We need a reliable basis for action
The role of knowledge in the life of the knower
I have previously criticised philosophical approaches to understanding knowledge for forgetting that we know things as humans and assuming a type of objectivity that isn't possible. As noted previously, the most common philosophical approach is to think of knowledge as some kind of justified true belief. That is, we can say A knows that P if, and only if, A has a justified belief that P and P is true.
I have written before that this type of approach only works if we "have an objective method of deciding whether any statement P is true that is independent of the validity of A’s justification for P." But there is no such neutral, objective position available to us. There is a fundamental problem with the type of objectivity that is assumed.
It has since occurred to me that there is another flaw with this way of thinking about knowledge - this time to do with the subjective experience of A, the knower.
Another puzzle
Let's look at a simple example. Imagine you have a friend who bought a bag of apples from the seller they always buy from. They have eaten a couple of apples from the bag and you are currently eating one. They pick up an apple and believe - correctly and with perfectly good justification - that the apple is safe to eat. However, for some reason, your friend has doubts and insists they don’t know it is safe. So, instead of biting into the apple, they start looking at it closely and sniffing it.
It might be their mood, or something about the colour of the apple, but when you ask them about it, they say that they think it is safe but they just don’t know and don’t want to take chances.
Whether or not this case seems plausible to you, this type of example creates something of a puzzle for the justified true belief approach. Your friend is justified in their belief that the apple is safe to eat, and it is true, so therefore, as it is a justified true belief, by definition your friend knows the apple is safe to eat. But that same friend insists that they don't know any such thing.1 Thus this philosophical approach commits us to saying a person knows something even though that person is confident they don’t, which seems very odd.
Intuitively, whether or not ‘A knows that P’ depends to some extent on A’s subjective state of mind. A, the knower, has to have some appropriate level of confidence in their belief that P for us to count it as knowledge. We need to take into account what is going on ‘inside’ A, we cannot simply have an objective definition ‘from the outside’.
There is a natural spectrum of confidence about beliefs at play here. Starting from the lowest levels, there are some things that we only suspect to be the case, and then others that we believe (lightly or strongly) to be true. When our confidence goes beyond those levels, then we reach the things that we know. This spectrum probably deserves a fuller exploration but the key issue here is trying to understand, from the inside or subjective perspective of the knower, where the dividing line between belief and knowledge is.
Before we get there, it is worth noting that there will often be a gap between an external account of what A knows and what A would say they know. To pick an extreme example, you might have a friend who is utterly sure that Kanye West is the current President of the United States. From their internal perspective, they clearly know it, but no-one else would seriously say that 'my friend knows Kanye is President'.
For this essay, I want to focus on the subjective, inside perspective - regardless of whether it is externally accurate - as it is not really explored in anything I have read. If any readers have similar or contrasting accounts, I'd love to hear about them.
The inside view of knowledge
So, from the subjective perspective, what is the dividing line between belief and knowledge? Obviously, it is closely connected to confidence. I consider myself to know something if I am highly confident, or perhaps certain, that it is true. So perhaps to say that I know that P simply means both that I believe that P is true and I am certain about it.
However, this is too simple. For example, we are often certain we know something, like the answer to a trivia question, but when we pause to reflect we become less sure and conclude that we don't actually know. Similarly, it is common to be confident we know how to do something, only to find that we don't know when we have to actually do it. Home DIY disasters are a classic example. If our definition of knowledge depends simply on how confident we feel, then it becomes very unstable.
If we can’t draw the line simply based on our feeling of confidence, where do we draw it? Let's look at and example and go back to apples that are, or aren't, safe to eat.
What is the behaviour of someone who knows that an apple is safe to eat? Fairly clearly, they would start eating that apple without any worries, second guessing or checking it out. In other words, they don’t just feel confident but will act, without any reservations, on their knowledge. They take it as an accurate description of reality.
Consider, by contrast, our friend who insists they don't know if the apple is safe to eat. If they make a big fuss about it and yet, perhaps when no-one is watching, happily eat the apple anyway, then we would rightly conclude that they did know the apple was safe all along. On the other hand, if we think they are making a fuss for the fun of it, and then they, say, decided to cook the apple before eating it, then we might have to conclude that they really weren't sure it was safe. Quite naturally, we make judgements about what someone really knows, or believes, based on their actions.
My suggestion therefore is that the dividing line between belief and knowledge, from a subjective perspective, is whether we are confident enough to act on that belief without worry or reservation. If I know that my money is safe in the bank, then I won't think twice about keeping my savings there. If I only believe it is, then I likely will keep money there but I will likely hedge by not putting all my money there.
The practical role of knowledge in life
This connection between our knowledge and our actions makes sense given the role of (subjective) knowledge in our daily lives. Let me sketch a quick account.
The world we live in is incredibly detailed and complex and we humans have limited time, energy and information processing capacity. If we had to figure things out from scratch all the time, we would not survive as it would take too much time and effort. Instead, we need a stock of reliable information about the world that we can act on without needing to think about it. This is essential so we can navigate the world and thrive without burning too much time and energy. This stock of reliable information, this set of beliefs that we act on without reservation, is what we take to be our knowledge.
Given that we act in the world based on this stock of knowledge, we ideally want it all to be an accurate description of reality. For if what I take, for example, as my knowledge of poisonous plants isn't true and I eat something toxic, I will suffer badly. However, complete accuracy isn’t always the most important thing. In moments of danger, for example, uncertainty and acting slowly can be worse than inaccurate information. What matters in that case is that we completely trust our knowledge, so we can act without second guessing, rather than that it is true.
Thinking pragmatically, from the perspective of the role my knowledge plays in living, my knowledge only has to be true enough for me to function well in typical circumstances. The more true it is, the better for me, but perfect accuracy isn't necessary. As a result, given the survival necessity of a reliable stock of knowledge, it seems likely that humans are hardwired to accept some things as knowledge even when we don't have complete justification for them being true. There is an effort/accuracy trade-off involved in life and we need to often err on the side of less effort.
This has the consequence that, I can often accurately considering myself as knowing P, so I will act on P without any worries, but it later turns out that P is wrong. In other words, by considering the role of knowledge from the inside, we have reached a familiar conclusion: our knowledge is defeasible and so we need to be humble about knowledge. We all get things wrong.
I suspect pointing out to them that they have a justified true belief about the apple being safe, and therefore they do know isn’t going to change their mind either!
I am curious about the gap between belief and knowledge. If confidence and a willingness to act are the bridge between internally created belief and knowledge, is there really a gap between the two concepts in practice? In a world of humble knowledge, you can never be certain that you are right. As a consequence you willingness to act always exists in the absence of full confidence. Does this mean in an internally generated world, you can only ever act on belief rather than knowledge? If the full confidence (however justified) is not the benchmark for knowledge, then what is?
In the example, we have accepted that your friend still believes the new apple is ok to eat based on past experience. But this is a new apple and requires a new judgement and new act. The example suggests that the actual risk of the apple having something wrong with it has not changed. But this does not mean that there was never no risk. The apple example suggests between two points of time there has been a loss of confidence (and / or risk appetite), which undermines the previous belief / knowledge your friend held. In a sense your friend is now more confident that they do not know that the apple is safe (the right humble knowledge stance). They have a justified reason to believe that it is probably ok, but nothing more.
All this is a longwinded way of saying that you are describing something really interesting which doubtless will be explored further in your next piece. But for me at least, it suggests that for a purely internally generated proposition, no difference can exist between belief and knowledge.
An interesting take on belief and knowledge.
Every statement is made expecting an agreement, hence, it is a truth claim. As we try to obtain proof that would help us attain an assured conviction of undoubtful reality, we reach out to the experience of the present. However, our experience is never adequate for the changing reality, and we look for causes to make sense of the world. Of course, artistic expression (and matters of belief) allows mytho-poetic language to communicate its truth; however, the public sphere requires rational discussions.
To justify contradictions in our behaviour and to find safety in our convictions, we often assign the causes of our actions to platonic universal concepts or emotional responses. Thus, we can always claim our individual or collective choices to be beyond our control. Yet, the existence of knowledge is a necessary condition to function in a factual reality.
As Wittgenstein later acknowledged - logic has limited reach and cannot infer matters of belief.