also the case. We literally just asked her and she was ah able to say that right off the top of her head. so yeah, odds are she definitely believes it.
00:19:03
Speaker
Does Lisa have good reason for believing in that proposition? Well, here we would have to say yes. Again, it seems like she probably got it from a textbook or maybe from a reliable chemistry teacher.
00:19:15
Speaker
And so she has good reasons based off the authority of either a text or a person for believing that a neutral carbon atom has four valence electrons. In other words,
00:19:27
Speaker
This counts as knowledge, right? This knowledge claim is, if we want to call it valid, right? There is a sense in which we know that Lisa knows this claim.
00:19:39
Speaker
Okay, cool. That's how the JTP theory works.
Introduction to Pyrrhonian Skepticism
00:19:43
Speaker
And so far, so good, right? It seems like a good enough theory.
00:19:49
Speaker
Well, let's now think about Lisa's brother, Bart, and we will see that maybe the JTV theory does have something going for it. Because if you don't watch The Simpsons, Bart is not very studious and he's actually famous for getting in trouble a whole lot in school. So let's say that Bart is taking a test and ah conveniently for us,
00:20:15
Speaker
the way that the test is phrased is as follows. I know that a neutral carbon atom has five valence electrons, b a neutral nitrogen atom has four valence electrons, c a neutral carbon atom has four valence electrons, or d a neutral hydrogen atom has no valence electrons.
00:20:42
Speaker
Well, Bart has no idea. So what do you do when you don't know the answer? Of course, you pick C, right? So that's exactly what Bart did. He picked C, a neutral carbon atom has four valence electrons.
00:20:56
Speaker
And lo and behold, we can sort of treat this like a knowledge claim. Now we're grading his test and Bart is telling us that he knows C is true. So let's treat it that way.
00:21:08
Speaker
Bart is saying to us, I know that a neutral carbon atom has four valence electrons. Okay, so let's bust out the JTP theory and see if this knowledge claim actually counts as knowledge.
00:21:23
Speaker
Bart is now the subject. The proposition is the same. And of course, our set of criteria is the same. Is the proposition P true? Well, yeah. It doesn't stop being true just because Bart says it.
00:21:38
Speaker
Does S actually believe P? Does Bart believe that a neutral carbon atom has four valence electrons? Probably not, right?
00:21:50
Speaker
He just picked it out of a hat. I bet you if we were to ask him again what he actually selected on the test, he might not really know. So we're going to go ahead and say no to that one.
00:22:03
Speaker
And is Barth justified in believing that proposition? Well, no, it doesn't seem like it because for starters, he probably doesn't believe it.
00:22:14
Speaker
But secondly, even if he did believe it, even if he did remember that's what he chose, odds are he doesn't have any good explanation for why he believes that. He doesn't remember reading it in a chemistry book. I doubt he ever actually opened his chemistry book.
00:22:30
Speaker
And he wasn't paying much attention to his teacher. So he has no good reason for believing that proposition. Therefore, this is not knowledge. It does not count as a valid knowledge claim.
00:22:45
Speaker
And well, it seems like a pretty good theory, right? This view that Plato mentions in one of his dialogues, which I'm sure many of his students at his school, the academy, would talk about and debate and stuff.
00:23:01
Speaker
Maybe there's something to it, right? It seems to work. Well, the thing about ancient Athens though, is that Plato's academy wasn't the only school in town, literally.
00:23:14
Speaker
There were many other competing schools and competing schools of thought. And well, let's walk down the streets of Athens now to go find another way of thinking about knowledge.
00:23:28
Speaker
This one coming from a view known as Pyronian skepticism.
00:24:18
Speaker
Okay, so we've been walking around the ancient world and lo and behold, we have found a Pyronian skeptic to chat with. Let me give you ah bit of context so you can understand Pyronism a little bit better.
00:24:37
Speaker
Let's assume that the year is like, you know, it's we're in the 200s BCE, let's say. So it's about 100 years after Plato first opened his academy.
00:24:48
Speaker
And we are in a time period that is known by historians as the Hellenistic Age. What in the world is the Hellenistic Age?
00:25:00
Speaker
It begins around 323
00:25:05
Speaker
That is a day that one of the greatest conquerors of this era dies, Alexander the Great. And this is important because Alexander conquered a whole lot of territory.
00:25:19
Speaker
And once he died, his generals and other people in his court, ah well, they couldn't keep the empire together. They started fighting with each other. And essentially, big chunks of land were run by Greeks at this point. All the different generals and people in Alexander's court divider divided up the empire for themselves.
00:25:43
Speaker
What does this mean for philosophy? It means that, again, big chunks of territory are now run by Greeks, which means that Greek thinking starts to make its way throughout the regions.
00:25:59
Speaker
Moreover, ideas from other places now are starting to get blended with Greek thinking. And that is, as far as we can tell, one of the explanations for the view that we're going to cover now, Pyronian skepticism.
00:26:17
Speaker
So this is one of the many philosophical movements that flourished in the Hellenistic age. And Pyronism is a form of radical skepticism.
00:26:30
Speaker
I will explain what that means in a second. Let me just highlight the connection here with Alexander the Great. Pyro Avelis is a philosopher who accompanied Alexander the Great on his campaigns.
00:26:45
Speaker
And in fact, they made it all the way to modern day India. Which means that whatever it was going on over there, Pyro made contact with those ideas.
00:26:59
Speaker
So as far as we can tell, Pyro made contact with early Buddhists. And he spent a couple, you know, some time with them. And when he came back to Greece, eventually...
00:27:11
Speaker
Apparently, he was a completely changed man. So he was Zen, right? In fact, the scholar Christopher Beckwith calls Pyro the Greek Buddha.
00:27:23
Speaker
So you can tell that something unique and different is going on. Okay, let's talk about skepticism. According to Pyronism, beliefs and knowledge are obstacles to inner peace.
00:27:39
Speaker
obstacles to inner peace and tranquility. And that's because beliefs bring with them inclinations towards this or that.
00:27:50
Speaker
And so they add intensity to our mental lives. Let me give you an example that might work for you. Let's imagine that you think something is good. Maybe it's good to get into this school that you want to transfer into, or it's good to get this job that you really want, or it's good to get this romantic partner that you really want to get.
00:28:14
Speaker
Once you believe that that is good, oh, I should do that. I want that. I should do that. That would be a good thing for me. Once you believe those things, Then there's a sort of intensity now. Now there's more of a longing, right?
00:28:31
Speaker
I really need to get into that school. I really want to be with this person. I really want this job. I need this job. And so these are inclinations you want, you desire, you need.
00:28:45
Speaker
But the fact is, you don't always get what you want. you don't even always get what you need even when those needs are real needs, right? So these beliefs in thinking that something will be good for you are sort of just adding anxiety to your life.
00:29:06
Speaker
So what the Pyronian skeptic says is that maybe you should not have these beliefs. Beliefs are a problem. What you should do is kind of take a big step back and say, you know,
00:29:19
Speaker
I don't know if it would be good to get into the school. It seems that it would be good to get into the school, but I don't know for sure. And as soon as you kind of take that epistemic step back, you feel sort of a total release of the anxieties. Like, I don't really know. I'm going to try my best. I'm going to do what I can, but it's not clear that I know what's best for me. It seems like it's this, but it might not be.
00:29:47
Speaker
And that is the general idea behind Pyrenism. You don't want beliefs. You think you want beliefs. You think you want knowledge. But they're actually just going to be an obstacle to tranquility. Let me give you another example that might help a little bit more.
00:30:08
Speaker
Think about this. It is your belief that you are right. that causes you to be rattled whenever someone expresses a belief that is contrary to yours.
00:30:20
Speaker
Just think about that for a second. All of us think our opinions are true. And the more true you think it is, the more likely you are to be rattled when someone says something that isn't what you believe.
00:30:35
Speaker
It's just like, yeah, of course I'm right. So if you are saying something else, A, you're wrong and B, i get it I gotta show you that you're wrong and that I'm right. There is like this need that people need to believe what you believe.
00:30:53
Speaker
That's what conviction you know produces. This sort of like moral necessity to put into other people's heads what you believe. But think about all that anxiety, all that tension, all that hostility.
00:31:09
Speaker
To the contrary, you should try to stop believing that you're always right. Because if you don't believe you are right, you can more easily experience the views of others without being upset.
00:31:25
Speaker
There is that tranquility. Now you can be more Zen throughout your day. I hope you can tell that much like Buddhism, Pyranism is a form of philosophical therapy, right? the The whole idea here is that you're aiming to eliminate beliefs because beliefs cause distress.
00:31:48
Speaker
And so by ridding yourself of those beliefs, you can achieve what they called ataraxia, undisturbedness, calmness of mine So the whole idea here, if I could nutshell this for you, is that you want to get rid of any and all beliefs that cause distress on some takes on Pyranism, some versions of Pyranism.
00:32:18
Speaker
That actually is every belief. You ought to get rid of every single belief so that in that way, there is no possible belief that might cause distress.
00:32:30
Speaker
Then you're on the road to ataraxia.
Critiques of JTB and Skepticism
00:32:34
Speaker
Now, how do you produce this absence of belief or what the skeptics might call suspension of judgment?
00:32:44
Speaker
Well, there's actually quite a few methods, but the general idea is that you want to argue both for and against a given belief. And so by arguing for all sides of an issue, you can actually create doubt within yourself. You can actually see, ah, this belief might go this way or that way.
00:33:06
Speaker
it might be true or it might be false. I'm actually not sure. And when you are able to successfully debate or argue for both sides of an issue, you will produce suspension of judgment. It is an outcome of this argumentative process.
00:33:23
Speaker
I hope you can tell that if you were to take Buddhist ideas and transfer them over to Greece where there is a culture of argumentation, this is sort of like a Greek Buddhism. it's kind of interesting, right? So that's what you get when you take Buddhist ideas to Greece.
00:33:41
Speaker
Okay. Well, I want to give you a more laser-like argument here because I want you to see that the Pyronian skeptics, they were right there in Athens with Plato and his academy.
00:33:58
Speaker
So it's definitely the case that some skeptics at some point argued with some people from Plato's academy. What sorts of arguments might have they produced to argue against something like the JTB theory of knowledge?
00:34:14
Speaker
Hey, maybe Plato didn't believe the JTB theory, but maybe some of his students did. So I suspect, as do other scholars, that the skeptics argued against the Platonists at some point.
00:34:30
Speaker
I think one of the arguments that they used is the regress argument. So I will produce this argument for you in a second. But the general idea is to take the very definition of knowledge that Plato gives us and turn it against itself.
00:34:50
Speaker
So let's take a look at that now.
00:34:56
Speaker
Let's do the same thing that we did earlier. Let's cover the argument in the abstract, the view in the abstract, and then I'll give you an example. So here is the first premise of this argument.
00:35:11
Speaker
In order to be justified in believing something, You must have good reasons for believing it. Notice that this is pretty much just the definition of the JTB theory of knowledge.
00:35:26
Speaker
It says, yeah, you need good reasons for something to count as a justified belief, right? So that's all that this really is. Essentially, premise one is stating the JTB theory of knowledge.
00:35:41
Speaker
But then premise two points something premise two points something else out. Good reasons for a belief are themselves justified beliefs.
00:35:53
Speaker
In other words, if you believe something, you need reasons for that belief, right? Well, those reasons for that belief are themselves beliefs that you've somehow justified.
00:36:05
Speaker
So, you support beliefs by other beliefs. Or more accurately, you support justified beliefs with other justified beliefs. You believe one knowledge claim on account of other knowledge claims.
00:36:23
Speaker
Okay, well, so far so good, I guess. That means that, the skeptic says, in order to justifiably believe something, you must believe it on the basis of an infinite amount of good reasons.
00:36:38
Speaker
Why is that? Well, to believe something. a knowledge claim, you need to support it with other knowledge claims, and you need to support those other knowledge claims with still other knowledge claims, and then more knowledge claims to support the reasons for the reasons of the reasons, and next thing you know you're stuck in infinity, right? You're never done justifying your beliefs.
00:37:05
Speaker
Well, obviously no human can have an infinite amount of good reasons, an infinite amount of justified beliefs. It's just not possible. And therefore you can't have justified beliefs, right? Not fully justified beliefs.
00:37:22
Speaker
Obviously, again, the JTB theory of knowledge says that knowledge just is justified a true belief. And so according to this skeptical argument,
00:37:33
Speaker
Knowledge is impossible. Let me say two things here before I move on. mean, we'll go over the argument in more detail, but number one is if you already kind of understand this, you're seeing that they took the definition of JTB theory of knowledge And they said, by your own view, you can never fully justify a belief, which means you can never truly attain knowledge, right? So one way of looking at this is that this is sort of a brilliant argument by the skeptics,
00:38:07
Speaker
to sort of say, you know, I'm just using your own weapons against you and it works. So that's one take you can you know have, maybe a more pro-skeptic take.
00:38:19
Speaker
It doesn't necessarily mean that no ah theory of knowledge works. It just means that this theory of knowledge wasn't as good as we initially thought.
00:38:29
Speaker
You don't have to be a full blown skeptic to accept this. It's just accepting that the skeptics make a good point against this JTB theory. Okay, that's one take.
00:38:41
Speaker
Here's a second take. Maybe you hate this argument. You're like, these skeptics are out of control. What are you talking about? That is nuts. Okay, that's sure. Maybe you don't like it. And so what you have to do is find a flaw in this argument. You literally have to point at a premise, one through, i suppose, four and then six, or one through four in particular, and see that it's wrong. Basically undermine it in some way.
00:39:13
Speaker
So that is your task if you hate this argument and are not currently on the side of the skeptics. Those are your two takes that you can have so far.
00:39:24
Speaker
Okay. Well, let's give another example of this argument in practice, or let's give a first example of this argument in practice so you can see how it works.
00:39:35
Speaker
And then maybe you can decide whether you like it or not. Consider a belief. Let's just say the belief that you're... Oh, how about a belief that my wallet is at home, right? So I'm having this thought.
00:39:51
Speaker
I forgot my wallet. I must have left it at home. So I know that my wallet is at home. I'm sitting on campus having this thought, this belief.
00:40:03
Speaker
Okay. Is that knowledge? Well, according to the JTB theory and the skeptic, if you want to assume the JTB theory is true, then you have to provide those reasons, some reasons for that belief.
00:40:18
Speaker
So I'll give some reasons right now. Okay, what do I got? um Here's the first one. i have a memory of where I left my wallet last and that happens to be at home.
00:40:29
Speaker
So my memory says that my belief that my wallet is at home is accurate. right, here's another reason. I think it's at home because in the past when I've left it at home, people that have access to my house tell me if they're in my house and have picked up my wallet to take it to me. This is actually a true story. One time my wife brought my wallet to me at my place of work because, hey, the absent-minded philosopher, right? That's what I am. So I left my wallet. She texts me, hey, I'm going to take your wallet to you.
00:41:05
Speaker
And presso pasta, my wallet was suddenly on campus. Okay, so but I don't believe she's done that because she hasn't texted me to tell me. And what's another belief that might support this? Oh, here's one.
00:41:17
Speaker
I don't believe anyone's broken into my house to steal my wallet because I have cameras all over the place and my alarm hasn't sounded or anything. So I believe my wallet a is at home. Awesome. Okay.
00:41:31
Speaker
Well, let's take that last one that no one's broken into my house. I need to give reasons for that belief too, because that itself is a knowledge claim. You see?
00:41:43
Speaker
And so I have to give some reasons for that. And I don't know what reasons I'm going to give, you know, because it might be that the Wi-Fi is down or whatever. And so the alarm doesn't work. I'm not even sure that's how alarms work.
00:41:53
Speaker
So that's, you know, I got to give reasons for that belief. I got to give reasons for why, you know, my wife would definitely text me if she took my wallet so she can take it to work for me.
00:42:05
Speaker
So I have to give another set of reasons for the reason, the second reason I gave. And then i have to also give reasons for the first reason I gave. So I have to give reasons for the reasons for my belief.
00:42:22
Speaker
And those are themselves knowledge claims. So I need to give reasons for those too. Okay, so I start giving reasons for that and that explosion of beliefs. That is how the regress argument works. It's just, how do you stop that, right? How do you stop justifying your knowledge claims if every knowledge claim has to be justified?
00:42:50
Speaker
Okay. So this is a debate that was probably had by Platonists and skeptics. And one prominent Platonist, or skeptic, sorry, named Agrippa, basically summarizes for us how this conversation might go between the skeptic and the Platonist.
00:43:11
Speaker
Now, again, Agrippa is a skeptic. He's saying, yeah, knowledge is impossible. So he's going to give us the three ways that a Platonist might respond, and he's going to say none of them work.
00:43:23
Speaker
Okay, here's the first thing that a Platonist might say, someone trying to defend the JTP theory of knowledge. Agrippa says, well, you can start providing justifications, but you're never going to finish because a skeptic can always ask for reasons for whatever the last set of reasons you gave, right? So it basically they basically can keep asking, and why this? And why do you believe that? And why do you believe this?
00:43:51
Speaker
And so that will never end. So that route won't work. Agrippa says that the JTB theory advocates could also say, hey you know what? Some things don't need further justification.
00:44:08
Speaker
But isn't that exactly going against their view. They say knowledge is justified true belief. Justified being the key word there.
00:44:21
Speaker
And so now you're saying, well, you know, I don't need to give justification for some things. Well, that would be a dogma. And by your own view, says Agrippa, that's not okay.
00:44:32
Speaker
You need to give reasons for your beliefs. ah Okay, a third option, if you want to defend the JTV theory, Maybe you could try to assume what you were trying to prove.
00:44:44
Speaker
You can say, well, I mean, ah obviously my, you know, wallet is at home. So therefore my wallet is at home. That, to be honest, that does justify the belief in a weird way, but that is circular, right? We've already seen the problem with circular beliefs. And so that won't work either, right? So that is the pickle.
00:45:11
Speaker
that the person who is defending the JTB theory of knowledge is finding so themselves in. Anyway, by the way, this is called Agrippa's Trilemma, in case you wanted to know.
00:45:26
Speaker
And this is just one of the many skeptical arguments that a Pyronian might provide against basically any other school of philosophy. Because again, their whole idea was Beliefs, you think you want them, but you really don't.
Transition to Early Modern Period
00:45:44
Speaker
And so they had all sorts of ways for arguing against knowledge and against having beliefs in general. They suggested instead, you should just have appearances. This appears to me to be this way, but I'm not really sure.
00:45:59
Speaker
So that's a skeptics. And so those are two views that come from the ancient world and they collide with each other. And you're going to see that when we cover some philosophers from the early modern period in the next couple of lessons, very similar problems will arise.
00:46:23
Speaker
So then let's get into our time machine and mosey on over to the year 1600. sixteen hundred