A Perspectival Definition of Knowñedge

© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Ratio (new series) XXIII 2 June 2010 0034–0006
A PERSPECTIVAL DEFINITION OF KNOWLEDGE rati_458 151..167
Claudio F. Costa
Abstract
In this paper an improved formulation of the classical tripartite view
of knowledge is proposed and defended. This formulation solves
Gettier’s problem by making explicit what is concealed by the
symbolic version of the tripartite definition, namely, the perspec-
tival context in which concrete knowledge claims are evaluated.
Knowledge is not simply justified true belief, but it is justified

true belief justifiably arrived at.
Robert Fogelin
Analytic philosophers have dissected the classical tripartite view of

propositional knowledge as justified true belief with the following
definition:
( i ) ( ii ) ( iii )
( Df .k1) aKp ≡ p & aBp & aEBp ( where p = proposition,
a = person, B = belief ,
E = reasonable justifying
evidence) .
It is well-known that this formulation has given rise to a challenge
to the rationality of our knowledge which is known as counterex-
amples of Gettier’s kind. These counterexamples have lead to a
multiplicity of answers which have typically generated new difficul-
ties, even suggesting that the conceptual analysis of knowledge is a
kind of degenerative research program without good prospects.
Our overall diagnosis of the situation is much more optimistic:
the classical view of propositional knowledge, as presented in
the formulation above, though not incorrect, is an oversimplifi-
cation of conceptual structures that have always belonged to the
praxis of our natural language, concealing a perspectival and
potentially dialogical dimension of our knowledge evaluations. It
is this concealing that leads to misunderstandings of the Get-
tierian kind. This diagnosis calls for a therapy which consists in
152 CLAUDIO F. COSTA
improving the tripartite definition of knowledge in such a way

that it becomes reflexive of the perspectival dimension of our
knowledge evaluations. Once we have done this, we will not only
have alleviated the symptoms, as most solutions to Gettier’s
problem do, but actually cured the disease by treating its real
cause. Gettier’s problem will then vanish without a trace, while
the analysis of propositional knowledge will achieve its full prag-
matic dimension. In order to arrive at these results, we need to
begin by reviving an old discussion.
The Internal Link Between the Conditions of Evidence and

Truth: Almeder’s Attempt
A natural way to solve Gettier’s problem without substantially

changing the tripartite view was defended in the seventies by
Robert Almeder.1 His solution emerged from the observation that
in Gettier’s counterexamples the justifying evidence given by a
does not have anything to do with what makes proposition p true,
while our epistemic evidences always make p true. If it is so, he
thought, what we need is to introduce the requirement that the
evidence given by a for p must be sufficient for the truth of p, which
seems to be expressible in logical terms by saying that it must entail
p. As he notes, this requirement appears to be consistent with our
linguistic intuitions: it seems odd to deny this with assertions such
as: ‘Your evidence (justification) is sufficient for your knowledge
of p, but it does not make p true’. Using the sign ‘=>’ for entail-
ment, we can restate the tripartite definition in a way that includes
Almeder’s requirement:
( i ) ( ii ) ( iii )
( Df .k 2 ) aKp ≡ p & aBp & (aEBp & ( E => p )) .
Indeed, since in Gettier’s counterexamples it is only by coinci-

dence that the conditions of truth and justification are conjunc-
tively satisfied, in none of these cases does E entail the truth of
p and none of them satisfies Df.k2. Unfortunately, Almeder’s pro-
posal has always seemed too strong. It has the serious handicap of
making inductive justification impossible, for in these cases the
1
R. F. Almeder: ‘Truth and Evidence’, The Philosophical Quarterly, 24 (1974), pp. 365–68.

A PERSPECTIVAL DEFINITION OF KNOWLEDGE 153
truth of proposition p does not necessarily follow from the truth of
E, as should occur in the case of entailment.2
The Epistemic Link: Fogelin’s Solution
A more successful attempt to solve Gettier’s problem by relating

the conditions of justification and truth was proposed by Robert
Fogelin in the nineties. His approach, unlike Almeder’s, already
places the problem in a dialogical context. According to Fogelin’s
view, the justifying evidence given by anyone claiming knowledge
must be both a personal justification and an epistemic justification.
A personal justification is one that satisfies the condition of
epistemic responsibility, being consonant with the right epistemic
standards and the information available to the person; this is what
I called reasonable evidence when introducing the tripartite defini-
tion. The evidence stated in Gettier’s cases satisfies this require-
ment. On the other hand, an epistemic justification must also be
evidence (a ground, a reason) that establishes the truth of the
proposition p for us – which no Gettierian counterexample is able
to do. In all of these examples, so Fogelin, there is a mismatch
between our ‘wider information’ and the information accessible
to a, and because of this we can see that the justification given by
a, although personally justified, cannot make proposition p true.3
According to this view, the condition of justification in the
tripartite definition of propositional knowledge should be split
into a condition of personal justification (iii-p) and a condition
of epistemic justification (iii-e), and based on this we obtain the
following definition of propositional knowledge:
a knows that p ≡ ( i ) p is true,
( ii ) a believes that p is true,
( iii-p) a justifiably came to believe p,
( iii-e) the justifying evidence given
by a establishes the truth of p.
This formulation immunizes the tripartite definition against
counterexamples of Gettier’s type because, although they satisfy
(iii-p), they do not satisfy (iii-e).
2
W. E. Hoffmann: ‘Almeder on Truth and Evidence’, The Philosophical Quarterly, 25
(1975), pp. 59–61.
3
Robert Fogelin: Pyrrhonian Reflections on Knowledge and Justification (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1994), pp. 22–23.

Although intuitively acceptable, as it already reflects the per-

spectival and often dialogical dimension of our knowledge evalu-
ations, this version of the tripartite definition still leaves unsolved
the logical problem addressed by Almeder, namely, the question
of what kind of logical or internal link exists between justifying
evidence and truth. If the word ‘establishes’ in (iii-e) means the
same thing as ‘entails’, then we are reverting back to the same
difficulties.
Next I will develop a more perspicuous symbolic formulation of
our epistemic intuition, one that is able to reflect the dialogical
context in which most concrete knowledge claims are evaluated,
as in the case of Fogelin’s solution, but that also solves the logical
problem defectively addressed by Almeder.
Introducing the Dialogic Equivalence
Before reformulating Df.k1 it is useful to be more explicit about

our dialogical assumptions. In order to do this, I shall call the
concrete person who is evaluating the knowledge claims of a the
knowledge evaluator s. Usually we speak about s allusively, using
personal pronouns such as ‘we’ or ‘us’, as in ‘We are aware that a
knows p’ or ‘a’s knowledge of p is known to us’, and the plural
form indicates that the evaluation is accepted, or can be expected
to be accepted by any reasonable person provided with the rel-
evant information. This, of course, does not preclude that s = a,
where a intends to evaluate his or her own knowledge claims in an
internalized (non-proper) dialogue. Moreover, we will call ‘tj’ the
time of the judgment, which here is the time at which s evaluates a’s
knowledge claims. Equipped with these concepts, we can add to
Df.k1 the following dialogical equivalence:
( DE) sK tj (aKp ) ≡ sK tj ( p & aBp & aEBp )

or ( which is the same thing )
sK tj ( p ) & sK tj (aBp ) & sK tj (aEBp ) ,
What DE says is intuitively clear. Let us suppose for now that the
knowledge evaluator is the teacher s, who asks the schoolgirl a
where the city of Angkor is located, and that a answers (correctly)
p: ‘Angkor is in Cambodia’. To judge that a knows p, s must know
that a knows p, and in order to know this, according to the
tripartite definition, s must also know that p is true (that Angkor

really is in Cambodia), that a believes p to be true (perhaps based
on a’s belief-affirmative behaviour), and that a has reasonable
evidence for her belief that p is true (a has presumably found this
information in the schoolbook).4 Bearing in mind this dialogical
assumption, my procedure will be to carefully reexamine what
exactly is involved in the conditions of truth and justification,
searching for the right link between them.
What Might be Dialogically Involved in the Condition of Truth
The condition of truth is usually formulated in the tripartite

definition as p, or ‘p is true.’ This formulation leaves aside what
makes p true and for whom. However, there is no way of attributing
truth value to p independently of judging subjects and the ways in
which they arrive at this attribution. As the one who decides that
p is true is the person evaluating whether or not a knows p, the
condition of truth assumes that p must be true for the knowledge
evaluator s.
Nonetheless, one could still ask if what is meant by the condi-
tion of truth isn’t the ultimate truth value of p, even if it is impos-
sible to ascribe truth value to p independently of a knowledge
evaluator and the ways in which he comes to know it. The answer
is that here this demand would lead us to epistemic scepticism,
since our empirical truth attributions are almost always depen-
dent on fallible evidential support. Only God, the infallible evalu-
ator, by knowing the ultimate truth value of any empirical
proposition, would be able to apply the tripartite definition in
order to decide with absolute certainty whether or not p is true
and, consequently, whether or not a really knows p. However, this
is not what we mean when we say that knowledge is ‘justified true
belief’. When we evaluate knowledge claims, we are not appealing
to God’s judgment of the truth value of p, but rather to our own
present evaluation of this truth value, which is contextually con-
tingent and based on our finite human cognitive powers. For this
reason, what is at stake is the truth value ascribed by s to p and
4
Knowledge evaluators must always assume previous knowledge. This brings in to play
the threat of infinite regresses, e.g. ‘. . . sKsK(aKp)’ or ‘. . . sKsKp’. However, s can easily
take the place of a in further evaluations. Moreover, in cases like sK(aKp) and sKp, where
there is no possible distinction between evidence for truth and justifying evidence, further
evaluation turns out to be pointless.

based on the evidential support accessible to s at the time. This

truth value isn’t usually seen as the ultimate one, but rather as a
mere candidate for this role, arguably the one with the highest
probability. Therefore the interpretation of ‘p’ as ‘p is true for s’ is
the only really sound alternative.
After making explicit for whom p must be true, we still need to
make explicit what makes p true for s. In order to do this, we must
again consider what is involved in the condition of truth as it
appears in the DE. This condition appears as sKtj(p) or sKtj(that p
is true). As s is a human epistemic subject, s must come to know
that p is true by drawing on evidence (which might be seen as
truth-makers, as facts, etc.). Thus, one could express sKtj(p) more
explicitly as sKtj(that there is sufficient evidence to make p true) or
as sKtj(that there is at least one piece of evidence E, such that E is
sufficient to make p true).
However, this is not yet a fully explicit presentation of what is
involved in the condition of truth as viewed by the knowledge
evaluator, since there is more to consider about the role of evi-
dences. To arrive at a more complete account, we need to intro-
duce the concept of a corpus of evidence E*, understanding this as
a set of pieces of evidence that individually count decisively for or
against the truth of a proposition p for some s at a certain time.
Here is the definition:
( Df .E *) E * = a set of pieces of evidence, each considered
sufficient for the assignment of a truth value
to a proposition p.
This definition means that if a piece of evidence E is an element
of the set E*, then E must be sufficient to render p true or to
render p false.
It is important to see that a piece of evidence E which belongs
to E* can be composed of other pieces of evidence that in them-
selves are not sufficient for the assignment of truth value to p. The
most common form of composition is by conjunction. So, for
example, if I am sure that I am sitting in the same chair I sat in
yesterday, because it has the same appearance and because it is
located in the same place, the conjunction of these two pieces of
evidence may be what I find to be sufficient evidence for the truth
of the proposition.
In order to deal more precisely with the notion of being suffi-
cient, I will introduce the symbol ‘~>’ to represent what might be
called ‘sufficiency’, defining it in the following way:

‘F ~> Y’ means that if the antecedent F is true, the consequent
Y must either be necessarily true (with a probability of 1 and
logical certainty) or be probably true to a very high degree
(with a probability near to 1 and practical certainty).
In this way the symbol ‘~>’ respectively captures the force of

formal evidence (appropriate for knowledge claims belonging to
the formal sciences) and also the force of empirical evidences
(appropriate for inductive knowledge claims, such as those
belonging to the empirical sciences, where the inference has
strong inductive force and the consequent should be seen as
practically certain).
Given that E is the case and that E ~> p, then either p must
be true or p is very probably true; and, given that E is the case and
that E ~> ~p, then either p must be false or p is very probably
false. Considering this, with the concept of E* we could render
sKtj(there is at least one piece of evidence E, such that E is suffi-
cient for p), as sKtj(there is an E* and E* ~> p), since E* is a set
displaying individually sufficient pieces of evidence as its ele-
ments. We will come to this conclusion shortly, but before this we
need to make two explanatory points about E*.
The first point concerns the intuitive basis of the concept of a
corpus of evidence for the ascription of truth value, as the follow-
ing examples show.
Firstly, let us suppose that at time t the subject s holds as true
the proposition p1 ‘The temperature was below zero last night’,
because of the evidence E1 ‘The snow didn’t melt’, and also
because of E2, ‘p1 was stated in the weather forecast’. If s considers
each of these pieces of evidence sufficient to make p1 true, and
these are the only two pieces of evidence that s has, then s has a
corpus of evidence E* for p1 constituted by the set {E1, E2}. In this
case, each of these pieces of evidence will also be considered by s
(at this time, on the assumption that his stock of beliefs is true) as
making the truth of p1 highly probable, which means that s knows
at time t that ‘E* & (E* ~> p)’, which means that under these
circumstances s knows (or believes he knows) inductively, with
practical certainty, that p1 is true.
Now let us assume that at time t a subject s believes in the falsity
of p2, a proposition stating that the earth is flat, based on at
least one of the following pieces of evidence: E1 = ‘Photos taken
from space show that the earth is round’, E2 = ‘There are many
historical accounts of the circumnavigation of the globe’, and

E3 = ‘Ships seem to sink below the horizon when they sail out of
view’. In this case, for s ‘E* = {E1, E2, E3. . . En}’, and each of these
pieces of evidence is considered by s at t – assuming the truth of
his stock of beliefs at time t – to be sufficient to falsify the propo-
sition p2. This means that s knows (or believes he knows) at time t
that ‘E* & (E* ~> ~p2)’, namely, that the probability of ~p2 being
true is very high or that p2 is certainly false.
A third case is that in which s doesn’t know the truth value of
the proposition. For example: Suppose that s doesn’t know
whether the proposition p3 ‘Aston Rowant is bigger than Kingston
Blount’ is true. In this case, s’s corpus of evidence for p3 is empty:
E* = Ø.
Looking back to Df.E*, we come to the conclusion that a
subject s can access E* in three different ways:
(1) s does not attribute any truth value to p; in this case, E* is

seen by s as an empty set;
(2) s has cognitive access to a non-empty set E* of justifications,
while (2) divides itself into two possibilities:
(2a) Each element of the set, each piece of evidence, is con-

sidered by s as sufficient to make p true; in this case it is
clear that s knows that ‘E* & (E* ~> p)’, which means
(deductively or inductively) that s knows that p is true.
(2b) Each element of the set, each piece of evidence, is con-
sidered by s as sufficient to make p false; in this case s
knows that ‘E* & (E* ~> ~p)’, which means (deductively
or inductively) that s knows that p is false.
One could ask if there isn’t a further possibility, namely:
(2ab) E* contains at least one piece of evidence sufficient to

make p true and at least one piece of evidence sufficient
to make p false.
However, this would not be a real epistemic alternative. As E*

is defined as a set of individually sufficient conditions, in this case
E* turns out to be an inconsistent set, making simultaneously p and
~p true for s at a certain time. Although we are often irrational in
our judgments, holding inconsistent beliefs, insofar as we regard
ourselves as epistemic subjects, we are supposed to be consistently

rational, and this means that we should only consider one evi-
dence as sufficient for the truth of a proposition p when we do not
possess any other evidence that we consider sufficient to make p
false and vice versa. Assuming the rationality of s’s judgment, the
elements of E*, when achievable, must all be either evidence for
the truth of p or for its falsity, but not for both.
The second point about Df.E* concerns a better understanding
of the concept of sufficiency expressed by the symbol ‘~>’. As was
shown above, this symbol must either be understood as represent-
ing something like material implication in the case of formal
evidence, or a strong inductive relation in the case of the usual
empirical evidence. It is important to see not only that ‘E* ~> p’
must be true for s at a certain time, so that when joined with E* it
allows s to conclude that p is true, but also that this conditional
only works under the assumption of the truth of the background beliefs
and other relevant beliefs belonging to the stock of beliefs held by s at this
time, being insofar context-dependent.
To make this point clear, let us consider the following cases
of conditionals where the truth of the antecedent is viewed
by a subject s at a given time as sufficient for the truth of the
consequent:
(i) If my car’s gas tank is full, then there is sufficient gasoline

for my trip.
(ii) If the defendant’s fingerprints are found at the scene of
the crime, then we will have enough proof that he is guilty.
(iii) If this is the result of the biopsy, then the surgeon can be
sure that the tumour is malignant.
In all of these cases it is possible that the antecedent is true but

the consequent is nevertheless false. Let us suppose that the car’s
gas tank has a leak, that the fingerprints were planted, that the
tumour is a benign one of an unknown kind, indistinguishable in
its histology from a malignant tumour. In all these cases, the
consequent will be false, although the antecedent remains true,
which would make the three conditionals false. Is this a threat to
our understanding of ‘being sufficient’? Certainly not, because in
all three cases, if s becomes aware of the facts that the gas tank has
a leak, that the fingerprints were planted . . . then some of the
beliefs belonging to s’s stock of beliefs will change, which would
on this basis lead him to disclaim his admission of the condition-
als. On the other hand, under the assumption that all the other

relevant beliefs held by s (such as the belief that his car’s gas tank
does not have a leak, that the fingerprints were not planted, that
this is not a new kind of tumour . . .) are consistent with the
conditionals, it follows that if the antecedent true, the consequent
should very probably also be true. Hence, it seems that the sign
‘~>’ gives s enough of a sense of ‘being sufficient’ or ‘being
enough’ or ‘making true’, insofar as he interprets it as making its
consequent true with a very high probability, assuming the truth
of the relevant beliefs belonging to the stock of beliefs held by s at
the time of his evaluation.
Now that we have explained our concept of E* it is time to
return to our task of restating sKtj(p) in a precise and fully explicit
way. We have seen that sKtj(p) can be rendered as sKtj(there is at
least one piece of evidence E, such that E is sufficient for the truth
of p), where the evidence and its role were only mentioned. Now,
using E* we can restate what is contextually assumed in the con-
dition of truth as it appears in the DE as:
( i ’) sK tj ( E * & ( E * ∼> p )) .
Indeed, when s is aware of an E* at tj, and when for him E* has
some element viewed as sufficient for the truth of p, then s con-
cludes either deductively (using the modus ponens) or inductively
(using the rule of induction) that p must be true, which amounts
to the same thing as the satisfaction of the conditions of truth! In
this way, ‘E* & (E* ~> p)’ only makes explicit what we (as place-
holders for s) implicitly mean by ‘p’ in the condition of truth. As
we will see, this analysis will suffice as a restatement of the condi-
tion of truth which does not play down the role of the knowledge
evaluator.
What Might be Dialogically Involved in the Condition

of Justification
What about the condition of justification? Our proposal is to use

a similar strategy for its reconstruction, keeping in mind our
perspectival analysis of the condition of truth and the intuitive
idea that the justifying evidence given by a must in some way make
p true (which was misleadingly captured by ‘aEBp & (E => p)’ in
Df.k2). When could E be sufficient for the truth of p, considering
that what is involved in the condition of truth might be rendered

as ‘sKtj(E* & (E* ~> p))’? The answer springs to mind: When the
evidence E given by a can be seen by s as belonging to E*! For if
E ∈ E*, and p is viewed by s as true, and if s is reasonable, this
means that all the elements of E* (E inclusive) are viewed as
making p true. Therefore, what is assumed by the condition of
justification in a dialogical context of knowledge evaluations can
be made sufficiently explicit as follows:
( iii ’) sK tj (aEBp & ( E ∈ E *)) .

In this way, instead of Almeder’s condition E => p, which
wrongly suggests that E makes p true necessarily and in all con-
texts, what must really be required is that for s under the assump-
tion of his stock of beliefs at tj E ∈ E* and E* ~> p.
DE⬘ and the Perspectival Definition of Knowledge
The next step is to improve DE substituting (i’) for (i) and (iii’)
for (iii), as follows:
DE’: (i’) (ii) (iii’)

sKtj(aKp) ≡ sKtj((E* & (E* ~> p)) & aBp & (aEBp & (E ∈ E*)))
DE’ clearly displays the logical or internal link between the

conditions of justification and truth, as shown by the arrows. We
are now able to give expression to the perspectival and often
dialogically reflexive formulation of the tripartite definition of
knowledge, insofar as we conceal sKtj on both sides of the equiva-
lence as redundant, even if presupposed. Here is the definition:
(i ) ( ii ) ( iii )
( Df .k 3 ) aKp ≡ ( E * & ( E * ∼> p )) & aBp & (aEBp & ( E ∈ E *)) .
This is, I believe, the view of knowledge as justified true belief
with its ‘missing link’ relating conditions (iii) and (i). This defi-
nition can be somewhat simplified; since condition (ii) is already
included in aEBp, we can eschew it as redundant, formulating
Df.k3 as:

( Df .k 4 ) aKp ≡ aEBp & ( E ∈ E *) & E * & ( E * ∼> p )

By means of these two formulas knowledge is explicitly defined
in a way that reflects the epistemic perspective of the knowledge
evaluators. The decisive point is that the evidence E must be
sufficient for the truth of p, but in a contextually dependent way,
namely, by means of its acceptance by s, as belonging to the set of
given evidences able to make p true under the assumption of the
truth of other beliefs belonging to his stock of beliefs at the time
of his evaluation. Would this definition solve our problems? To
answer this question we first need to see how it works.
Ordinary Cases of Application
We begin with the most common and unproblematic case.

Suppose, for our first example, that the knowledge claimer a
states p, namely that the temperature was below zero last night. I
ask a how she knows that. Her answer is E1: she has seen that the
snow did not melt during the night. In this standard case I am
the knowledge evaluator s, and I have the evidence set E*, which
consists of, for example, E1: ‘I saw that the snow did not melt’ and
E2: ‘I heard it on the weather report’. Thus, my E* is made up
of {E1, E2}, and because a believes in the justification E1 which I
accept as belonging to my E*, and which at the time of my
evaluation makes p true for me, I conclude that a knows p.
Not all cases are so straightforward. There are others in which
s accepts a’s knowledge claim by expanding his E* in order to
include the evidence E in E* because of its coherence with s’s
previous beliefs. Imagine that I am s and that person a tells me
that she knows p: ‘Oxford is bigger than Witney’, because of E1,
namely, because she has heard this from a tourist guide. Let us
suppose that I know this for reason E2: ‘I have spent some time in
both towns’. Although her justification does not belong to my E*
for the truth of p, it is natural for me to expand my E* in order to
accept her justification (for if I held E2 to be true, assuming my
stock of beliefs, which includes my belief in the trustworthiness of
a and of tourist guides, it follows that E1 also turns out to be true
for me). Thus, for me E* turns out to be {E1, E2}, both justifications
making p true at the time of my evaluation, and from this I
conclude that a also knows p.
There are also examples showing how dependent epistemic
evaluation is on the time at which s makes his evaluation. Let us

suppose that in a court of law jury a concludes that b has commit-
ted a murder, basing his conclusion solely on the sufficient evi-
dence given by E, which is the result of a DNA test . . . At time t1
judge s concludes that a knows that b is the murderer, confidently
including E in his E*. A few days later, at time t2, it becomes known
that the DNA test was performed incorrectly, which invalidates the
results. Nevertheless, new information, including b’s confession,
shows beyond any doubt that b was in fact the murderer. Aware of
this, the judge could not persist in his belief that jury a knew p at
t1, even by accepting the truth of p, for at t2 E has ceased to belong
to s’s E*. Indeed, judge s makes a new evaluation with the expec-
tation that jury a will accept p based on evidence belonging to his
present E*. Because the time at which knowledge claims are
evaluated is essential to the construction of E* by s, the perspec-
tival definition of knowledge explains spatio-temporal variations
in knowledge evaluations left unexplained by the usual formula-
tions of the tripartite definition.
Another important point is that by making knowledge claims
relative to the changeable belief stocks of knowledge evaluators,
we are not compromising ourselves with any relativist view con-
cerning truth or knowledge. This is shown by the fact that the two
opposite evaluations of the same knowledge claim by judge s are
asymmetrical: the old evaluation would be rejected by any other
rational evaluators possessing the new information. Most of our
perspectival and changeable epistemic evaluations are not incom-
mensurable. However, it is not the task of a theory of truth evalu-
ation to explain the structure of such variants, but rather that of a
theory of verisimilitude or truth approximation employing some
normative concept of ultimate truth.
Finally, it is noteworthy to mention that sometimes the Df.k3 (or
Df.k4) seems to collapse into Df.k1. This is what occurs when we
ask ourselves whether we know something at the present moment.
For example: I wish to evaluate my present knowledge claim of p:
‘The air-conditioning is on’. According to the traditional defini-
tion, I know p because it is true that the air-conditioning is on and
because I have reasonable evidence for my belief, namely, the
continuous humming sounds that I can hear. Following the per-
spectival definition, I know this because I have evidence E,
namely, I can hear the sound of the air conditioner and because
this evidence belongs to my presently accepted evidence set E*,
which makes p true. In this case, however, not only are s = a and
E = E*, but even the time of evaluation is the same (namely, the

present moment). It seems that here Df.k3 presupposes the iden-

tity DE′ in a trivial way. But this does not necessarily render the
application of our definition superfluous, for it seems to require
at least a meta-cognitive awareness of s as a, and of E as E*.
Some Unusual Cases: Gettier-Type Counterexamples
Arriving finally at Gettier’s problem, it is not hard to understand

why the proposed analysis of the intuitive view dissolves this
problem. By bringing to light the internal link between the con-
dition of justification and the condition of truth, the perspectival
definition has sufficient strength to neutralize all Gettier counter-
examples, since they all arise from the absence of this link. In order
to show this, we must adjust our eyes to the new bright light
outside the cave of Gettierian shadows, reconsidering some of
these counterexamples.
Consider the following well-known Gettierian counterexample:
person b is a worker in a’s office, and a not only sees b coming to
work in a BMW, but b has also told a that the car belongs to him
and even has shown him his ownership documents. Based on this
evidence E, a makes the knowledge claim p: ‘Someone in my office
owns a BMW.’ However, b has lied to a: the BMW actually belongs
to his sister, the ownership documents are forgeries, etc. However,
p is still true, for without a’s knowledge, another worker in his
office, c, really does own a BMW. Under such circumstances, it is
obvious that a does not know p, since there is no relationship
between the truth of p and the evidence given by a. However,
according to the tripartite formulation of the classical definition,
a must know p, because (i) it is true that someone in a’s office has
a BMW; (ii) a believes that p is true; and (iii) a is able to offer the
very reasonable evidence E for the truth of p.
However, this is no counterexample to our dialogically condi-
tioned definition of propositional knowledge, for it is not able to
satisfy this definition. To make this clear we need to follow the
strategy of always take into account the supposed counterex-
amples contextually, considering the whole of the concrete dialogical
situation in which a knowledge claim is evaluated by s, with all the
relevant independent information accessible to him. These counterex-
amples need to be considered not just in their abbreviated form,
like examples used in books on epistemology, but as fully concrete
cases, similar to ones that could be found in real life. In the case

of the counterexample above, the question is: how do we know all
these facts about the worker in the office? Well . . . let us suppose
that, when considering who belongs to this elusive ‘we’, we are led
to a judging subject s, an older worker in the office who knows all
his colleagues very well and has told us this Gettierian story. He
knows that c has an old BMW, and he also knows that b is a
compulsive liar who drives his sister’s BMW, pretending that it
belongs to him. If a had justified p by saying that c had told him
this, giving him in this way the evidence E1, s would judge that a
knows p, because s accepts this justifying evidence as belonging to
his E*, and because he thinks that on the basis of all he knows, this
E* ~> p. But taking into account that a justifies his claim to know
p by giving the evidence E that b has told him, s refuses to accept
this justification as an element of his E*. The knowledge claim of
a is rejected by s because E ∉ E*, failing to satisfy the condition of
epistemic justification.
Now let us suppose that a justifies p by giving the true evidence
E2, ‘A worker in my office told me that he owns a BMW.’ Although
this justifying evidence is true, it does not satisfy Df.k3 for s for in
this case, anticipating that b and not c might be the worker who
told this, s does not immediately accept E2 as belonging to E*,
asking a who told him p, which brings him to the same result as
before. A possible objection here would be that a knowledge
evaluator s might not be so well informed, judging falsely that a
knows p . . . But in this case we would need to consider another
well-informed knowledge evaluator in order to explain our aware-
ness of the fact that b is lying and that only c really owns a BMW.
Otherwise, how could this Gettierian story be grounded? The
rejection of the knowledge claim turns out to be unavoidable
every time we replace the usually abbreviated reports of Gettierian
cases with a sufficiently detailed explanation of how the evaluation
of the knowledge claim was generated.
A second counterexample of the Gettierian type is based on
perceptual evidence. Imagine that a is a traveller who, looking out
of her car window thinks she knows the truth of p: ‘There is a red
barn in the field’. However, it is only by chance that what she sees
is a real red barn – for with exception of this one, there are only
external façades of red barns in the vicinity, convincing enough to
fool even the most observant traveller. Although a’s claim satisfies
the conditions of justified true belief of the standard definition, it
does not satisfy these conditions as required by the dialogical
form. For in this form we need to consider the reasons for belief

in the truth of p, which always arise from the point of view of a

knowledge evaluator. To see whether the example satisfies Df.k3
in a real case, we need to consider where one got all this infor-
mation! Here is a plausible story: we are only reporting what the
knowledge evaluator s has told us. This person lives in the region
and is well aware that all the red barns, with the exception of this
one, are only barn façades . . . Traveller a has given s a lift. As a
drives away from the river, she points out to s the beautiful red
barn she has noticed in the field. Since s knows that this is the only
authentic red barn and that a is a foreigner, s would not think that
a really knows that she is seeing a real barn, as here the evidence
E – which can be formulated as ‘I see something like a red barn’
– does not belong to s’s E*. The only evidence s would accept as
belonging to E* would be a close inspection of the barn by a, or
a’s having told him that she already knows about the façades and
this one real exception, which is located after the bridge, as such
justifications would be accepted as belonging to or being implied
by his E*, and therefore as being sufficient to the truth of p. As the
justification given by a was only that she had seen a red barn, s
concluded that a had said the truth only by chance, and that her
merely Gettierian justification does not belong to E*.
We can also consider a Gettierian counterexample that involves
self-evaluation, the interiorized form of dialogical evaluation. Let
us suppose that a looks at her watch and sees that it is 11:15. At this
moment, a believes that she knows p, namely, that it is 11:15 a.m.
After this, a looks at the clock on the church tower in the square
and sees that it really is 11:15 a.m. But then a remembers that
yesterday her watch was running slow. Therefore, a examines her
watch carefully and concludes that its hands are not really moving
and that the watch had probably stopped the night before. At this
point in time a realizes that she did not really know that it was
11:15 a.m. the first time she looked at her watch: it was all just an
amazing coincidence. Here again, for the standard version of the
classical definition, the three conditions are satisfied: p is true, a
believes that p is true, and a has a reasonable justification for her
belief. But for our improved statement of the classical view, a’s
knowledge claim is being evaluated in an internalized dialogical
context by a knowledge evaluator a′ (s = a′) who is the same a after
she realizes that her watch is not working. At this moment, the E*
consists in the evidence E1, given by the Church clock, while the
evidence E, that her watch shows that it is 11:15 a.m., which was
given by a, cannot be accepted as belonging to the E* of the

knowledge evaluator a′. Once again no knowledge is acquired, as
at the time the knowledge claim is evaluated, E ∉ E*, leaving the
condition of epistemic justification unsatisfied.
Inductive Evidence and Defeasibility
Unlike the old solutions, the perspectival understanding of

the link between epistemic evidence and truth allows us to deal
satisfactorily with the problem of inductive evidence. The given
empirical evidence E must be seen by s (and certainly also by a),
as sufficient for the truth of p, that is, as making it true with
practical certainty. Moreover, the acceptance of E as sufficient for
the truth of p belongs to a more complex inductive framework,
which includes background information and other relevant
beliefs belonging to the whole stock of beliefs held by s at tj, what
makes its acceptance always susceptible to revision. That is: a change
in a stock of beliefs brought about by new experience and infor-
mation can always undermine evidential support, which fully con-
forms to what we expect from inductive inferences.
Finally, the perspectival definition of knowledge also allows us
to find a better place for the condition that epistemically adequate
evidence must remain ultimately undefeated. When appended to a
humble form of the tripartite definition like Df.k1, the condition
that the justifying evidence must remain ultimately undefeated
imposes a much too heavy burden on knowledge claimers,
namely, that they must know the totality of truths, for this is the only
way to warrant that the given evidence has no possible defeater.
The problem with this conclusion is that it leads to scepticism,
since no human epistemic subject can have access to the totality of
truths. However, this condition makes sense again when trans-
formed into a requirement that must necessarily be satisfied by
each piece of evidence E given by a in order to be accepted as
belonging to E*; this requirement (which is already implicit in
Df.k3) states that E must remain ultimately undefeated by the
totality of beliefs held by s at the time of his evaluation, which is
reasonable enough.5
Department of Philosophy, UFRN, Natal, Brazil

[email protected]
5
Thanks to professors Richard Swinburne and João Branquinho for helpful advice and
support.

A Perspectival Definition of Knowñedge

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

A Perspectival Definition of Knowñedge

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

A Perspectival Definition of Knowñedge

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Ratio (new series) XXIII 2 June 2010 0034–0006

A PERSPECTIVAL DEFINITION OF KNOWLEDGE rati_458 151..167

Knowledge is not simply justified true belief, but it is justified

Analytic philosophers have dissected the classical tripartite view of

improving the tripartite definition of knowledge in such a way

The Internal Link Between the Conditions of Evidence and

A natural way to solve Gettier’s problem without substantially

Indeed, since in Gettier’s counterexamples it is only by coinci-

© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

The Epistemic Link: Fogelin’s Solution

A more successful attempt to solve Gettier’s problem by relating

© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Although intuitively acceptable, as it already reflects the per-

Introducing the Dialogic Equivalence

Before reformulating Df.k1 it is useful to be more explicit about

( DE) sK tj (aKp ) ≡ sK tj ( p & aBp & aEBp )

© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

What Might be Dialogically Involved in the Condition of Truth

The condition of truth is usually formulated in the tripartite

© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

based on the evidential support accessible to s at the time. This

© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

In this way the symbol ‘~>’ respectively captures the force of

© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

(1) s does not attribute any truth value to p; in this case, E* is

while (2) divides itself into two possibilities:

(2a) Each element of the set, each piece of evidence, is con-

One could ask if there isn’t a further possibility, namely:

(2ab) E* contains at least one piece of evidence sufficient to

However, this would not be a real epistemic alternative. As E*

© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

(i) If my car’s gas tank is full, then there is sufficient gasoline

In all of these cases it is possible that the antecedent is true but

© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

What Might be Dialogically Involved in the Condition

What about the condition of justification? Our proposal is to use

© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

( iii ’) sK tj (aEBp & ( E ∈ E *)) .

DE⬘ and the Perspectival Definition of Knowledge

DE’: (i’) (ii) (iii’)

DE’ clearly displays the logical or internal link between the

© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

( Df .k 4 ) aKp ≡ aEBp & ( E ∈ E *) & E * & ( E * ∼> p )

Ordinary Cases of Application

We begin with the most common and unproblematic case.

© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

present moment). It seems that here Df.k3 presupposes the iden-

Some Unusual Cases: Gettier-Type Counterexamples

Arriving finally at Gettier’s problem, it is not hard to understand

© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

in the truth of p, which always arise from the point of view of a

© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Inductive Evidence and Defeasibility

Unlike the old solutions, the perspectival understanding of

Department of Philosophy, UFRN, Natal, Brazil

( Df .k 4 ) aKp ≡ aEBp & ( E ∈ E ) & E & ( E * ∼> p )