Cohen (2002) Basic Knowledge and the Problem of Easy Knowledge

Cohen (2002) Basic Knowledge and the Problem of Easy Knowledge 

 

1. Basic Knowledge and the KR Principle

P1 We acquire knowledge of the world through belief sources like sense perception, memory, and induction.
P2 Such sources can not deliver knowledge unless we know the source is reliable.
P3 But surely our knowledge that sense perception is reliable will be based on knowledge we have about the workings of the world. And surely that knowledge will be acquired, in part, by sense perception.
C So it looks as if we are in the impossible situation of needing sensory knowledge prior to acquiring it. Similar considerations apply to other sources of knowledge like memory and induction. Skepticism threatens.

It seems that P2 is weird...my intution says that P2 should be revised as "Such sources can not deliver knowledge unless the source is reliable." Why do we have to know the fact that the source is reliable?

 

KP Principle: A potential knowledge source K can yield knowledge for S, only if S knows K is reliable.

 

① Evidentialism: empirical knowledge has its source in evidence.

KP in Evidentalism: in order for S to know some empirical proposition P, S must possess some evidence E, and S must know that E is a reliable indication of P, or perhaps that E makes P probable. (regression will occur, of course)

Rejection: one can know P on the basis of evidence E without knowing that E is a reliable indication of P. For example, one can know that X is red, on the basis of its looking red, without knowing that X's looking red is a reliable indication of X's being red.

 

② Reliabilism: reliabilist views: a belief P can be knowledge in virtue of some 'external' relation it bears to the world, e.g., being reliably connected to the fact that P, or being produced by a reliable cognitive faculty.

KP will be rejected in this framework: one's belief P can be knowledge provided the source of one's belief is reliable, even if one does not know that the source is reliable.

 

③ Foundationalism: a belief source can deliver knowledge prior to one's knowing that the source is reliable. Let's call such knowledge, "basic knowledge".

 

We do know our belief sources (or sustainers) are in some important sense reliable and so this is something that any theory of knowledge must account for.

The problem with the KR principle is that it says that we can have no knowledge prior to our knowing that our belief sources are reliable. This makes it very difficult to account for how we in fact know that our belief sources are reliable-and so, given the KR principle, very difficult to account for any knowledge.

Theories that allow for basic knowledge have a distinct advantage here, since they can appeal to our basic knowledge in order to explain how we know our belief sources are reliable. According to such views, we first acquire a rich stock of basic knowledge about the world. Such knowledge, once obtained, enables us to learn how we are situated in the world, and so to learn, among other things, that our belief sources are reliable.

 

Once one accepts basic knowledge, we can get a plausible enough story about knowledge of the reliability of our knowledge sources. According to BKS views, such knowledge is attainable, but only after we acquire a substantial amount of information about the world.

The problem is that once we allow for basic knowledge, we can acquire reliability knowledge very easily-in fact, all too easily, from an intuitive perspective. This suggests that we were wrong to think we had the basic knowledge in the first place. And this is just what the KR principle says. We can call this "The Problem of Easy Knowledge". But if we do accept the KR principle, then we are faced with the problem of the criterion. So I will explore some possibilities for avoiding the problem without denying the KR principle.

 

II The Problem of Easy Knowledge: Closure

If S knows P and S knows P entails Q, then S knows (or at least is in a position to know) Q.

This principle seems to me to be something like an axiom about knowledge.

Let me first illustrate the problem closure presents for basic knowledge by looking at an evidentialist view-a view we can call evidentialist foundationalism. (Later we will look at non-evidentialist views.) According to this kind of a view, I can know, e.g., that the table before me is red, merely on the basis of its looking red (to me). On some versions, I know the table is red on the basis of my believing it looks red. But given that we do not obviously have beliefs about how things appear to us, it is perhaps more plausible to hold that I know it's red on the basis merely of its looking red. This view allows for basic knowledge in my sense because I can know the table is red, prior to knowing that the table's looking red is a reliable indication of its being red.

 

This view can look intuitively quite acceptable. Provided I have no posi- tive reason to believe X's looking red is not a reliable indication of X's being red, then perhaps I can know X is red on the basis merely of its looking red.Y? The knowledge thus acquired is relatively modest. Of course this example will be an instance of a more general principle that one can know X is 0 on the basis of its looking 0, without knowing that 4-looking things tend to be 0. For this principle to work, there must be some restriction put on the sort of properties that 0 ranges over."1 And this can present a problem for explain- ing how we are able to acquire enough basic knowledge to eventually learn facts about our perceptual process, e.g., that such processes are reliable. But I do not wish to highlight the difficulty this view has in explaining how one