Michael Lacewing

The tripartite definition of knowledge

What is knowledge? In this handout, we discuss the claim, deriving from Platos dialogue Theaetetus,
that knowledge is a belief that is both true and justified. This claim was widely accepted until 1963, when
Edmund Gettier published a very strong objection.

Types of knowledge
First, we need to clarify some terminology. There are different types of knowledge. The first is
acquaintance knowledge. This is knowledge of someone or some place. For example, I know Oxford
well. The second is ability knowledge, knowing how to do something. For example, I know how to ride a
bike. These first two types of knowledge are very interesting, and raise some important philosophical
puzzles, but we will be concerned only with a third type of knowledge, propositional knowledge.
Propositional knowledge is knowledge that some claim a proposition is true or false. A proposition is a
declarative statement, or more accurately, what is expressed by a declarative statement, e.g. eagles are
birds. Propositions can go after the phrases I believe that and I know that. So I know that eagles
are birds. From now on, our question is, what is it to know that a proposition is true or false?

The tripartite definition of knowledge

The tripartite definition of knowledge claims that knowledge is justified, true belief. It claims that if
you know some proposition, p, then

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the proposition p is true;

you believe that p;
your belief that p is justified.

And if you have a justified true belief that p, then you know that p.
Necessary and sufficient conditions The tripartite definition aims to provide a complete analysis of the
concept of propositional knowledge. Its three conditions, taken together, are intended to be equivalent to
knowledge. So if someone knows some proposition, they should fulfil exactly those three conditions. And
if they fulfil those conditions, then they know the proposition. The conditions are necessary and sufficient
conditions for their knowledge that p.
Necessary and sufficient conditions are related to conditional statements, which take the form if x,
then y. Such statements relate the truth of two propositions, e.g. it is raining and I am getting wet,
e.g. If it is raining, then I am getting wet. The conditional asserts that if the first statement (known as
the antecedent) is true, then the second statement (the consequent) is also true. Suppose the conditional
is true: if it is raining, then I am getting wet. It follows that if the antecedent is true (it is raining), then
the consequent is true (Im getting wet). It also follows that if the consequent is false (I am not getting
wet), then the antecedent is false (it is not raining).
The tripartite definition of knowledge claims that if all the three conditions it lists are satisfied if you
have a justified true belief that p then you know that p. You dont need anything else for knowledge;
the three conditions, together, are sufficient. It also says that if you know that p, then you have a

justified true belief that p. There is no other way to know that p, no other analysis of knowledge. So, it
claims, each of the three conditions is necessary. If p is false, or you dont believe that p, or your belief
that p is not justified, then you dont know that p.
So the definition puts forward two conditionals: if all three conditions are satisfied, then you know that
p; and if you know that p, then all three conditions are satisfied. This means whenever you have one,
you have the other. Knowledge and justified true belief are the same thing. Justified true belief is
necessary for knowledge (you cant have knowledge without it), but it is also sufficient for knowledge
(you dont need anything else).

Are the conditions individually necessary?

We can raise two kinds of objection to the tripartite definition of knowledge by searching for
counterexamples. The method of finding counterexamples is important in philosophy. If a theory makes a
general claim, such as all propositional knowledge is justified true belief, we only need to find a single
instance in which this is false to show that something is wrong with the theory. (Of course, we then have
to find out what is wrong with it.)
First, it may be that one of the conditions is not necessary for knowledge can we have knowledge
without justified true belief? Second, it may be that all of the conditions together are still not sufficient
for knowledge can we have justified true belief without knowledge? We will discuss the first question
in this handout, leaving the second question for a separate handout on Gettiers objection and responses
to it.
Justification is not a necessary condition of knowledge Why think that justification is necessary for
knowledge? Could knowledge be just true belief? The difficulty with this suggestion is that people can
have true beliefs without having any evidence or justification for their beliefs. True beliefs can be formed
or held on irrational grounds. For example, someone on a jury might think that the person on trial is guilty
just from the way they dress. Their belief, that the person is guilty, might be true; but how someone
dresses isnt evidence for whether they are a criminal! Or again true beliefs can just be lucky. For example,
there is a lot of evidence that astrology does not make accurate predictions, and my horoscope has often
been wrong. Suppose on one occasion, I read my horoscope and believe a prediction, although I know
there is evidence against thinking it is right. And then this prediction turns out true! Did I know it was
right?

In both examples, it is counter-intuitive to say that the belief counts as knowledge, because the person has
no reason, no evidence, no justification, for their belief. Knowledge, then, needs some kind of support,
some reason for thinking that the proposition believed is true. This is what is meant by saying that
knowledge needs to be justified.
(Some philosophers have thought that another difference between knowledge and belief is certainty.
Knowledge must be certain; beliefs dont have to be. If a belief is certain, then it cant count as
knowledge.)
We can object that sometimes we use the word know just to mean believe truly, without worrying
about justification. If I ask, Do you know who wrote the Meditations?, Im only interested in whether
you have the true belief that it was Descartes. But we could reply that this is just a loose use of the word
know; strictly speaking, unless your belief is justified, it isnt really knowledge. Alternatively, we
could say that true belief can count as knowledge (at least sometimes) in this sense; but there is another,
stronger sense of knowledge, which is what we are interested in here.
Truth is not a necessary condition of knowledge Could knowledge be simply justified belief? There are
two very different possibilities here. First, perhaps we can know what is false. Second, perhaps we
shouldnt talk about truth or falsehood at all.
People can believe propositions that arent true. For example, someone may claim that flamingos are grey,
and think that they know this. But they are mistaken: flamingos are not grey, but pink. Of course, they
believe that flamingos are grey, they may even be certain that flamingos are grey. But beliefs can be false,
and if they are, then they are not knowledge. You cant know something false.
What if many people, perhaps a whole society, share a particular belief and have good reasons for doing
so? For instance, almost everybody used to believe that the Earth is flat. It does, after all, look that way.
Should we say that people used to know that the Earth is flat? Or should we say that they didnt know it,
they only believed it?
Another puzzle arises with how specific we make the claim. One of the most important revolutions in
scientific thinking was the shift from Newtonian physics to Einsteins theory of relativity. Now, our
everyday experience is very accurately described by Newtonian physics (because we are not moving at
speeds close to the speed of light). However, strictly speaking, Newtonian physics is false. So do we know
the claims of Newtonian physics, which after all, we rely on and use all the time, very successfully?
One response is to note that the claims of Newtonian physics are roughly true, or true enough in the
context of everyday life. So rather than saying we dont know them, because strictly speaking they are
false, we can say that we do know them, roughly speaking. This response rules out the opposite claim
regarding the flat Earth it is not even roughly true that the Earth is flat, so people only believed, but
didnt know, that it was flat.
Doing away with truth?
Thomas Kuhn argues that science repeatedly involves large shifts in thought, such as the shift from
Newtonian to Einsteinian physics (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). One way of thinking, which
Kuhn calls a paradigm, is replaced by another. When this happens, Kuhn claims, we cant compare the
two paradigms in such a way as to say that one is true and the other is false, because paradigm shifts
involve changes in the concepts that we use to understand and explain reality. And there is not just one
right set of concepts that matches reality.
It is natural to think that a scientific theory (paradigm) can be evaluated as true or false, or at least better

(more true) or worse (more false), by comparing its claims with evidence derived from observation. But,
argues Kuhn, there is no theory-neutral way of describing the world which we can use to compare and
judge between two paradigms.

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How scientists describe what they observe depends on the concepts they use.
The main concepts of a paradigm acquire their meaning in relation to the paradigm as a whole.
Therefore, a different paradigm, even if it uses the same term, interprets the concept differently,
because it plays a new and different role.
Therefore, different paradigms are talking about different things.
There is no neutral way of describing the world.
Therefore, we cannot compare different paradigms claims to say that one is more correct or true
than another, as they could both be correct in their own terms.

If we insist that knowledge involves truth, then it will be difficult to talk of scientific knowledge.
So we should say that knowledge is justified belief.
We can object that if we do not assume that scientific theories are getting closer to the (objective) truth, we
cannot explain the success of science. Technology has advanced considerably the best explanation for
this is that the scientific theories which underpin technology are more accurate than before. Kuhn responds
that there is progress, including the solving of problems, but he argues that the idea that we are getting
closer to the truth makes no sense. Science responds to the challenges it faces at any particular time; this
does not mean that there is an ultimate goal truth towards which it is moving.
A different objection is to argue that there have been no revolutions as Kuhn describes them. Changes
in scientific theory involve considerable continuity and overlap, e.g. in beliefs about methodology and
evidence. If there have been no Kuhnian revolutions, then scientific theories exhibit enough similarity
for us to compare them and judge which is better.
A third objection accepts that we cant talk about Truth (with a capital T), how the world really is
independent of our concepts or experience or way of thinking about it. But we can still argue that within
each way of thinking, there are true (small t) and false beliefs. And only those beliefs that are true, using
the concepts available within that paradigm, can count as knowledge. Knowledge is not justified True
belief, it is justified true belief.
Belief is not a necessary condition of knowledge There are two strengths of the objection that belief is not
necessary for knowledge. The weak objection is that sometimes it is possible to know something without
believing it. The strong objection is that knowledge is never a form of belief.
The weak objection: suppose John is sitting an exam, but hes very nervous and has no confidence in his
answers. Suppose when answering Which philosopher wrote the Meditations?, he writes Descartes.
Hes right, and the answer isnt a lucky guess he has remembered what he learned. So it is plausible to
say that John knows the answer, he knows more than he thinks hes just unconfident. But because hes
unconfident, we should say that John doesnt believe that the answer is Descartes. So he knows the answer
without believing it.
We can defend the tripartite definition by replying in one of two ways. We can say that John doesnt
know the answer, e.g. because he cant produce a justification for giving that answer. Or we can say that
John does believe that the answer is Descartes, although this belief is unconscious or tacit. This
unconscious belief amounts to knowledge.
Knowledge is not a form of belief

Timothy Williamson argues that knowledge is not a form of belief, but an entirely different mental state
(Knowledge and Its Limits). Either you believe something or you know it; but you dont know something
by believing it.
We can understand this by comparing knowledge and perception. We only see that the tea is on the table
if the tea is on the table. If we hallucinate this, that is an entirely different kind of mental state. Perception
is not hallucination + added conditions (e.g. that what appears to you is how things are). Perception is a
factive mental state you can only be in a perceptual state, such as seeing something, if the world is the
way you perceive it to be.
Knowledge is the same. You can only know that p if p is true. Belief, by contrast, is a mental state that can
be true or false you can have a belief that p whatever the world is like. Knowledge is factive, belief is
not.
The tripartite definition explains this difference by saying that knowledge is belief with additional
conditions (truth, justification). But every attempt to spell out the conditions has met objections. This is a
reason to think that knowledge is not a kind of belief at all. Knowledge is unanalysable there are no
necessary and sufficient conditions that accurately describe what knowledge is. (If some analysis of
knowledge is convincing, this theory loses much of its motivation.)
Williamson argues that knowledge is the most general factive mental state. What this means is that any
factive mental state is a way of knowing. So seeing is factive a way of knowing something is to see
that it is the case. Another example is remembering. You dont remember something if what you think
you remember is not actually true. So remembering is a way of knowing (about the past). And so on
with other factive states.
Williamson argues that we should understand belief in terms of knowledge. To believe that p is to take
p to be true. You cant believe that elephants are grey while also believing that your belief that elephants
are grey is false! Put another way: to believe that p is to treat p as if you know that p. We can only
understand what beliefs are if we first understand what knowledge is.
One objection to Williamsons theory points to those occasions on which we make mistakes. Suppose I
think I know something, but it turns out I didnt. We would usually say that I had, nevertheless, believed it.
I believed it, but I thought I knew it; this shows that we can mistake belief for knowledge. If knowledge
isnt a kind of belief, this would be puzzling. But Williamson can reply that just because belief and
knowledge can be subjectively indistinguishable does not tell us anything significant about what
knowledge is.